Grab a rosary and put it down in front of you. This will be much easier if you can visualize what I am saying. The rosary visually represents a very important Old Testament event and spiritually is still used the same way today!
The first part of the rosary is the Crucifix. Most people do not realize this but the Israelites were encamped around the Ark of the Covenant in the form of a cross. In the middle was the Ark which was surrounded on all sides by the priests and Levites. They will represent Christ’s body on the crucifix.
Now for the cross. In early Biblical times things were orientated from east to west–from the rising of the sun to the setting as opposed to our modern north-south orientation. To the east, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulon totaled 185,000 people. (the bottom of the cross), to the west, Ephraim, Manasseh, and Benjamin totaled 108,000 (the top of the cross), to the south Reuben, Simeon, and Gad totaled 151,000 (the right side of the cross) and to the north Dan, Asher and Naphtali totaled 157,000 (the left side of the cross) It is not a perfect cross but very close to a crucifix if you consider the Ark of the Covenant and the Levites being in the center.
Now Joshua and the people were ordered to attack the city of Jericho, an impossible enemy stronghold, in a very specific way. They left the camp (the Crucifix) and walked a short distance to the Jericho. There they walked all the way around the city with the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant in front of them. Your rosary is a visual representation of their footsteps in the sand.
Now we don’t have the Ark of the Covenant to carry around the enemy’s strongholds or do we? The Old Ark of the Covenant contained three things: the stone tablets with the 10 Commandments, some manna, and Aaron, the High Priest’s rod. The Ten Commandments were the Word of God made in stone by the finger of God. Manna was called the bread that came down from heaven.
Mary held within her, the Word of God made flesh and instead of manna, Jesus–the Bread of Life. Finally within her womb was the Eternal High Priest Jesus Christ. She has been called the Ark of the New Covenant. When we pray the rosary we encircle Satan’s strongholds with this new Ark.
The Israelites did this for six days and on the seventh day, they circled Jericho seven times. They blew trumpets and the stronghold fell!
My husband developed the Jericho prayer. Each day for the first six days, pray one rosary doing whichever set of mysteries you want. On the seventh day, pray seven rosaries. You can do this with the four sets of the mysteries of the rosary approved by the church just repeating whatever three you want, or you can use our three Old Testament mysteries that will give you the full scope of the Bible.
The Creation Mysteries: the Creation of Man, the Fall of Man, the Flood, the Priesthood of Melchizedek, and the Sacrifice of Isaac.
The Exodus Mysteries: the Burning Bush, the Plagues, the Passover, the Giving of the Law, and the Manna in the Desert.
The Kingdom Mysteries: the Kingship of David, the Building of the Temple, the Prophets, the Exile, and the Return from Exile.
Finish the last four rosaries with the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, and Glorious mysteries. End with a mighty shout and bring down the strongholds of the enemy!
#Rosary #trcot, tcot, #Virgin Mary
The Transfiguration of Creation 
Did you two come up with the Old Testament mysteries or is that a more official list?
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My husband prayed about it and that is what he got. Nothing official.
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I have been looking for some time for Old Testament mysteries. These are fascinating. It would be nice if they were all mysteries that directly prefigured Christ and Mary. Do you have specific Bible passages for each of these Mysteries?
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It will take me a little time to get the actual passages but let me do this off the top of my head. Creation – According to Paul Jesus is new Adam. Just as death came to man through one man, so life came to man through Christ. St. Irenaeus and St. Justin Martyr saw Mary as the new Eve, her “Yes” to God undid the knot caused by Eve’s “No”.
The Fall of Man, when God cursed Adam and Eve and cast them out of the garden, he promised a woman and her seed would come and crush the head of the serpent.
The Flood, St. Peter in his epistle compared that to Baptism that saves those who are lost. There is a visual comparison between Noah surrounded by the unrighteous dying in the waters below, and Peter in the boat being called to be a “fisher of men.” The mission of the church is to save the unrighteous through the sacraments, especially baptism.
The priesthood of Melchizedek. He was a priest of the Most High God, and King of Salem (which means peace). He offers bread and wine to Abraham who had just rescued his kinsman Lot and others who had been carried off. Abraham in returns offers him a tenth of everything. The bread and wine prefigure the Eucharist which is a gift of God to man. Abraham is prefiguring Jesus’s mission of rescuing his kinsmen (the Jews) and others (the Gentiles) from the evil ones who carried them off (Satan). Jesus institutes a new priesthood in the order of Melchizedek that is eternal and offers to man the gift of God. The Levitical priesthood took from man an offering for God which could never grant forgiveness for our sins, it only pointed to the true sacrifice of Jesus who could forgive.
