How To Pray the Rosary ~ http://www.therosary3.com
While the rosary and the indulgences attached to it by the Church essentially concerns the decades and the meditation upon the mysteries only, the following is a customary way of preparing for the rosary and concluding it.
The Rosary is essentially the decades and their associated mysteries, and only these must be prayed to “pray the rosary”, either in satisfaction of Our Lady’s requests, or, to gain the indulgences attached to praying the rosary.
The traditional Rosary is divided into three parts, each having five mysteries: Glorious, Joyful and Sorrowful. In his apostolic letter The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, Pope John Paul II proposed a new set of mysteries, which he called the Luminous, and which concern the period of the public life of Our Lord. For those who wish to say all 20 decades at once during the course of a day, they may be said in the following order: Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious. For those who wish to say only 5 decades per day, the Holy Father proposed the following schedule: Monday Joyful, Tuesday Sorrowful, Wednesday Glorious, Thursday Luminous, Friday Sorrowful, Saturday Joyful, Sunday Glorious For those who prefer to follow the traditional order of the days it is: