Book Review: "Champions of the Rosary" by Fr. Donald Calloway

This is a legitimate magnum opus. Fr. Calloway continues to outdo himself. His Champions of the Rosary: The History and Heroes of a Spiritual Weapon has been advertised as the most comprehensive book written on the Rosary, and I find that point impossible to dispute.

I fell in love with the first chapter. Fr. Calloway titled it, "From the Angelic Salutation to the 12th Century: The Antecedents of the Rosary"; but I refer to it as a biblical theology - the first for the Rosary that I have read. He weaves his theology around the image of a sword, developing the truth to be confirmed throughout the rest of the work: The Rosary is a uniquely powerful weapon for vanquishing Satan. The Rosary has this power because it is "equipped with the only thing capable of defeating him - the saving mysteries of the God-Man" (p.27). The mold for the sword was the Word of God, and the elements poured into that mold, the Our Father and Hail Mary. He discusses the historical development of the Hail Mary, from the joining of the Angelic Salutation (Lk. 1:28) and the Evangelical Salutation (Lk. 1:42) in the sixth century to the addition of its intercessory culmination in the fourteenth. 

Fr. Calloway gives a sweeping history of the Rosary, championing the traditional view that its antecedents were not joined to meditation on the mysteries of Christ's life until St. Dominic Guzman, the founder of the Order of Preachers (Dominicans), was granted a vision of the Blessed Mother, who extended the Rosary to him as a preaching tool to combat the Albigenesian heresy. You will read how the Rosary was employed by popes and saints to not only bring about conversion but win military battles against overwhelming odds (such as at Muret and Lepanto). I learned of miracles and Church-approved Marian apparitions that I had never heard of, such as Our Lady of Laus. Of special interest to me was the section dealing with the modern denial of St. Dominic's role as the original promulgator of the Rosary. Fr. Calloway traces this denial to the early twentieth century work of a Fr. Hebert Thurston, S.J., a priest with ties to the occult and an often-unwarranted criticism of the supernatural elements of the Catholic Faith.

The second section of Fr. Calloway's book is devoted to the great men and women who have championed the Rosary, from well known saints such as Pius V and Louis de Montfort to lesser known individuals, like Servant of God Joseph Kentenich.  Short biographies are provided for twenty-six individuals along with quotes witnessing to the power of the Rosary in their lives.

The third section of the book leads readers in the praying of the Rosary, from providing the texts for all of its vocal prayers to verses of Scripture to meditate upon in each mystery. It's is even capped off with a full-color appendix showing the Rosary in art down through the centuries, as well as paintings commissioned for inclusion in this book from artists Vivian Imbruglia and (what a great surprise, my friend) Nellie Edwards.

Fr. Calloway's Champions of the Rosary is the very definition of a masterpiece.

Book Review: "Word by Word" by Sarah Reinhard

What a fascinating concept for a book: Sarah Reinhard and her 41 contributors unpack the Hail Mary one word at a time, and the result is the perfect blending of personal testimony and Catholic theology.

"Lex orandi, lex credendi" - the Church believes as she prays. The Hail Mary is a theological gold mine and Reinhard and her contributors dazzled me with their ability to point out the sizeable theological nuggets hidden in plain sight. The first reflection, Fr. Patrick Toner's for the word "Hail," is a perfect example:

"To greet [Mary] is to acknowledge that she is present to us" (p.7).

"Hail" as a one word testimony to the Communion of Saints! This book had me hooked right there. It is the best kind of theology, that done on one's knees: prayer yields insight, and that insight launches one back into prayer.  I found it in reflections over even the most seemingly insignificant words of the Hail Mary. Listen to contributor Val J. Bianco:

Of is a preposition meaning "from." It can indicate ownership or position, neither of which has any meaning unless the word forms a bridge between two other words. Here, those words are Mother and God...Mary is of God in that she is from him, and in her fiat she completely belongs to him. Jesus, in turn, is of her in that his humanity springs from her. His genetic code, eyes, hair color, blood type, and smile are all of his mother, Mary.

Take that thought with you into today's praying of the Hail Mary; I guarantee that you will be the richer for it.

I was also drawn into this book by the personal connection each author felt to the Blessed Mother and the important role the Hail Mary played in their lives. Their witnesses allowed me to recognize what a small mental world I inhabit when praying the Hail Mary and to appreciate the many different notes it strikes in the souls of my brothers and sisters.

