The end of all human love is doing the will of God - Fulton Sheen -
Unexpectedly, the Friday before school started, I had to get a new phone when the former one suffered extensive water damage. The new Smartphone I got, with all it’s extra capabilities, runs the battery down faster than the old one requiring more frequent charging. With the busy pace of school under way this got me to thinking about how I, too, could use with charging my own batteries more often.
Realizing how much I much I needed a daily recharging I set about looking for a way to do this. Around this same time, for some reason, I also wanted to deepen my devotion to Our Blessed Mother—it’s there, certainly, but definitely is a bit lacking. On cue a package arrived from Miss Martus containing a dozen or so Rosaries. She had come across them while cleaning out some drawers at her new home. Remembering we didn’t have many class Rosaries, and knowing it was a larger class coming in this year, she thought we could use with them in 4th grade.
Her thoughtfulness did triple duty: providing our larger class with enough Rosaries, inspiring in me a way to put some energy into a devotion that was a bit too slack, while recharging my own batteries each day. Now, sometime shortly after I get home each day, I take a few minutes and sit with Mary and offer up one decade of the Rosary—it’s amazing what a prayerful five minute break can do.
Praying this extra decade each day, and noting October, the month dedicated to the Rosary, was coming up I soon found myself doing a little research reaffirming the connection between the Rosary and building a worthy, stronger, more loving devotion to Mary.
When we pray and meditate on the Rosary we see, as Paul VI saw, that Mary indeed “shows forth the victory of hope over anguish, of fellowship over solitude, of peace over anxiety, of joy and beauty over boredom and disgust, of eternal visions over earthly ones, of life over death.” She leads us to the virtues through her exemplary holiness and calm vision because to pray the Rosary is to spend time with someone whose life was completely surrendered to and centered on Jesus. Meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary is also to spend time with someone who is delighted to spend the time with us and listen to us.
Saint John Paul II knew praying the Rosary to be a time “to hand over our burdens to the merciful heart of Christ and his Mother.” Though I’ve been praying a Rosary daily for many years now, this extra decade each day has helped me to carry my burdens with a little less stress as well as to slow down more as I announce the mystery. This last part is important because the very announcing of the mystery is nourishment for the soul. The prayerful contemplating that results keeps the Rosary from becoming a “mechanical repetition of formulas,” as Blessed Paul VI termed it; this is something that Jesus warns us about in Matthew 6:7. Paul VI also saw contemplating the mysteries as the way to keep the Rosary from being “a body without a soul,” while bringing about many spiritual benefits.
So quietly, each afternoon, that is what I have been doing, and with much benefit to my heart and soul. In a technological world where speed and noise are more the norm, turning to Mary through contemplating the mysteries of the Rosary is a great counter measure. As I allow this time to go at a slower pace I give God time to speak and myself time to hear. Ultimately praying the Rosary can deepen our devotion to Mary, bring us closer to God and help us conform ourselves with His holy will. Thank you, Miss Martus.
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At our parish the Rosary is prayed Monday - Saturday a half hour before daily Mass at Olive. There are other ways to increase devotion to Our Blessed Mother. Our parish has a Consecration to Jesus Through Mary group. For more information contact Josette Letson, 909 557 4150. You can also join them in prayer the first Saturday of the month at 8:30, right after daily Mass at Olive. Confession is also available each Saturday after daily Mass.
3 Oct 2016
Why do you fly from the drowned shores of Galilee,/From the sands and the lavender water?/Why do you leave the ordinary world, Virgin of Nazareth,/The yellow fishing boats, the farms,/The wine smelling yards and low cellars/Or the oil press, and the women by the well?/Why do you fly those markets,/Those suburban gardens,/The trumpets of the jealous lilies,/Leaving them all, lovely among the lemon trees?
You have trusted no town/With the news behind your eyes./You have drowned Gabriel’s word in thoughts like seas/And turned toward the stone mountain/To the treeless places./Virgin of God, why are your clothes like sails?…
You need no eloquence, wild bairn,/Exulting in your heritage,/Your ecstasy is your apostolate,/For whom to kick is contemplata tradere./Your joy is the vocation/Of Mother Church’s hidden children—/Those who by vow lie buried in the cloister or the hermitage/The speechless Trappist, or the grey, granite Carthusian,/The quiet Carmelite, the barefoot Clare/Planted in the night of contemplation,/Sealed in the dark and waiting to be born.
Night is our diocese and silence is our ministry/Poverty our charity and helplessness our tongue-tied sermon./Beyond the scope of sight and sound we dwell upon the air/Seeking the world’s gain in an unthinkable experience./Waiting upon the first far drums of Christ the Conqueror,/Planted like sentinels upon the world’s frontier. - Thomas Merton - The Quickening of St. John the Baptist