My dear brothers and sisters, on this day all around the world, we are given the opportunity to thank-God for drawing us closer to him, in his kindness, through so many means, but in particular through this prayer we have grown to love, and know to have come from heaven – the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
In recalling the mysteries of our Lord, and through the meditation on those same mysteries of his life, which includes his ministry, his horrific passion and brutal death, his glorious resurrection and ultimately his ascension into heaven, we are heeding our Blessed Mother’s final words and admonition in Sacred Scripture: “Do what he tells you.”
For in praying the rosary, we hear the sweet voice of the Saviour, who through what he has done for us, as recollected in those episodes captured in Scripture, speaks to our hearts and purifies them.
He does this because he loves us. He gives us guidance and awareness, so that we can battle the infernal enemy who continually lays traps and snares at our feet, hoping to misdirect, disillusion, and confound our steps towards God. Jesus, through his life and the mysteries we meditate on therein, illuminates those traps so we can avoid them. So, through his fiat in the Garden of Gethsemane, for example, we learn a humble resignation to the Father’s will, even if this will mean a great cost to us. Most of the time however, it will mean a renunciation of something which is not his will. The efficacy of the rosary is found primarily in the power which the mysteries of our Lord’s life impart to ours, but how we are accompanied in all of these by our Blessed Mother, Mary. We express to her our love, respect and honour, as with each invocation of the Hail Mary, we reiterate that which so marvellously fell from the lips of the Archangel Gabriel: “Hail… Full of Grace.”
Yes, our Mother is so perfect, so spotless, so completely and utterly filled with God, that grace totally encompasses and dwells within her soul, to the point that there is no room for sin, for where God is, sin can never be. That white cloak with which the elect will one day be vested in paradise, is the cloak she received right from her Immaculate Conception. So each time we pray the Hail Mary, and reiterate how she was full of grace, we call to mind the singular graces God adorned our Blessed Mother with, and we give him glory as it all leads us back to the power of the Cross. For it is in view of Christ’s merits that she was kept undefiled and spotless, so as to be the worthy dwelling place of the God who would assume flesh in her womb for nine months, but under her roof for thirty years. When one considers the household of the Holy Family, we can only marvel and wonder in joy.
In a world rife with confusion and discord, the rosary is the gift from Heaven which God has given us to find clarity, assurance, hope and peace. Whereas we are inundated with negative news each day, and the looming threat of war and disease, the Lord reminds us, through the Holy Rosary, that there is something greater than the machinations of the devil, something greater than the failures of a fallen world, which God worked within it, so as to get us to the next. For, the greatest of all his miracles, is the miracle of a God who would hang in weakness and brokenness on a cross, to be publicly ridiculed instead of thanked for his manifold graces, and most especially for redeeming us through his own precious blood. Only the true
God knows pain. Only the true God would ever hang there. And each time we pray the rosary, this greatest of all miracles, the cross, is somewhere being anticipated or vindicated, and it becomes the sign by which the Lord guides our path through the deserts of our lives. The Cross of Christ, Christ Crucified, continues to be the source of our strength and salvation, and the rosary only reinforces this in all the more a magnificent manner.
Let us take this weapon into our hands, and wield it with confidence in our precious Mother, trusting that though we walk through the valley of darkness, with the Lord by our side, we shall fear no evil, and closing our eyes, and remembering his sweet birth in Bethlehem, and his wonderous institution of the Eucharist, and glory of his Cross, the devils shall flee, the outrages committed against him shall be atoned, and the glory of his name shall be magnified—all this thanks to the prayer our Blessed Mother has given us from heaven. May the Rosary be for you and your family, a source of unity, growth, and perpetual blessings from the Lord, and may he bless you all, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Go in peace. Thanks be to God.
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