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Sunday 28 (B): First of three homilies
on the Rosary to celebrate the end of the Year of the Rosary
As we approach the end of the Year of the Rosary, proclaimed by Pope John Paul II in October of last year, I would
like to preach for the next three Sundays on the Rosary. My aim is to help us rediscover or deepen our understanding and love
for this prayer and perhaps inspire a renewed commitment to praying it alone or together, especially as families, for in the
Rosary we are in the truest sense at home. Time is short, so I will not give you a basic catechism on the Rosary: it seems
right to presume that you already know its origin and history. If you do not, I encourage you to find it out by a sincere
search in Catholic literature; you can also look for the Holy Father’s Apostolic Letter on the Rosary which he wrote
last year to help re-educate us as to its deepest meaning and to link it with the Great Jubilee of the Third Millennium. If
the Pope’s invitation to all in the Millennium was to contemplate the Face of Christ, his invitation to reimmerse ourselves
in the Rosary is for us to make that contemplation through the eyes, Heart and mind of the Mother of Christ. She is the one
who “pondered all things” about Jesus in Her Heart. The Rosary is simply to share in Her pondering and so to come
to share in Her understanding of, love for, and obedience to the Mysteries of Her Son.
To understand the Rosary, we need to understand the relationship between Mary and Jesus. Yes, we know She is His physical
Mother; yet She is not so much blessed because She bore Him in Her womb or suckled Him at Her breasts; rather She is blessed
because She “heard the Word of God and obeyed it.” Intimacy of knowledge and relationship with Jesus is not primarily
physical, but spiritual. Since He is the Word of God made flesh, it is in listening to, and obeying Him that we grow in oneness
with Him. “Who are my mother and brothers?”, He once asked; “The one who hears the Word of God and keeps
it is my mother and brother and sister.” The Rosary, then, is a gift given us by God at the hand of Mary to draw us
into a deep pondering of the Words and Life of Jesus so that we may come to obey His Word and imitate His Life and thus become
ourselves “mothers, brothers and sisters” to Jesus. More than any human being, Mary knows the mind and Heart of
Jesus; that is the fruit both of the fullness of grace She received as a pure gift from God and as the fruit of Her free response
of obedience in faith to God’s will. By baptism, we too are called to the fullness of grace and to the free obedience
of faith; we too are called to become “Mary”, to be faithful followers and companions of Jesus in the unfolding
of the joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious mysteries of His life. Mary teaches us how to do this and, as our Mother by
Jesus’ own dying gift, She accompanies us and empathizes with us as we reproduce in our own lives the Mysteries of Christ,
the Mysteries of the Rosary.
The Rosary itself, with its chain of beads, fulfils precisely the function of any chain: to keep us anchored, tied
to something, only that something is Jesus to whom we are drawn and attached by the Father and the Holy Spirit. Of course,
we are attached to Him in many ways, especially through His Church, His Word and His Sacraments. However, one ingeniously
“human” way in which He draws our freedom to surrender itself to Him is through the affectionate route of His
Mother. She does not stand in competition with the Church, the Scriptures or the Sacraments! Her role is subordinate to these
and at the service of these! She Herself would have it no other way! Indeed, the more truly we draw closer to Her, the more
we will find ourselves belonging to the Church, sensitive and attentive to the Word and desirous of the Sacraments. The Rosary
presents to us in another form what is already at the heart of the Church, the Word and the Sacraments: namely, the Mysteries
of the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus. The special advantage of the Rosary is that, at any time and in any place, with
the help and solicitous love of Mary, it can focus our wayward, weak or lonely hearts on the Mysteries of Christ. In doing
so, it stirs our longing for the Communion of the Church, the Truth of His Word and the Grace of His Sacraments. It makes
us conscious of the chain, the bonds of profound spiritual affection which bind us always and everywhere to Christ and to
the whole company of heaven, thus freeing us from the oppressive yoke of feeling cut off, disoriented, or lost in the trials
of our existence.
