The rosary helps me to be a child...

Ave Maria!  In October 1973, on the occasion of the 4th centenary of the Feast of the Rosary, the future Pope John Paul I, Albino Luciani, then Patriarch of Venice, gave a homily suited to the occasion. He concluded his homily with these words:

"When we speak of 'adult Christians' in prayer, at times we exaggerate. Personally when I speak tête-à-tête with God or with the Blessed Virgin Mary, more than an adult I prefer to think of myself as a child. The mitre, skullcap and ring disappear; I give a holiday to the adult and the bishop and also to heavy burdens, sober and pondered, and let myself go with the spontaneous tenderness of a child in front of his papá or mamma. To be – at least for half an hour – before God as I truly am with my wretchedness and also with the best of myself: to feel rising from the depths of my being the child of other days who wants to talk and chat with the Lord and love him and who sometimes feels the need to cry that he may be granted mercy, all this helps me to pray. The rosary, a simple and easy prayer, helps me to be at times a child again and of this I am not in the least ashamed.

"The rosary a prayer of repetition? Père de Foucauld used to say: 'Love is expressed in a few words, always the same, repeated time and time again.'"

Dearest Mary, Mother Most Wonderful, how good it is to be your child!

O Mary, you are praying for us...

O Mary, you are praying for us, you are always praying for us. We know it, we feel it. Oh what joy and truth, what sublime glory, in this heavenly and human interchange of sentiments, words and actions, which the rosary always brings us: the tempering of our human afflictions, the foretaste of the peace that is not of this world, the hope of eternal life! ~Blessed John XXIII, 1881-1963

Ave Maria! I find great comfort in thinking that Mary, Christ's mother and ours, is always praying for me and for all of us. Always! And along with comfort, I discover that joy, truth and sublime glory of which Pope John XXIII spoke. There's no magic in these beads that we so often pick up and pray, but there's a tremendous amount of love -- the love of a mother for her children, of the Mother for her Son, and of the Son for us. Overflowing love, abiding love, enduring love! Love that will never let us go! Mother most wonderful, to you I come...

These holy beads...

Once I saw a rosary made in a prison camp of the most precious material to be found there, namely bread-crumbs. The fact that a starving soldier had denied himself the bread necessary to survival in order to fashion a Rosary out of it speaks more eloquently for the value of these holy beads than volumes of pious books can do. ~Joachim Cardinal Meisner

Dear Lord, please forgive me for the times I've taken "these holy beads" for granted and neglected to pray them. Amen.

Today's Feast: Our Lady of the Rosary

Ave Maria! What a lovely feast we celebrate today! Our Lady of the Rosary! Mary's rosary is for us a lifeline to Jesus, her Beloved Son. It is our song of praise and our cry for help as we pray over and over again, "Hail Mary, full of grace...blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus!" Mary's rosary is a chain of love that binds us to her Son's heart and to hers as well.

Everyone and anyone can and should pray the rosary! It is the perfect prayer for both the child and the adult, the learned and the unlettered, the sophisticated and the simple. One does not have to be a theologian or Scripture scholar to grasp the tremendous depths and heights of the rosary. All that is required is faith and love -- faith in God who is Infinite Love and love for Him and His Holy Mother.

As always, Mary leads us to Jesus. The rosary is centered on Christ, not His mother. It is truly a Gospel prayer. As Pope Paul VI wrote his apostolic exhortation Marialis Cultus: "As a Gospel prayer centered on the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, the Rosary is a prayer with a clear Christological orientation. Its characteristic element, the litany-like succession of Hail Mary's, becomes in itself an increasing prayer to Christ who is the ultimate object both of the Angels' announcement, and the greeting by Elizabeth, the Mother of the Baptist - 'the blessed fruit of your womb.'"

Pope John Paul II quoted Pope Paul VI in his own apostolic letter on the Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, calling the rosary "a compendium of the Gospel." A compendium is, of course, a short but complete summary, and the rosary contains the major events of Our Lord's life as they relate to our salvation and sanctification. Many years ago, St. Thomas Aquinas said that the mysteries of the rosary sum up our faith. The addition of the Luminous Mysteries by Pope John Paul II eight years ago makes this even clearer.

The rosary is a prayer for everyone and for all seasons. Let us take up our rosary often, daily even, with love and gratitude and in the blessed assurance that through Mary, our life, our sweetness and our hope, we will find Jesus, the way and the truth and the life.

O glorious Virgin Mary, may we always love and praise you!

A New Springtime of the Rosary

Today, together we confirm that the Holy Rosary is not a pious practice banished to the past, like prayers of other times thought of with nostalgia. Instead, the Rosary is experiencing a new springtime. Without a doubt, this is one of the most eloquent signs of love that the young generation nourishes for Jesus and his Mother, Mary. In the current world, so dispersive, this prayer helps to put Christ at the centre, as the Virgin did, who meditated within all that was said about her Son, and also what he did and said. When reciting the Rosary, the important and meaningful moments of salvation history are relived. The various steps of Christ's mission are traced. With Mary the heart is oriented toward the mystery of Jesus. Christ is put at the centre of our life, of our time, of our city, through the contemplation and meditation of his holy mysteries of joy, light, sorrow and glory. May Mary help us to welcome within ourselves the grace emanating from these mysteries, so that through us we can "water" society, beginning with our daily relationships, and purifying them from so many negative forces, thus opening them to the newness of God. The Rosary, when it is prayed in an authentic way, not mechanical and superficial but profoundly, it brings, in fact, peace and reconciliation. It contains within itself the healing power of the Most Holy Name of Jesus, invoked with faith and love at the centre of each "Hail Mary". ~Pope Benedict XVI, 5/3/08

