What Is The Psalter Of Mary Is It The App?
A little background here: The devotion of the rosary has been part of our tradition for almost a thousand years, having developed in the second millennium of Christianity. The Dominican Religious Order were the ones to spread the popularity of this devotion, and therefore the rosary is often attributed to their founder, Saint Dominic, who died in the year 1221.
The Beads
Christians used prayer beads to count the number of prayers recited. The 150 prayers were broken down into three groups of 50, and these 50 were then broken down into groups of ten each. Each ten beads of the rosary focused in on an event, or “mystery”, in the life of Jesus and/or Mary. We know these as the ‘Mysteries’ of the Rosary.
- Joyful Mysteries
- Sorrowful Mysteries
- Glorious Mysteries
Where Did the Luminous Mysteries Come From?
In this third millennium of Christianity, Pope John Paul II gave the Church five new mysteries to meditate upon, the Luminous Mysteries.
How Does Mary’s Psalter App Help?
The App is beautiful, with delicate icons, and a logo that is pleasing to find on your device. The developer Valent Richie is excellent at capturing the essence and beauty of the Rosary, in the creative way. Other rosary apps bring you artwork, and scriptures that aren’t a part of the original Psalm prayers, but that focus on the particular moment of mediation.
The Psalms of St. Bonaventure
St. Bonaventure wrote and composed these 150 reflections to be sung or prayed with each bead of the rosary instead of the Hail Mary.
Here is a quote from the preface:
..That I may give you an occasion of obtaining such great gifts, I send you the Psalter of this most Holy Virgin, put together and composed indeed by my feeble intelligence, but with her grace and help; by means of it you will praise with divers hymns, now her virginity and chastity, now her fecundity and sanctity, now her clemency and bounty.
You will be able to salute her as full of all grace, or as filled with all knowledge, or as illumined by all understanding and wisdom.
Preface from St. Bonaventure Catholic Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary
This app brings the 150 Psalms (not the bible Psalms) written by St. Bonaventure to life.
Each of the three 50 sets is broken down, so that from the menu you can select 1-50, 51-100, 101-150. Or you can select all of them together, to pray the 150 consecutively. Don’t worry if you don’t finish, it keeps an auto book mark so you can come back to where you left off. This bookmark feature is super for those of us exhausted by kids and life, and end up falling asleep to the divine mediations. (At least that is the excuse that I will allow myself to take right now). If you close the app, you can always come back to the Psalm you left off with. Fantastic App!
You can jump right to the prayers that you want with this great navigation. It works the same on the iPhone
Pulling in from the left side gives you a navigation screen (iPad Edition)
Focus on any of the three sets of 50 prayers that St. Bonaventure wrote to Honor Mary.
I thought that this would make the rosary exponentially longer, HOWEVER, the point of this app is to allow you to replace the Hail Mary with the reading of the Psalms. This is beautiful, or you could do both, pray/read/sing the psalm and then pray the Hail Mary.
You can navigate through all of the psalms with the arrows at the bottom, or jump to the pslam you want to start with front he book menu at the top right of the screen (iPad edition).
Share It Out!
At any point you can share what you are reading. by touching the cloud in the bottom centre. Does this seem familiar? It should. If you have a look at his other apps including the Scriptural Rosary app that we have reviewed, he has the little cloud in that app as well.
So share it on social media, or copy it to your clip board. It is a great way to encourage and share your prayer. Any and all of your connected sharing apps are available including things like Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Don’t worry, you can share out with the pretty cloud icon that the author has placed at the bottom centre.
The author has included the preface written by St. Bonaventure for the Psalter of Mary. Beautiful.
This app is a great buy. It isn’t just another rosary app, it really takes the rosary and brings it to the foundation, a history that I didn’t even know or understand. Praying the Psalms as part of the rosary is beautiful. It is worth the cost, because this app is unique. Well worth it!
A Bundle of Apps
You can also purchase this app as part of the developer’s bundle. The Blessed Virgin Mary Bundle. $8.99 for four apps![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