Word by Word: Slowing Down with the Hail Mary is an amazing tool to bring into your prayer life, especially as we enter Advent. With one reflection for each of the 42 words of the Hail Mary, I urge you to pick up a copy now; and let it enrich your approach to the great feasts that lie ahead: the Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Christmas, and the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

The Rosary & Our Mother Mary's Jewish Prayer Life

When I ponder what it means for Mary to be the mother of God incarnate, one of the most astounding aspects is to recognize the role she played in shaping Jesus’s human prayer. Yes, in the heights of His soul Jesus beheld the Father as clearly as the angels in heaven; but as a child, “He learns the formulas of prayer from his mother. . .He learns to pray in the words and rhythms of the prayer of his people” (CCC 2599).  When Jesus entrusted the Church to Mary at the Cross (Jn. 19:26-27; Rev. 12:17), He extended her motherhood to His entire Mystical Body. She became, in an utterly unique way (next to her Son of course), the Church’s great instructor in prayer. I think we see this most especially in the Rosary, and the way it mirrors the prayer times Mary and Jesus shared as devout Jews.

As faithful Jews, Jesus and Mary stopped three times each day to pray together.  They recited Israel’s creed, the Shema: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD; and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart. . .  .” (Deut. 6:4–9, 11:13–21; Num. 15:37–41). They also prayed the Eighteen Benedictions, a beautiful, comprehensive tapestry of praise and petition. And between those times of prayer, as Mary went about the business of the day, she pondered the words of the Torah and the Prophets that she had heard in the synagogue and discussed with Jesus and Joseph. Through her meditation the Holy Spirit planted the words of Scripture so deeply in Mary’s heart that they naturally permeated her spontaneous prayer (see 1 Sam. 2:1-8 and Lk. 1:46-55) Most importantly, Mary’s heart was fixed upon her Son’s every word and action, contemplating the divine condescension to which she was exposed on a daily basis and how the covenants with Abraham, Moses and David were all reaching their fulfillment in Jesus. Mary’s prayer, so intimately united to the prayer of her Son, is the most beautiful imaginable – and that is what the Holy Spirit wants to give us in the Rosary!

You see, in the New Covenant, the magnificent prayer of God’s people has been to new heights. Jesus commanded His disciples to pray the Our Father, a prayer whose seven petitions encapsulate all others – the Eighteen Benedictions included. And when it is prayed slowly, with the proper awe and love expressed in the words, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” it can encapsulate all blessing and thanksgiving as well. The early Church recognized this quite clearly (CCC 2767). The revelation of God’s oneness constantly confessed by the Jewish people in the Shema, has been completed by Jesus’s revelation of the Trinity and our confession of it in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and our making of the Sign of the Cross (the Creed in miniature) each time we prayer. All of this, and more, is present when we pray the Rosary.

We also join in Mary’s contemplation of her Son – contemplating Him in the light of Scripture. We invoke her intercession, softly praying the words of Scripture (the Hail Mary – Lk. 1:28, 42-43), as we mediate upon the mysteries of her and Jesus’s lives, narrated in the gospels. As we think and rethink the evangelists’ inspired words the Holy Spirit blesses us with deeper understanding of their significance and calls us, as He did Mary, to ever more profound discipleship. We complete our meditation on each mystery with the Glory Be – even more Scripture (Lk. 2:14; Matt. 28:19; Rev. 1:8). It’s such an amazing reflection of our Lady’s own prayer life! Pope St. John Paul II called Mary’s meditation, “the ‘rosary’ which she recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life;” and he invited us to join her: “With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 11; 1). Is it any wonder that when our Blessed Mother has been sent to earth – such as at Lourdes and Fatima – she beseeches us to pray the Rosary? It is one of the most important ways she nourishes and instructs the children entrusted to her by Jesus, at the Cross. It is one of the main ways she cooperates with the Holy Spirit to mother the Body as she did our Head!

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If you enjoyed the information shared in this post, you may also enjoy the book, Through, With, and  In Him: The Prayer Life of Jesus and How to Make It Our Own (Angelico Press, 2014), which explores these points in further detail.

Between Ascenion & Pentecost - Were the Apostles Praying the Rosary?

It sounds like a ridiculous question for me to pose. It's common knowledge that the Rosary didn't take shape for at least another thousand years! Upon reflection however, I hope you will agree that the the "soul" of the Rosary was always present in the Apostles' prayer.

Jesus' instruction at the time of His ascension was, "not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father...before many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit." And the Apostles did just that: "All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren" (Acts 1:4-5, 14). That was how they spent the nine days between Jesus' ascension and the descent of the Spirit on Pentecost.

