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How to Pray the Rosary for Healing

The Rosary is a pattern of prayer that helps us to meditate more deeply on the life of Christ. We pray the Rosary by holding a Rosary and saying a prayer for each bead. The spaces between the beads become spaces for silence and meditation.

There are many different ways to pray the Rosary, and different customs and prayers have grown up in different cultures and for different individuals.

Some people kneel to pray the Rosary, but to pray the Healing Rosary I recommend sitting comfortably, perhaps with a candle burning before an icon or a crucifix.

Most people begin by holding the crucifix and reciting the Apostles’ Creed. This is followed by reciting the Lord’s Prayer (Our Father) and three Hail Marys and a Glory Be on the beads that connect the crucifix to the main circlet of beads. When you get to the medal that joins these two groups of beads, I recommend that you stop and ask God to use this prayer for your healing. You may use your own form of words or you might like to say: By the power of this Rosary, I pray the Blessed Virgin Mary to intercede for me for my healing, the healing of my family, and the healing of the world. This I ask by the redemption won for us by the suffering, death, and Resurrection of the one Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Pope John Paul recommended beginning each decade by announcing the mystery for that decade and, taking a moment, holding the chain before the decade of beads to visualize the events of this particular mystery. In this book, you will find material to help you visualize the event and apply it to your personal needs. After that, pray the decade slowly, allowing the Lord’s healing to be applied to your situation.

You may feel that God is doing wonderful things as you pray through a particular mystery. Maybe you feel he is bringing up many things that need to be dealt with. If so, take your time. Allow the Holy Spirit to work through your life at that point. You may feel that you want to repeat that mystery. That’s good. You may feel that you want to stop and simply rest in God’s healing presence and not complete the entire sequence of mysteries. That’s fine. Be led by the Spirit, and allow him to guide your prayer.

You may feel that the meditations designed for healing don’t apply to your situation. In that case, please still pray the Rosary for healing, but allow your prayers to be focused on other people you know who are in the situation described. If you do not know people who are in that situation, please pray for the healing of those unknown to you, for the healing of your community, and for the healing of the world.

Many people have doubts, questions, and fears about the healing ministry. We worry that God won’t answer our prayers, that we will look foolish because the person wasn’t healed after all. Don’t worry too much about this. When I began to work in the healing ministry, I expressed such doubts to an old priest with whom I was working. I said, “What if we lay hands on a person and pray and nothing happens?” He smiled and said, “Oh, something always happens!”

So it is with praying the Rosary for healing. Don’t worry. Something always happens! It’s just that it is not for us to say what God will do. If we pray faithfully, he will be faithful in keeping his promises. How and when he keeps his promises is his business! All we have to do is watch and wait, and eventually we will see the power of his healing love in our world.