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Sunday 29 (B): Second of Three Homilies
on the Rosary
This is the second homily of three I wish to give on the Rosary to mark the conclusion of the Year of the Rosary. Last
week I tried to explain why and how the Rosary is so relevant and important as a form of prayer and how it is an efficacious
aid in deepening our life in the Church, in the Scriptures and in the Sacraments. Above all, I wanted to explain how the Rosary,
prayed from within the Heart of Mary, helps center our life on Christ who reveals to us the sense, and the destiny of our
own lives.
Today I would like to dwell a little on some of the main features of the Rosary
to help render it even more attractive as a school of prayer, love, wisdom and joy.
The first feature concerns the use of the word “mystery”, as
in the phrase, for example, the “joyful Mysteries” of the Rosary. In common parlance, a mystery is basically something
unknown, which may or may not attract our curiosity. If the mystery is being investigated by Agatha Christie it may attract
us; yet we may have fear of other mysteries, as of the “unknown”, and seek to avoid them. The meaning of “mystery”
in Christian parlance is not simply God as “unknown”, but truths of God which, out of intimate love, He reveals
to us, for we would never have been able to know them of ourselves. The Incarnation, the Resurrection and Pentecost are three
examples of such Mysteries. Our mind could never know these truths if they were not revealed; yet even being revealed, we
can never fully grasp them. We accept them by virtue of the gift of faith in that which God reveals, we seek to plumb them
ever more fully with our minds, love them with our hearts and place our hope in the eternal blessing they promise. By praying
the Rosary, again and again, we engage in the sweet yet arduous labor of fine-tuning our understanding of the Mysteries; we
also fine-tune our faith, hope and charity as the Lord Jesus, through the intercession of Mary, draws us more and more deeply
to plunge ourselves into the depths of His Mysteries. By meditating on these Mysteries, Jesus communicates to us through the
Holy Spirit that grace of intimate communion with Himself which prepares us for the final Mystery of our beatific union with,
and vision of, Himself.
Our Lady, by God’s design, provided the Son of God with visibility, with the true human flesh like ours. It should
be no surprise, then, that the Mysteries of God’s love for humanity, His presence among us as brother, friend and Savior,
should be revealed through His flesh. This is the second feature of the Rosary I want to highlight. The Rosary contemplates
the Mysteries of Christ come in the flesh. St.
John says that whoever refuses to recognize
the Son of God come in the flesh is anti-Christ; St. Teresa of Avila, reflecting biblical and mystical
tradition, insists that there is no more perfect way to come to God than through the humanity of Jesus, whom she fondly calls,
“His Majesty”. From the first joyful Mystery onwards, the Rosary educates us as to how the humanity of Jesus reveals
to us in a crescendo of love the great “symphony” of divine self-giving to all mankind. They reveal God’s
humility in His predilection for the little ones, the poor, the exiled, the suffering and dying, in His coming to serve, not
to be served, in giving His life as a ransom for many; they reveal God’s truth and glory in the mission of Jesus as
He proclaims the Kingdom and manifests the generosity and tenderness of His Heart at Cana, on Tabor or at the Last Supper;
they reveal His Majesty and vindicate His servanthood in the Resurrection and Ascension; they reveal the power of His flesh
over all flesh in the outpouring of the Spirit, in the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin and in that vision of the future completion
of the communion of saints in the final glorious Mystery.
Remember that every time you receive Holy Communion you receive the Risen flesh of Jesus, that same Body which was
born of Mary and passed through each and all of the Mysteries of the Rosary. See then how the Rosary helps you spell out and,
as it were, “flesh out” the Mystery of the Eucharist which you receive. Remember too that She who “gave”
Him conception in the first joyful Mystery was crowned by His hand in the last glorious Mystery, and She desires to give each
of us the grace to reproduce spiritually in our own lives all the Mysteries of the Rosary of our Savior right up to our own
“crowning in heaven”.