Of what did their prayer consist? Petition, combined with a great deal of meditation (the "soul" of the Rosary) - thinking and rethinking the things Jesus had said to them, the actions and miracles they witnessed, the meaning of His death, resurrection, and ascension. It consisted of reflecting upon Scripture; when Jesus appeared to them on the night of His resurrection, He had "opened their minds to understand the scriptures...the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms" and how they had been fulfilled in Him (Luke 24:44-45). And this meditation was being done in the presence of Mary. She was engaged in it with them. As John Paul II pointed out so beautifully:

Mary lived with her eyes fixed on Christ, treasuring his every word: “She kept all these things, pondering them in her heart” (Lk 2:19; cf. 2:51). The memories of Jesus, impressed upon her heart, were always with her, leading her to reflect on the various moments of her life at her Son's side. In a way those memories were to be the “rosary” which she recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 11).

The Apostles spent nine days engaged in this with her, making the Church's first novena. We can see the fruits that emerged - Peter's move to replace the office left vacant by Judas' defection emerged from his reflection upon the Psalms (Acts 1:20) and then the explosion of Scriptural insights he unleashed up the crowd at Pentecost! (Acts 2:16-41) Isn't it likely that the Holy Spirit had been bringing key points of that first sermon to Peter's consciousness throughout the nine days of prayer?

When we today pray the Rosary, when we recite the Hail Mary while meditating upon the events recounted in the gospels and Acts (the twenty Mysteries), we enter into the Apostles' experience. "With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love" (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 1). And by doing this regularly, daily, our souls grow and become progressively docile to the movement of the Holy Spirit. We receive not one, but several Pentecosts as our eyes open up onto new spiritual vistas and we find ourselves acting with a freedom and strength we imagined ourselves unable to attain. And rightly so - these things can only take root in souls that have been broken up and seeded, over time, through prayer. These souls are made ready for that moment when the Living Water rains down and causes the new life to burst forth out into the open.

We won't see Pentecost without it. Jesus knows how we are made, and He knows how to "remake" us in His image; that was why He sent the Apostles back to the upper room. They needed to spend that time in prayer, in meditation ... in the company of His Mother. My friends, almost two thousand years may have passed, but the prescription remains the same.

Today is the Memorial of Our Lady of Fatima, and I can't think of a better way to recognize it than honoring our Lady's request to pray the Rosary.

Eve and Mary (the New Eve)

"The knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. What the virgin Eve had bound in unbelief, the Virgin Mary loosed through faith."

                  - Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons
                    Against Heresies, Book III (180-199 A.D.)

I have meant to write this post since the Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Dec.8th).  The readings at Mass that day contrasted humanity's disobedience in the Garden of Eden with Mary's obedience at the Annunciation.  

In both stories an angel spoke to a woman, a sinless woman fresh from the hands of God.  In the first, it is a fallen angel speaking in his own name, but in the second an archangel speaking in God's.

In the first, Eve gave her husband fruit to eat from the forbidden tree.  Mary offers us fruit as well, the fruit of her womb, Jesus (Lk.2:42), given to us as "real food" in the Eucharist (Jn.6:55).  But we must join her at the tree of the Cross to receive Him.

Eve did not believe God's word, that the fruit of the tree would bring death.  She did not trust in His love for her or her spouse, and was willing to believe that He was keeping them from true fulfillment.  She wished to put herself in the place of God.

In the sharpest contrast imaginable, Mary took God completely at His word - believing that even a virgin could conceive a child.  And Mary placed herself completely at God's service, "I am the handmaid [literally "slave girl"] of the Lord; let it be to me, according to your word.  

Both women became Mothers of the Human Race but in different ways.  Eve became mother of the fallen human race, but Mary the mother of the redeemed human race (Rev.12:17), redeemed by its union with her Son . 

Mary, "blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus!"

Jesus' Prayer (offered through YOU) Will Bring an End to Abortion

Here is my talk from today's luncheon:

My hope is to encourage you and renew your excitement over the Mystery at work in you - this Mystery I saw lived out this morning at Mass and in praying the Rosary on behalf of the unborn. We have many incredible Mysteries in our Faith, to which one am I referring?

The Epistle to the Hebrews says that in Heaven, Jesus always lives to make intercession for us. The Catechism of the Catholic Church draws our attention to the way He exercises that intercession through His Mystical Body, the Church!  (CCC 2740)  “The prayer of Jesus makes Christian prayer an efficacious petition. He is its model, he prays in us and with us … the heart of the Son seeks only what pleases the Father …”   We’re going to look at Jesus’ human prayer, He wants to reproduces it within us. We want to consider how we can most effectively cooperate in this Mystery, how we can allow the intentions of Jesus’ Sacred Heart, especially for the unborn, to be lifted up to the Father through us.

