THE HEAVENLY PRAYER WITH OUR LADY


OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY

Gal 1:6-12; Ps 111:1-2,7-10; Lk 10:25-37

A Beautiful Prayer from the Gospel

We celebrate the feast of our Lady of the Rosary. Our Blessed Mother Mary wants us to invoke her maternal intercession with this title when she appeared to three children at Fatima in 1917. By choosing this title, she called our attention back to the beautiful Rosary prayer. The Rosary prayer is not new; it was initiated at the annunciation of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ by the Angel Gabriel. With its major component contained in the angelic salutation and the second component within the prophecy of St. Elizabeth at the visitation of the Virgin Mary to her house, the Rosary prayer evolved through Christian history at various times and needs as a concise summary of the Gospel. The angelic salutation contains the core of the Gospel, the incarnation of the Son of God, with the mysteries meditated on during the prayer highlighting key events and pillars of Christ’s life and mystery. The good of the Rosary prayer is that it helps us recall the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ by bringing into our minds the important events of his life, thereby allowing us to meditate on his life and heavenly teachings. By helping us to recall the human events of our Lord, in the company and intercession of our Blessed Mother Mary, the Rosary guides and helps us walk the Way of salvation, which is the humanity of Jesus Christ.  

The possibility and the danger of falling away from the true Gospel of our Lord was Paul’s concern in the passage from his letter to the Galatians. “I am astonished at the promptness with which you have turned away from the one who called you and have decided to follow a different version of the Good News.” This danger abounds with us always, for the evil one is wont to deceive us and substitute a false gospel for the true one whenever we slacken our guard or get distracted with worldly matters. Our Blessed Mother, knowing our weakness and the possibility and danger of falling away from the Gospel way, urges us to pray the Rosary. The Rosary and its content are not of human origin, as St. Paul confirms. “The fact is, brothers, and I want you to realise this, the Good News I preached is not a human message that I was given by men, it is something I learned only through revelation of Jesus Christ.” By praying the Rosary, we receive and assimilate the revelation of Jesus Christ our Lord. The power of the Rosary prayer to transform our lives is the very power of the Gospel, for it is about the mysteries of Jesus Christ. Without journeying into these mysteries, our Christian life remains undeveloped and in danger of dying or being counterfeited by the devils. The Rosary prevents this from happening to us and restores us to the authentic Gospel if we are already victims of agents of darkness.  

As our Lady of the Rosary urged us at Fatima to pray the Rosary for our conversion and the conversion of sinners, the Rosary does the highest good for our neighbours. We achieve this love of our neighbour through the transformation it brings in us by our constant meditation on the life of Jesus Christ, which renews the presence of the Holy Spirit within us. By this transformation, our lives are better patterned according to that of our Lord, and through the Holy Spirit offered to the Eternal Father in union with the sacrifice of our Lord for the conversion of sinners. Hence, the Rosary prayer helps us to obey our Lord's injunction in the Gospel to be a neighbour to our brothers and sisters. In praying the Rosary daily, we offer spiritual works of mercy to our brothers and sisters, which is above and more effective than the corporal works of mercy the good Samaritan did to the man beaten by robbers. By praying the Rosary constantly as urged by our Lady, we all can come to the help of our brothers and sisters who are deceived, beaten, wounded, and left lying helpless everywhere spiritually by robbers of our spiritual valuables. “Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbour to the man who fell into the brigands’ hands?’ ‘The one who took pity on him’ he replied. Jesus said to him, ‘Go, and do the same yourself.’” No wonder St. Dominic converted many souls and successfully battled against the Albigensian heresy with the Rosary. 

Let us pray: Pour forth, we beseech you, O Lord, your grace into our hearts, that we, to whom the Incarnation of Christ your Son was made known by the message of an Angel, may, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by his Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of his Resurrection. 

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