The Rosary, then, can mediate to us a sense of order, structure and direction in our lives, individual, married, family
or social. You might even say that the “mystery” of our own life, which not infrequently we ourselves hardly notice,
never mind understand, finds itself constantly illumined, explained, renewed, transformed, reinterpreted by the Mysteries
of the Rosary. The depths of Christ’s life are not understood by reading a book, just as the depths of one’s own
life cannot be plumbed by one’s schedule or spiritual journal. We need to keep reflecting and searching. Hence, repetition
is of the essence: while our tendency to bad habits can plague us, habit itself is nevertheless necessary for survival, growth
and maturity. Our lives are linear, from beginning to end: but rather than being a straight line, they are more akin to an
ongoing spiral on its side. Think how often you go over the same thoughts; yet notice how, from time to time, one or other
thought is not quite the same. The experience of life brings new perspective and what once seemed inscribed in stone is now
slightly different, even although it is paradoxically the same! There is continuity and discontinuity: continuity with what
we were and are, discontinuity in what we are becoming. To understand ourselves more deeply we need to keep mulling over and
returning to those depths and dimensions of our lives which somehow elude us, but which we sense as holding the key to some
doorway we need to pass through. Likewise, the Rosary “chain”, as it takes us round and round, again and again,
pondering the Mysteries of Christ, is not a mechanical repetition, but a dynamic, spiraling repetition, leading us to an ever-deepening
penetration into Jesus. In so doing, it leads us to an increasingly profound understanding of ourselves, our marriage, our
families, our world, for we know all these truly only to the degree that we know them in Jesus. In pondering Jesus, we effectively
learn to ponder ourselves and to understand how Jesus ponders us. When that happens, the “Marian syndrome” becomes
our own syndrome: that is, we find our hearts filling up with grace and wisdom and our freedom opening out in active obedience
to the will of God. And when that happens, the Rosary has achieved its purpose of transforming us into the mother and sister
and brother of Jesus. We have reached home.
In the light of the power of the Rosary, I ask you not to indulge in spiritual snobbery, considering yourself above
such “pious practices”. The Rosary will evangelize you, not penalize you. The Rosary will lead you by grace and
gratis to the self-understanding that Christ and His Mother have of you; that is surely better than the self-understanding
you may be seeking in the sundry banalities that modern life offers, promising you the stars with a view to emptying your
pocket. The Rosary is neither magic nor an automatic, spiritual quick-fix: it is an instrument of grace only for those who
make a commitment to Christ, Our Lady and themselves in taking the high road of patience and perseverance to make their lives
concentric with that of God. Now, perhaps with the astounded disciples in today’s Gospel you may wonder if this is possible
for you. To that I would say: do not underestimate either your own capacity for holiness or God’s power working, among
other things, through the simple prayer of the Rosary to make you holy: “all things are possible for God.” Remember:
without holiness we cannot see God, and God has made us to see Him.
Again, some of you may feel that the Rosary belongs to a past era of Catholicism, or simply to a past era of your life.
I can only say that the Pope does not agree, nor do millions of Catholics the world over who find in the Rosary not only a
compendium of the Gospel, of the life of Christ, not only an easier route to holiness, not only a comforting warmth and closeness
to the Mother of God, but also an unfailing source of light, wisdom and strength to remain faithful to their baptism and even
just to survive the trials of life. There are many proofs of the power of the Rosary: in time of war, disease and famine;
in times of marital and family strife; in times of social upheaval; in times of moral or doctrinal confusion. Long after those
who reduce, ridicule or denigrate the relevance of the Rosary have passed away, and their very ridicule has been forgotten,
the Rosary will continue to be a power in the Church and in the world. The temptation of many spokespersons for modern living
is to think that everything past is obsolete and that everything new is, by that simple fact, relevant. They indulge in “alternative
thinking”, i.e. either you are obsolete or you are relevant. They have no thought for the wisdom which teaches that
we are what we are only because we have been what we have been. Cannot the past teach us something about today and even check
the tragic arrogance of putting all one’s hopes in what is novel and fashionable? Can the new be anything more than
an illusion if it is cut off or set in antagonism with the past which gave it birth? Let the new be welcomed, especially insofar
as it perfects the old; but let it not think that history begins only tomorrow, else the new itself be still-born. As far
as the Rosary is concerned, all you need do is read the Pope’s most recent document on it to understand how profoundly
relevant it continues to be; yet he has not feared to modify it to include 5 new mysteries for meditation, the “mysteries
of light” or the luminous mysteries. He has renewed it, updated it, helped perfect it, and that very fact should be
for any serious Catholic a source of great encouragement and gratitude to renew their own personal commitment to this great
and venerable prayer.
So, as you take the Rosary in hand, consider that you are taking the hand of Mary Herself, leading you to ponder the
ways in which the depths of Christ’s life are in effect the depths of your own life. In the Rosary, accept and rejoice
in the freeing truth that your name is written in Her Heart and in His, and, as He fills you with grace, have the courage
of Mary to transform your own life into obedient surrender to His will. How good, how wonderfully good, to know yourself thus
as the mother, sister and brother of Jesus! How wonderfully consoling and reassuring to know you are most surely and most
truly going home!
Msgr. Peter Magee
Sunday, October 12th,
2003: St. Matthew’s Cathedral, DC, 10.00 am;
St. Thomas Apostle, DC, 12.00 noon
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