Short outline:

1)    Details of Jesus' daily prayer

2)    Talk about His Passover, His offering of Himself, to the Father

3)    How we the Church enter into His Passover sacrifice and prayer

4)    And how Mary assists us in this.

It seems strange for us to think about Jesus learning to pray.  This is God the Son.  He, the Father, and Spirit are eternally communicating Themselves to each other.

When God the Son became one of us, He didn’t lose anything of His Divinity.   He is still one with the Father.  In His human soul He gazed upon the Father just as clearly as the Saints and Angels in heaven.  What He did learn, what He did grow in, however was how to express His love for the Father as a human being - in words and actions!  (CCC 2599)   “The Son of God . . . learned to pray in his human heart.  He learn[ed]  to pray from his mother… He learn[ed] to pray in the words and rhythms of … his people,”

Jesus’ prayer was Jewish prayer.  When we think of Israel’s prayer, the first place most of our minds go is to the Temple.  Luke both began and ended his gospel there.  Jews recognized God as being present in the Temple as in no other point in all creation.  The Holy of Holies was His earthly throne room, heaven’s embassy on earth.  Jesus called the Temple His Father’s House and like all Jews, He, Mary, and Joseph traveled there three times a year for the Pilgrim Feasts of Tabernacles, Passover, and Pentecost.  John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus and His relatives made the 75 mile trip from Nazareth  even when it wasn’t required, such as to celebrate Hannukah (Jn.10:22)

The worship of the Temple was avodah, sacrifice.   Why was that?  With New Covenant hindsight, we understand that God is an exchange of life – A Son Who receives all He is from the Father and pours Himself out in a return of  Love in the Person of the Holy Spirit.  Man and woman were created to share, to have a created participation in, that circle of love and life – to receive all we are from God and pour ourselves out in gratitude and love.  Our first parents said “No” and that original sin damaged us, closed us in on ourselves.

God started to undo the damage by establishing a covenant with Israel.  He began the long process of rehabilitation by calling them to sacrifice,  to give back to Him a portion of the earthly gifts they received.  For an agricultural people like the Israelites, when they sacrificed their animals and crops – the very elements of life – to the Lord, they symbolically offered themselves.   In many sacrifices the Lord stipulated that a portion of the animal was to be held back – part of it eaten by the priests and part by the family making the offering.  God and his people were united in the life of the sacrificial victim.  This was how God wanted to be worshipped, and it was the absolute heart of Jewish prayer. 

I had heard of the Passover sacrifice and sacrifices for sins and to give thanks.  What I didn’t study until very recently though was the Temple’s daily liturgy.  It took place every day at 9 a.m. and again at 3 p.m.  The liturgy began with the priests leading the people in the Shema and the Ten Commandments.  With a crash of symbols priests and people launched into singing the Psalm for that Day.   Trumpets sounded  between the verses and everyone in the Temple went facedown in worship!   After that the priests then placed the perpetual, or daily offering, on the a lamb, cake of bread, and wine on the altar.  Trumpets sounded again and everyone in the Temple prostrated themselves in worship.  A priest chosen by lot went into the Holy Place to offer incense on the altar at the entrance to the Holy of Holies- the prayers of God’s people ascending upward.

The Temple and its sacrifices were the pinnacle of Jewish worship.  Obviously though - Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and millions of other Jews could only participate on very special occasions.  So what did they do on a daily basis?

At least two centuries before the birth of Jesus, Jewish people adopted the practice of stopping wherever they were to pray … 3 times a day, facing toward the Temple.  They prayed at 9 a.m., and 3 p.m., when the Tamid – the lamb, bread, and wine – were placed on the altar and then again around sunset when any final scaps remaining from the day’s offerings were burned on the altar and the Temple gate closed for the night.  Their daily, personal prayer  united them to the sacrifices in the Temple.

At their first and third time of prayer, as the spiritual bookends of the day, they recited the Shema, the Creed.  "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD;  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength" (Deut.6:4-5).  [The full Shema consists of  Deut.6:4-9; Deut.11:13-21; and Num.15:37-41]

Just like when you and I begin and end our day with the Sign of the Cross.  Yes, we have our Creeds, the Nicene and Apostle’s; but every time we make the Sign of the Cross we pray the Creed in miniature. Through the Christ’s Cross, we enter into the inner life of the Blessed Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) and His grace empowers us to do so with all our mind, all our heart, and all our strength!  There’s the Shema, our Christian Shema.

