We have seen, therefore, how the three divine virtues are the foundation of the Christian life, and that their practise constitutes Christian life.  The true worship of God consists in practising these virtues which, at the same time, are the sole way to eternal bliss.  Progress in the Christian life keeps pace with the activity of these virtues.  This increase of virtue is, likewise, a gracious gift of God.  We are ever obliged to co-operate with grace.  We must strive for the increase of our faith, hope, and charity, by frequently practising these virtues, by the worthy reception of the holy Sacraments, by attentively contemplating the divine truths and, especially, by humble and heartfelt prayer.

How feeble, indeed, is our faith, how wavering our hope, how insufficient our love of God and our neighbor.  They need the strengthening grace of God.

To pray rightly, and to be worthy of being heard, we must awaken these fundamental virtues.  Therefore, at the beginning of the Rosary we say devoutly one Our Father and three Hail Marys to ask God for an increase of these virtues.  Because faith, hope, and charity should be both the basis and the fruit of the Rosary.  Amen.

X. THE EXCELLENCE OF THE ROSARY IN REGARD TO ITS FORM

“She reacheth therefore from end to end mightily, and ordereth all things sweetly.”—­Wisdom viii, 1.

The disposition of the heart is in prayer of more consequence than the manner of expression.  Yet an appropriate form of prayer is helpful in avoiding distraction and in inducing devotion.  Our Divine Saviour taught His disciples to make use of a special form of prayer, the “Our Father.”

The form of the Rosary helps appreciably in rendering the Rosary the great prayer it is.  The Rosary has been aptly called the “lay breviary.”  For many centuries the faithful joined in the reciting of the breviary.  As late as in the eleventh century St. Peter Damian urgently exhorted the faithful to participate in the ecclesiastical “hours” of prayer.  And when gradually participation in the ecclesiastical prayer ceased, Divine Providence supplied the Rosary to take for the laity the place of the breviary.  It may thus properly be called the “lay breviary.”  In fact it reminds of the breviary of priests, for it contains verbal prayer and meditation, and the hundred and fifty “Hail Marys” of the Rosary correspond to the hundred and fifty psalms of the breviary.

Let us now consider how appropriate the form of the Rosary is, and how it renders the Rosary a perfect prayer.