How To Properly Place Your Holy Rosary

The Holy Cross is sacred. It is only in the Catholic tradition that a replica Cross, or Crucifix, is venerated and affixed to the Holy Rosary. It is also a sacramental, and like all sacramentals, which guide our attention heavenward, the Holy Cross must be treated with care and respect. This is most especially true for the way we face the Crucifix since it is at the Cross we find the full meaning and heart of the Christian faith.

Holy Rosaries are to be placed with the Crucifix always facing upward. The Fifth Sorrowful Mystery of the Rosary, the Crucifixion and Death of our Lord on Mount Calvary, as revealed by Venerable Mary of Agreda offers clues as to why. Nowhere in Sacred Scripture are these minute details found, but rather in her 4-volume work, the Mystical City of God. In fact, the detailed account of the Crucifixion scene found in this book was inspiration for Mel Gibson’s own powerful Crucifixion scene in the Passion of the Christ.

Venerable Mary of Agreda recounts in her visions from the Blessed Mother that Christ’s executioners decided to bend the points of the nails projecting through the back of the wooden cross in order that they not be loosened and drawn out by the weight of Christ’s body. Furthermore, the executioners planned to face the crucified body of Jesus downward towards the ground to ensure the weight of the cross would be upon Him rather than on the wood and the nails. Mary, His mother, touched with sorrow and compassion at this newfound cruelty towards her Son, intervened amidst cries of pity from bystanders through her intercessory prayer to the Father to not let this happen. By her prayers a throne of angels came to our Lord’s assistance. The holy angels supported their Creator by holding the cross inches shy of the stony ground when the executioners raised and dropped the Cross face down after nailing our Savior to it. To bystanders it seemed as if our Lord received a hard blow from the rocky ground. Yet, his body did not even come in contact with it.

Venerable Mary of Agreda writes “That this really happened, has been revealed to me many times,” (Rosary Meditations, 25).

May we always remember this eye-opening Crucifixion scene every time we hold our Rosaries in prayer or when placing it in its sacred place when not praying. Our Holy Rosaries must always face with the crucified Lord facing upwards.

Source: Concert, Tom. (2017). Rosary Meditations. Corpus Christi, TX: Agreda Media.