At all three times of prayer people prayed The Eighteen Benedictions.  In Hebrew they are known as Tephilla, simply “the prayer”  (Because the Benedictions are always prayed  while standing, you’ll also hear it called the Amidah, which means “standing.”  This is probably what Jesus was speaking of in the Gospels when He said, “When you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them” (Mk.11:25).  The Eighteen Benedictions are a beautiful tapestry of blessings and petitions:  “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – our shield (#1);  Blessed be the Lord, the only God. (#3); Blessed be the Lord Who raises the dead (#2); Blessed be the Lord Who loves repentance.  Make us turn back to you. (#5) … Who forgives, forgive us our sins. (#6)  ... Who rebuilt Jerusalem.  Restore the kingdom of David, your anointed. (#14).

Scripture says that Jesus entered history in the “fullness of time” (Gal.4:4), precisely the right moment in history, when these blessings and petitions would be a part of his prayer three times a day.  I suggest that when God willed the Incarnation,   He willed the petitions Jesus offered as a man, willed to bring about Jesus’ resurrection, and all that would mean for humanity, in response to them.

The early Church kept the Jewish practice of praying three times a day, but they didn’t pray the Eighteen Benedictions.  Instead of the Eighteen they prayed the Our Father.  (We find this in the Didache, the earliest Christian writing we have outside of the New Testament.  The Catechism makes note of it in Paragraph 2767.) The Our Father is the perfect prayer.  Listen to the Catechism, “, in the words of this prayer the only Son gives us the words the Father gave him [Jn.17:7] … [Jesus] knows in his human heart the needs of his human brothers and sisters and reveals them to us: he is the model of our prayer” (CCC 2765).  In those seven petitions of the Our Father Jesus encapsulated all Eighteen Benedictions!

The Gospels show Jesus’ prayer extending far beyond the 3 fixed times.  He prayed long after everyone else fell asleep.  He got up before anyone else to go off and pray.  Sometimes He just stayed up the entire night communing with the Father!  But the pinnacle of Jesus’ human prayer was reached at the Cross, when as the Catechism says (2605), “prayer and the gift of Self were one”

It’s at the Cross that Jesus’ gathered up his whole earthly life and poured it our to the Father in one great, irrevocable act of obedient love. The words of Psalms 22, 69, and 31 were on his lips, even as the texts took flesh in His Body – the piercing of His hands and feet, His incredible thirst, and his heart melting like wax within Him.  Mark’s Gospel tells us that He was nailed to the Cross at 9 a.m., the time of the morning sacrifice. His sacrifice was culminated at the 3 o’clock hour, as the Tamid – the lamb, bread, and wine – were again placed on the altar and Jews throughout the world prayed the Eighteen Benedictions:  Blessed are You Lord:  Restore the Kingdom of David … Make us turn back to You … Forgive us our sins … Raise the dead!

That was the moment when Jesus “cried out with a loud voice and yielded up His Spirit.”  The Catechism says that His final cry pulled all of the petitions and intercessions of all history into itself and carrying them to the Father. Jesus’ death was when all the prayers of God’s people, all the prayers of our Messiah’s thirty some years on earth reached a “critical mass” and the Father unleashed the graces of salvation upon the world through the Spirit, blood, and water issuing from Jesus’ pierced Heart.

This  great mystery of salvation and of Jesus’ prayer is being lived out by you and me.  In baptism our souls were fused to Jesus and the Holy Spirit rushed from His heart to ours.    As Paul said “It is no longer I who live, but Christ Who lives in me.” (Gal.2:20). The good works we do are not done under our power but His – it is Jesus loving His Father and brothers and sisters through us. St. Paul says that our sufferings are a participation in Jesus’ Cross, and because of that, they have redemptive value. And part of our prayer is Jesus praising and thanking and petitioning the Father through His Body.

We pray the Our Father – St. Paul says that “God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out ‘Abba, Father” (Gal.4:6)  The Spirit started praying in us the moment we were baptized.   Paul told the Romans (8:26-27):  “. . . the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.  And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

The highest point of Jesus prayer, where prayer and the gift of Self became one was at the Cross.  And His sacrifice becomes really, truly present for us at every Mass!  That’s why the Eucharist is the CENTER of our lives, the source and summit of our prayer.