Ave Maria! Today we begin a new month, and this one, being October, is dedicated to the rosary. That means that it is dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary and even more so to her Beloved Son, Jesus, the fruit of her womb. It is Mary, the Mother of Christ, to whom our prayers are sent like darts of ardent desire when we pray the Rosary. And Mary always leads us to Jesus. "Not me," she tells us, "not me but my Son! My Son! Look, here He is! Behold Him, listen to Him, obey Him, honor Him, imitate Him. Let Him be your life, your love, our strength and your hope. Be His, all His, and let Him do with you as He wants. Only then will your joy be complete. Come now, come with me, let us go together to His crib and His cross, to worship Him in spirit and truth, to serve Him all the days of our lives, to proclaim His goodness and mercy and to rejoice always in His enduring love." Mother most wonderful, I come!

The Rosary

The Rosary is both meditation and supplication. Insistent prayer to the Mother of God is based on confidence that her maternal intercession can obtain all things from the heart of her Son. She is “all-powerful by grace”, to use the bold expression, which needs to be properly understood, of Blessed Bartolo Longo in his Supplication to Our Lady. This is a conviction which, beginning with the Gospel, has grown ever more firm in the experience of the Christian people. The supreme poet Dante expresses it marvellously in the lines sung by Saint Bernard: “Lady, thou art so great and so powerful, that whoever desires grace yet does not turn to thee, would have his desire fly without wings”. When in the Rosary we plead with Mary, the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 1:35), she intercedes for us before the Father who filled her with grace and before the Son born of her womb, praying with us and for us. ~Pope John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae

Dearest Mary, today as every day, I happily take up my rosary anew, resting confidently in you like a child at her mother's breast (Ps 131), secure in your maternal love for me and for all your children. Mother Most Wonderful, may I always love and honor you, and, with you, the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Amen.

A Rosary of Our Life

Let us make a rosary of our life, placing every incident in it, and offering up our daily cares with a quick Ave Maria.

~Adrienne von Speyr, Lumina and New Lumina

What a lovely thing to do! To make a rosary of my life, offering every little piece of it as Our Lady offered herself to God -- gratefully, freely and happily, and confident of the Father's goodness and love. Jesus-living-in-Mary lives in me, too, and the mysteries of His life and hers are mine as well. In union with them, all the Paters and Aves of my life become a splendid Gloria in praise of the Holy Trinity.

Hail Mary, our life, our sweetness and our hope!

Rosary Story #2

In her book With Joy and Gladness, Sr. Maryanna, O.P. tells the story of a young priest who was visiting patients in a hospital and came upon an older man slipping the beads of a rosary through his fingers.

"I see you're a Catholic," the priest said, smiling.

"No, Father, I'm not," the old man replied, "but someone give me these here beads and I'm tryin' to say 'em."

"Do you know the prayers?"

"Well, I know the Our Father, but on these here Hail Mary beads, I just been makin' it up."

"Oh? What have you been saying?" the young priest asked curiously.

The old man looked embarrassed. "If it ain't right, maybe you could tell me the words, Father. I just been sayin', 'Hail, Mary, you was so sweet.'"

"Keep on saying it that way," the priest said gently. "She likes it."

"And who is to say she doesn't," Sr. Maryanna wisely concludes, "this Lady who is our sweetness and our hope?"

Hail Mary, you was so sweet!

You whose branches are so bright and graceful ... who bud forth delights like the vine ... whose blossoms have become fruit fair and rich for us, your hungry children in exile ... Hail Mary, you was so sweet!

You who give forth perfume and sweet spices, like the odor of incense in the holy place .. Hail Mary, you was so sweet!

You who are sweeter than honey, better to have than honeycomb ... Hail Mary, you was so sweet!

In this valley of tears, we who eat of you hunger still, we who drink of you thirst for more ... Hail Mary, you was so sweet!

You turn your eyes of mercy toward us and give us Your Beloved Son Jesus to be our food and our drink, our strength and our glory, our way, our truth and our life ... Hail Mary, you was so sweet!

May we who yearn for you come to you and be filled with the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus ... Hail Mary, dearest Mother, thank you for always being our life, our sweetness and our hope!

Hail Mary, you was so sweet!

(cf. Sirach 24)

Today's Memorial: Our Lady of the Rosary

An Old Woman with a Rosary, by Paul Cézanne

Just about every Catholic has at least one "rosary story" to tell. My own favorite is about Daddy and his rosary. His mother gave it to him when he was seven years old and made his First Holy Communion. Grandma Annie had had engraved on the back of the cross the date of this special occasion. When Daddy died at the age of 81, the date was almost completely worn off and the Body of Christ had been smoothed down into a barely perceptible rising on the cross. Daddy's lifelong, passionate devotion to our Blessed Mother was fueled by his great love for our Lord Jesus Christ. One of my dearest memories of Daddy is of him sitting in Grandma Annie's rocking chair while praying his rosary. I don't remember much of what Daddy told me about Mary, mainly because he was a man of few words. He didn't need to say much, though, because his life of deep faith spoke volumes. From him I learned everything I needed to about Christ's great gift to us of His Mother Mary.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you! Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.