Oct. 7, 2014 Tuesday: Our Lady of the Rosary
Our Lady of the Rosary
We become Christian not through lofty ideas or ethical choices, but through an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ and his saving events. The more we return to those events in meditation and self- surrender, the more we grow in holiness. If we are humble, we recognize our inability to do this worthily and well, for sin clouds our reason and weakens our will. We need a blessed companion Our Lady who enables us to rise above our faults and limitations so as to penetrate the mysteries of the Gospel. God gives us all this in the Rosary.
The Rosary is a way we continue to live out the graces we receive in the liturgy since it contains all the depth of the Gospel in its entirety. The Rosary opens us to the depths of the heart of Christ so that we can enter into his heart more profoundly. The design of the Rosary, with its cycles of meditation, awakens in us an always- increasing thirst for a deeper inner knowledge of the mystery of Christ.
While serving as a unique and most effective means of fostering contemplation, the Rosary also sheds light on the mystery of being human, for the mysteries of the Rosary mark the rhythm of human life. God communicates himself to us according to those rhythms. The Rosary thereby shapes our existence and conforms us ever more closely to Christ through a kind of training in holiness by which we are changed into his likeness. And since no one has ever been as devoted to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary, Our Lady plays an indispensable role in our meditation of the Rosary.
The Mother of God constantly sets before us the mysteries of her Son with the desire that our devout contemplation of those mysteries will release all their saving power. Mary acts to train us and to mold us, making us sensitive and alert to Jesus able to “read” him until Christ is fully formed in our Christian life. United with Our Lady of the Rosary, we encounter the beauty of Christ’s face and experience the profoundness of his love.
- Fr. Peter Cameron, Novenas for the Church Year
We become Christian not through lofty ideas or ethical choices, but through an encounter with the person of Jesus Christ and his saving events. The more we return to those events in meditation and self- surrender, the more we grow in holiness. If we are humble, we recognize our inability to do this worthily and well, for sin clouds our reason and weakens our will. We need a blessed companion Our Lady who enables us to rise above our faults and limitations so as to penetrate the mysteries of the Gospel. God gives us all this in the Rosary.
The Rosary is a way we continue to live out the graces we receive in the liturgy since it contains all the depth of the Gospel in its entirety. The Rosary opens us to the depths of the heart of Christ so that we can enter into his heart more profoundly. The design of the Rosary, with its cycles of meditation, awakens in us an always- increasing thirst for a deeper inner knowledge of the mystery of Christ.
While serving as a unique and most effective means of fostering contemplation, the Rosary also sheds light on the mystery of being human, for the mysteries of the Rosary mark the rhythm of human life. God communicates himself to us according to those rhythms. The Rosary thereby shapes our existence and conforms us ever more closely to Christ through a kind of training in holiness by which we are changed into his likeness. And since no one has ever been as devoted to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary, Our Lady plays an indispensable role in our meditation of the Rosary.
The Mother of God constantly sets before us the mysteries of her Son with the desire that our devout contemplation of those mysteries will release all their saving power. Mary acts to train us and to mold us, making us sensitive and alert to Jesus able to “read” him until Christ is fully formed in our Christian life. United with Our Lady of the Rosary, we encounter the beauty of Christ’s face and experience the profoundness of his love.
- Fr. Peter Cameron, Novenas for the Church Year