Just this morning, Jesus once again made pilgrimage to His Father’s House.  He made pilgrimage in us!  The Shema echoed when we began with the Sign of the Cross and it will echo again in tomorrow’s Mass when we pray the Creed.  The Eighteen Benedictions were prayed in our Gloria and the Our Father.  The true perpetual offering – the Lamb, under the appearance of Bread and Wine – became present upon our altar.  And we offered ourselves and all of our petitions to end abortion through, with, and in Him!  It is Jesus’ offering, and Jesus’ petition to end abortion, so we know with absolute certainty that they are pleasing to the Father.  The petitions made by Jesus through, with, and in His Body are efficacious – they will be answered by the Father!

But we’re not able to stay at the altar, at least not physically.  God has given us work to do out in the world.  We have to go to our jobs, and see to the needs of our families and friends.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph did too!  But that’s where personal prayer comes in. That personal prayer is meant to unite our entire day to Jesus’ sacrifice, made present on the altars throughout the world.   It’s meant to help us live the Eucharist, to become Jesus’ offering to the Father.  Like Him, our every thought, word, and action are to be an offering to the Father.  St. Paul practically begged the Romans, “present your bodies as a living sacrifice, for this is our spiritual worship” (12:1)

Anybody else out there feel like they ain’t getting’ the job done?  Like they’re coming up short?  How do we change that?  I believe that Jesus gave us the answer at the Cross when He told the beloved disciple, "Behold your mother." We have to take note of what John did, "And from that moment on the disciple took Mary into his home."  John took Mary to himself.  Wherever John was, there was the Blessed Mother. 

Think about John’s Gospel.  It soars up to speak about Jesus Divinity, it penetrates His Mystery in a way much different than the synoptics.  It shows Jesus’ connection to the great feasts in the Temple and the way they were fulfilled in Jesus.  He give us the Bread of Life Discourse and Jesus’ great high priestly prayer at the Last Supper.  I have to think that sharing his life with Mary had something to do with that! 

She became John’s mother.  The woman who taught Jesus to pray as a boy prayed with John.  Think about this woman:   For 9 months His Heart physically beat beneath her own; the flesh and blood He offered in sacrifice were taken from her…;  Mary was Jesus’ prayer partner throughout His Life  - and then she became John’s.  She became John’s mother too.  Jesus wants that for us.  The Mother of the Head, is the Mother of the Mystical Body as well.  In the Communion of Saints she has a special connection to each soul.

Today is the 95^th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima.  What did Mary say to the children?  Jesus wanted to establish devotion to Mary’s Immaculate Heart.  Very simply that means to love Jesus with the Heart of Mary.

The way that I read St. Louis Marie DeMontfort it means that the Faith, Hope, Charity, and virtues that the Holy Spirit poured into the soul of the Blessed Mother remain accessible to other members of the Mystical Body - what is of benefit to one, is of benefit to the whole.  And the Holy Spirit wants to knit our hearts together with Mary’s so that we can share her union with Jesus – her prayer and surrender to Him, her performance of every thought, word, and action out of love for God.  One of the most awesome ways we join Mary in loving Jesus is through the praying of the Rosary.

How did Jesus tell the Apostles to prepare for Pentecost.  Go back to Jerusalem and wait for the Gift My Father promised. The went back to the Upper Room and spent the next nine days in prayer, with Mary. What was there prayer like in those nine days?  Petition, combined with a whole lot of meditation.  They were meditating on, thinking and rethinking the life, death, rez, of Jesus in the light of Scripture.  (Look at Acts 1, and you’ll see Peter sharing what he discovered in the Psalms)  They were meditating on the life of Jesus in the light of Scripture, with the Blessed Mother.  That's the Rosary!

Outside of the Mass, the Rosary is where I think you find the greatest number of elements from Jesus’ human prayer woven together.

· Sign of the Cross – Shema

·  Apostle’s Creed – Shema

·  Our Father – the prayer taught to us by God the Son, the prayer that comes to us in Scripture, and the Holy Spirit cries out within us!

·  On the Cross, Jesus prayed the words of Scripture:

·   The Hail Mary – a prayer composed from Scripture, the words of the Angel Gabriel and St. Elizabeth.

·   The Glory Be – “The glory be to God” the angels sang at Jesus birth;  “as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be” – that’s the Book of Revelation’s “God Who is, was, and is to come”

These are the words are lips are praying as, along with Mary, our hearts and minds are focused on Jesus and how He brought about our salvation.  I love the way Pope John Paul II put it, “With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 1).  If Mary was good enough for the Apostles, if she led John deeper and deeper into the Mystery of her Son … if she taught Jesus how to pray as a child, then she’s good enough for me!