The Offering of Isaac. This foreshadowed the sacrifice of Jesus who carried the wood of his own cross up the hill. Jewish scholars believe that Isaac was a strong man at the time because it takes a lot of wood to sacrifice an animal much less haul it up a hill. Abraham who was quite old carried the fire and a knife. They believe he knowing consented to the sacrifice as he could easily have overpowered the elderly Abraham. The Jews also believed that in some mystical way each sacrifice on the altar was a representation of the sacrifice of Isaac which God found pleasing.
I need to take a break now. I will come back and do the Exodus Mysteries and then in another reply I will do the Kingdom mysteries. I’ll edit in the scripture references as I get time. I’m just afraid, if I wait until I have all my ducks in a row, it will be a month from now.
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Okay part 2, the Exodus Mysteries. The Call of Moses: The early church fathers compared this to the Annunciation with the appearance of the angel and the call to a mission. They saw in the burning bush, a symbol of Mary being consumed by the Holy Spirit and yet not harmed. Both are told that God is with them. God’s name is also revealed for the first time. In the annunciation, you have the angel tell Mary and later in a dream to Joseph, that his name is Jesus. Moses revelation is confirmed with the appearance of his brother Aaron. Mary’s revelation is confirmed by her cousin Elizabeth. Jesus started his ministry with a theophany at his baptism. If you substitute sin for slavery and Satan for Pharaoh, what is said at the burning bush becomes a mission statement for Jesus. “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt (sin), and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters (demons); I know their sufferings, and I HAVE COME DOWN to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians (sin and evil’s dominion) and to bring them out of that land to a good and broad land (heaven), a land flowing with milk and honey…” The apostles are later called and we too are called for a mission.
The Plagues: Jesus performs his first public miracle by turning water into wine at Cana, this harkens back to Moses turning the water into blood. I believe it was Sirach who said that the blood represented the deaths of the innocent Hebrew boys. Jesus’ birth was also accompanied by the death of innocent Hebrew boys. This typography is setting us up to see that Jesus is the new Moses, although something greater than Moses is here ( more on that when we get to the giving of the Law). Although Pharaoh’s heart is hardened during the plagues, if you look at the people in the background you see that they start to believe, in fact Pharaoh’s servants start begging him to let them go. In Jesus’ time, the leaders of the people get increasingly hardened to Jesus, but the ordinary people begin to believe. If you take a look at the plagues, every element of creation begins turning against the Egyptians. The first day where light and night and day are created, you see obliterated in the three days of darkness. Just as man was created last, the last plague is the death of the first-born son. Interestingly, at the parting of the Red Sea, you have darkness and wind blowing over the water, and the water is separated and the land appears. It seems like God is saying, here is a new creation I am making. God calls Israel, his first born son. In the same way, the Church co-existed with the Jewish people in Jerusalem for a time. In Acts we see that they were persecuted by them. In 70 AD, the Temple in Jerusalem and Israel was destroyed by the Romans. The Temple was a microcosm of the world for the Jews. The fall of Jerusalem is seen as prefigured in Revelations, which in turn prefigures the end of time when Jesus comes.
The Passover: For this I am going to be pulling directly from a book by Dr. Brant Pitre, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper, Chapter 3 The New Passover. Image Press, New York Copyright 2011, 2016. In the Passover, you had to first choose an unblemished male lamb. This would be Jesus who was without sin. Secondly, you had to sacrifice the lamb without breaking any of its bones. Christ was sacrificed without any of his bones being broken. In Jesus’s time, they would take a vertical spit up the center of the lamb’s body and then horizontal ones to spread out it arms and roast it that way. The lamb died in the form of a cross. Thirdly, you had to take the blood of the lamb and place it on the doorposts of the house. This was permanent sign that allowed the angel of death to pass over the house. The blood of the lamb stood in for the blood of the first-born of the house. So the blood of the first-born Jesus saves the people of his household within. Fourthly, you had to eat of the body of the lamb. If you did not participate in the eating of the sacrifice of the lamb you were not covered by it. There was a ban of eating of the blood of animals because their life was in the blood. With Jesus in the Eucharist, we eat of his body and drink of his blood that we might have his life within us. Lastly, the people had to do this as a perpetual remembrance. In a mysterious way, this remembrance was viewed as a participation in the actual event as if you were there. So this, is the type of remembrance that Jesus was talking about.
I will have to continue with the rest of the Exodus mysteries another time, as life is calling.
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