This brings me to a third feature of the Rosary, and which is not unlike the pattern of the Sacraments. In some senses,
the seven Sacraments follow the rhythm, the span of our lives, a thought I will
leave you to dwell upon for yourselves. Does not the Rosary do the same? It takes us from conception, birth and the joy of
youth, through the hidden anonymity which most of us experience in life, through the few years when perhaps we sense a peak,
a “public ministry”, in our lives, and often through the trials of misunderstanding and rejection, and inevitably
those of suffering and death. Yet the Rosary takes us further: to contemplate what will be ours beyond death if we remain
faithful to Jesus before death. I think it is fair to say that there is no experience of our own lives that we cannot somehow
locate within the pattern of the Mysteries of the Rosary. There is always a “niche”, a nest, in one or other of
those beads of the Rosary where we can linger and dally in order to know the compassion of Christ for us in our weakness and
the power of His strength and mercy to move us on to the next bead. And just as we do not rush through our lives –a
day has the same length for everybody- so we should not rush through the Rosary. We should stop wherever our heart needs to
stop or wherever divine inspiration seems to hold us back. To do this is to understand the real meaning of the Rosary, to
really pray the Rosary, to let the Rosary form, reform and conform our hearts, minds and consciences to the Mystery of Jesus
which He desires to reveal in us through the mystery of our own lives. Just as in life there are moments when time seems to
stand still, either because of some intense pain or delight, we must learn to stand still with Mary and Jesus as they converse
deeply within our souls about what They want to do for us. I know you cannot spend all day on the Rosary; if you have 15 minutes,
then stick to 15 minutes, but don’t rush through it for the rather facile satisfaction of saying you got to the end!
It’s not a race, or a test! Far better to dwell 15 minutes on the first bead with spiritual depth and relish, listening
to the promptings of the Father, Jesus and Mary through the Spirit, than to go crashing with garbled mumbling to the “Hail,
Holy Queen”! Indeed, in a certain sense, it’s not so much that we pray the Rosary as that the Rosary prays us,
just like it’s not so much that we read the Scriptures as that the Scriptures read us. If the Rosary seems a “task”,
it is often so because we make ourselves too much the main actors.
I have the image of a boat in which each of us wants to be the captain: we want the Rosary “full steam ahead”
to get it over with! It would be better to turn off the engine, lie down in the boat and leave the captain’s role jointly
to Jesus and Mary, and listen to the waves, the lapping of the water –to which you might compare the repetitions of
the Hail Mary- and let the breeze of the Spirit caress your face and your body, your heart and your soul. It may take you
a month to recite the Rosary at that rate, but so be it! We mustn’t measure the Rosary, the Mass or any genuine prayer
with a stop-watch. Rather we must enter into heaven’s time warp and, without losing a sense of practicality, seek to
give the Lord quality time. If we can learn to do this, perhaps with the help of others, the Rosary will become an envied
treasure, a haven of peace, a sure source of that grace and mercy we need in time of help. It will also become our greatest
friend in time of trial, sickness and death.
Last, but not least, I wish to focus on what I call the “Father feature”
of the Rosary. Traditionally, we begin the Rosary in the Name of the Trinity and with the profession of the Apostles’
Creed: we begin from the Father of Jesus. Likewise, at the end of the Rosary we conclude with a prayer to the Father that
we might “imitate what the Mysteries contain and obtain what they promise.” In the final analysis, the Mysteries
of the Rosary, that is, of Christ and of the Church, lead us to the Father, the source of our very existence and its final
goal. We should let the Rosary purify our understanding and enkindle our deepest love for the Father of Jesus and our Father.
For example, when you recite that first Our Father on the introductory beads of the Rosary, you might stop and take a few
minutes to imagine yourself alone with the Father. Let Mary take you by the hand into His presence and, as it were, let Her
withdraw and leave you alone with Him. That is a scene which can release unspeakably profound and moving exchanges of primordial
cries for help and mercy and, as in the parable of the prodigal son, the response of embrace and tender kissing from the Eternal
Father. To be alone with Him, seeking His face, His unfathomably kind and tender gaze, can bring immense strength and confidence
to one’s own heart. And as you leave His presence, so to speak, to make your pilgrimage through the Mysteries, that
initial encounter -almost like that of Moses with Yahweh at the burning bush, or Elijah with Yahweh in the cave at Horeb-
can give you the profound conviction that the Rosary for you, as for Jesus and Mary, is a mission of salvation, a vocation
of service, a loving search to know and do the Father’s will. Likewise, every Our Father at the beginning of each Mystery
will renew that initial grace and help you apply it to the specific Mystery you contemplate. In this way, at the end, you
will return to the Father with Jesus, Mary and all the saints, like the good servant who, by his perseverance, has produced
a rich harvest, now thirty, now sixty, now a hundred-fold.
It is my hope and prayer that these little reflections, on a few salient features of the Rosary, will help renew your
commitment to this powerful prayer and so renew your lives in the hope that comes from the Gospel. Surely this is the Holy
Father’s intention in giving us this Year of the Rosary which now draws to an end. Surely it is also his intention that,
although this Year end, our very lives become a “Life of the Rosary”, leading us to that “Year”, that
Life, which will never end.
Msgr. Peter Magee
October 19th, 2003,
St. Matthew’s Cathedral: 10.00 am
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