On this 95^th anniversary of the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima we recall our Lady’s requests to the children.  Our Lady was sent to bring about conversion.  She requested acts of penance, Communions of Reparation (the celebration of the Eucharist), and the praying of the Rosary.  That is the prescription to bring an end to abortion too. 

 

Just as Jesus offered petitions throughout His entire earthly life, before that critical Mass of intercession was reached at the Cross, so now the Father seems to have ordained a participation in the intercession of Christ to us.  But know this:  It is the intercession of Christ.  It will be efficacious.  God the Father wants to answer this prayer, and He will answer this prayer.   In His Providence He has woven our petitions, penances, and participation in the Eucharist into His plan to end abortion.  He has ordained that certain graces only be released in response to our prayer, our participation in the intercession of Jesus!  What an honor!  To share in the redemptive prayer and mission of Christ!

Let’s join the Blessed Mother in uniting everything else we do today with the Eucharist celebrated this morning:

Daily Offering from the Apostleship of Prayer (with one addition)

“O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world.
I offer them for all the intentions of Your Sacred Heart: the salvation of souls, reparation for sin, AN END TO ABORTION, and the reunion of all Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops and of all Apostles of Prayer, and in particular for those recommended by our Holy Father this month.”

When life takes that "wrong" turn ...

Every person reading this, at one time or another, has had some very specific way he or she believed they were meant to serve God ... only to find out that they were mistaken.  It may have been a career you felt sure you were called to, or some great ministry idea that never took off.  Life went on and perhaps you later found yourself carrying out the work you felt called to in a different setting or as part of some other role you took on.  Whatever it was, that experience of discovering you were mistaken on the specifics  is disappointing as well as bewildering.  I've sure been there and, so too I believe, has our Blessed Mother.  

Ivanov Alexander Andreevich's The Annunciation (1850)

If we read Luke's account of the Annunciation carefully, Mary asks what should strike us as a strange question.  A little background first:  Jewish marriage was a two-step process - 1) the legal-binding of the couple, and then after about a year; 2) the wife left her family and settled into married life in the home of her husband.  Mary and Joseph had already passed through step one when Gabriel appeared to her (Lk.1:27) with the announcement "you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus" (1:31).  At that point, Mary, an already legally married woman, asks a strange question?  "How will this be, since I do not know man?" (1:34)

Huh?  A married woman still in the dark about the "birds and the bees"?  The Bible has other accounts of angels announcing the birth of children, but none of them record the mother needing a lesson in the facts of life.  I don't think Mary did either, and I'm not alone.  A long line of biblical interpreters have understood Mary's question as revealing a decision on her part - a vow to God - to remain a virgin, even after she went to live with Joseph.  If that was the case then her question to the angel makes sense.  "I have consecrated my virginity to the Lord, I have made my life a virginal offering to him.  How can I conceive a child?"

Gabriel's response is one of my favorite verses in the whole of Scripture, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called the Son of God" (Lk.1:35).  Only God could conceive of a way of serving Him in which physical virginity and physical motherhood can exist side-by-side.  It wasn't the way Mary had conceived of in serving Him.  She had heard the call to consecrated virginity, never imagining that there could be a subsequent call to Motherhood!  How could she imagine something like that?  Naturally speaking it makes no sense!  But God is above nature.

He is above nature, and He is above you and me.  When life takes a "wrong" turn and our plans to serve God seem in shambles, take a step back.  It's possible that you heard incorrectly, but it's also quite possible that the Lord has only revealed a small portion of the larger work He intends for you.  Rest assured, nothing is wasted.  Even the sins committed against us have been woven into God's plan (Gen.5:20; Rom.8:28).  Take your Mother's hand, throw yourself into your Father's arms, and be at peace.  ("Hail Mary ..., Our Father ...)

Mother Mary & Father Abraham

The Rosary really is an inexhaustible source of meditation.  Last night while thinking about the Visitation, I saw how similar Mary's faith was to that of Abraham.  "By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance" (Heb.11:8), and when Abraham "believed" God's promise that he and his elderly wife would one day welcome a son, "the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness" (Gen.15:6).  Likewise, when Mary received the double announcement of Jesus' birth and the pregnancy of Elizabeth, "she set out and went with haste" to see her formerly barren relative (Lk.1:39); and what did Elizabeth say to her, "Blessed is she who believed that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord!" (Lk.1:45).

When I came to the Nativity I recalled how Isaac, like Jesus, was a "child of promise" (Gal.4:28), and then in the Presentation in the Temple (the place of sacrifice), I recalled how both Abraham and Mary were asked to offer their sons.

Both Abraham and Mary saw their sons make their way up mountains, with the wood of  sacrifice upon their backs (Gen.22:6).  The great difference was that Abraham was spared the final moment of horror, but Mary was not.  

I recognize the tremendous honor of being made a child of Abraham in baptism, one of the children of promise (Gal.4:28), but an even deeper honor at being made, with Jesus, a child of Mary (Jn.19: 27).  "Hail Mary, full of grace . . ."

Am I not here, who is your Mother?

I think those words of our Lady to St. Juan Diego, and through him to us, are some of the most beautiful in history. I just renewed my consecration to Jesus, through the heart of Mary, this past week and wanted to share a thought that struck me in that regard. Before I come to it though, I need to lay a bit of groundwork:

What does it mean to be consecrated to Jesus through Mary? St. Louis De Montfort wrote the book on the subject. It is popularly known as True Devotion to Mary. De Montfort himself though, spoke of the devotion to Mary he prescribed as being "a perfect consecration to Jesus Christ." As difficult as this may be for some Christian brothers and sisters to understand, that is Marian devotion's raison d'etre. What De Montfort espoused was entrusting ourselves to Jesus' Mother, our Mother, totally and completely. We ask the Holy Spirit to knit our souls together, so that the grace that was in her, will be participated in by us as well. Sounds heretical? It sounded very foreign to me too, but after years of looking at it and seeing its fruits in others, such as John Paul II, I espouse it as well.

The Apostles themselves gave us the doctrinal foundations! Listen to this beautiful image given us by the Apostle Peter, "Come to Jesus, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God's sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house...to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:4-5). The Apostle Paul developed it further, teaching that "we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another" (Romans 12:5). In being fused to Jesus, we find ourselves then, at the level of the soul, mysteriously joined to one another. As a result, Paul could teach that "If one member of the Body suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together" (1 Cor.12:26); and could even claim, "in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (Colossians 1:24).

And so, the grace that is in one member of the Body can be of benefit to all. And who received the grace to love Jesus with a perfectly pure heart from the moment of conception? Who was a disciple to Him like no one else in the cosmos? Our Mother Mary! As the angel Gabriel said, she is the "Kecharitomene," the one who is "completely filled" with God's grace. She is the Church's ultimate success story, God's greatest masterpiece of grace! Now that's the living stone that I want to be fitted to, the cell of the Body that I want to be functioning alongside. The grace that God gave her disposed her to overcome every difficulty and give herself to Him without reserve, so that the Holy Spirit could fashion Jesus within her. I want that grace that God poured into Mary, to yield to Him as she did! My soul, of itself, is still so underdeveloped, has so many impediments that prevent the Holy Spirit from moving it the way He wishes.

Do you remember your Old Testament? The great prophet Elijah told his pupil Elisha to ask a favor of him before he (Elijah) was assumed into heaven. Elisha's request? "I pray you, let me inherit a double share of your spirit" (2 Kings 2:9). And that was exactly what Elisha got! Well, there's no way we can receive a "double" portion of the grace Mary did - since as Mother of the Incarnate Word she received more than all of the angles and saints put together! - but she and the Holy Spirit sure want us to participate in it! They want us to tap into it to accelerate our spiritual growth. Again, as Paul said, "we are members of one another." To share in the grace given to Mary's soul is to make ourselves ever more docile instruments of the Holy Spirit, more perfect disciples of Christ Jesus! And this brings me back to that thought I was struck by earlier this week:

I was meditating on the third Luminous Mystery, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom. My mind turned to that episode when Jesus was preaching, and He was told that His Mother and family were outside. He looked at those sitting around Him and said, "Here are my mother and my brethren! Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother" (Matt.12:49-50). I've always understood Jesus to be saying that we are to share in the mission of His Mother, the mission of doing God's will by giving Him our flesh and allowing Him to "enter the world" through us. And that's true. But for the first time, I recognized Jesus' words as having a deep fulfillment in this idea of being consecrated to Him through spiritual union with Mary. It is "common" to think of ourselves as Jesus' brothers and sisters, but mother strikes us a bit strange. Not when we conceive of it as our souls being knit to Mary's by the Holy Spirit though. Not when we understand it as being allowed to share in that beautiful grace that was hers - becoming completely fluid in the Hands of the Spirit, so that He can form Christ Jesus in our souls as He did within the womb of Mary.

We become completely Mary's (as Jesus did in the Incarnation), so that we may become more perfectly Jesus'. Our Lady stands before us today as she did Juan Diego, "Am I not here, who is your Mother?"


Quite an honor: This entry was re-printed by Catholic Exchange on Dec.17th.