Mary TV Daily Reflection 10/7/2014 - Our Lady of the Rosary

    
(c)Mary TV 2014 

     

J.M.J

October 7, 2014

Our Lady of the Rosary

Dear Family of Mary!

April 25, 2001 "Dear children! Also today, I call you to prayer. Little children, prayer works miracles. When you are tired and sick and you do not know the meaning of your life, take the Rosary and pray; pray until prayer becomes for you a joyful meeting with your Savior. I am with you, little children, and I intercede and pray for you. Thank you for having responded to my call."

On this feast we remember the great military victories that were won through the prayer of the Rosary by thousands of people. Pope Pius V called for the faithful to pray the Rosary, to stop the invading Turks, and on October 7 they were soundly defeated. As important as this victory was, there are countless other victories that have been won by means of the Rosary. I am thinking of so many conversions, healings, blessings and reconciliations that have happened in individual lives and families because of the prayer of the Rosary. I know that in my life, it was the prayer of the Rosary by a woman close to our family that saved me from divorce and ruin. She never said a word to me, but prayed her rosary day and night for me and through her prayer God was able to lift me out of my difficulties and set our family on a firm foundation! (This is a story for another time!)

But I want to share a homily given by Blessed John Henry Newman to some young school boys about the Rosary. It describes the miracle that takes place for those who pray the Rosary, the victory it procures:

Madonna del Rosario (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You know that today we keep the Feast of the Holy Rosary, and I propose to say to you what occurs to me on this great subject. You know how that devotion came about; how, at a time when heresy was very widespread, and had called in the aid of sophistry, that can so powerfully aid infidelity against religion, God inspired St Dominic to institute and spread this devotion. It seems so simple and easy, but you know God chooses the small things of the world to humble the great (I Cor. 1,27-28).

Of course it was first of all for the poor and simple, but not for them only, for everyone who has practiced the devotion knows that there is in it a soothing sweetness that there is in nothing else. It is difficult to know God by your own power, because He is incomprehensible. He is invisible to begin with, and therefore incomprehensible. We can in some way know Him, for even among the heathens there were some who had learned many truths about Him; but even they found it hard to conform their lives to their knowledge of Him. And so in His mercy He has given us a revelation of Himself by coming amongst us, to be one of ourselves, with all the relations and qualities of humanity, to gain us over. He came down from Heaven and dwelt amongst us, and died for us. All these things are in the Creed, which contains the chief things that He has revealed to us about Himself.

Now the great power of the Rosary lies in this, that it makes the Creed into a prayer; of course, the Creed is in some sense a prayer and a great act of homage to God; but the Rosary gives us the great truths of His life and death to meditate upon, and brings them nearer to our hearts. And so we contemplate all the great mysteries of His life and His birth in the manger; and so too the mysteries of His suffering and His glorified life. But even Christians, with all their knowledge of God, have usually more awe than love of Him, and the special virtue of the Rosary lies in the special way in which it looks at these mysteries; for with all our thoughts of Him are mingled thoughts of His Mother, and in the relations between Mother and Son we have set before us the Holy Family, the home in which God lived. Now the family is, even humanly considered, a sacred thing; how much more the family bound together by supernatural ties, and, above all, that in which God dwelt with His Blessed Mother.

This is what I should most wish you to remember in future years. For you will all of you have to go out into the world, and going out into the world means leaving home; and, my dear boys, you don't know what the world is now. You look forward to the time when you will go out into the world, and it seems to you very bright and full of promise. It is not wrong for you to look forward to that time; but most men who know the world find it a world of great trouble, and disappointments, and even misery. If it turns out so to you, seek a home in the Holy Family that you think about in the mysteries of the Rosary. Schoolboys know the difference between school and home. You often hear grown-up people say that the happiest time of their life was that passed at school but when they were at school you know they had a happier time, which was when they went home; that shows there is a good in home which cannot be found elsewhere. So that even if the world should actually prove to be all that you now fancy it, if it should bring you all that you could wish, yet you ought to have in the Holy Family a home with a holiness and sweetness about it that cannot be found elsewhere.

This is, my dear boys, what I most earnestly ask you. I ask you when you go out into the world, as you soon must, to make the Holy Family your home, to which you may turn from all the sorrow and care of the world and find a solace, a compensation, and a refuge. And this I say to you, not as if I should speak to you again, not as if I had of myself any claim upon you, but with the claims of the Holy Father, whose representative I am, and in the hope that in the days to come you will remember that I came amongst you and said it to you. And when I speak of the Holy Family I do not mean Our Lord and Our Lady only, but St Joseph too; for as we cannot separate Our Lord from His Mother, so we cannot separate St Joseph from them both; for who but he was their protector in all the scenes of Our Lord's early life? And with Joseph must be included St Elizabeth and St John, whom we naturally think of as part of the Holy Family; we read of them together and see them in pictures together. May you, my dear boys, throughout your life find a home in the Holy Family; the home of Our Lord and His Blessed Mother, St Joseph, St Elizabeth, and St John.

(Mary-The Virgin Mary in the Life and Writings of John Henry Newman, chap. 6, Edited by Philip Boyce).

http://www.ewtn.com/library/Prayer/NEWMNROS.HTM

"Now the great power of the Rosary lies in this, that it makes the Creed into a prayer..."  This is real power, to have the creed before us in prayer in such a concrete way!!  And in praying this powerful prayer, we make a home with the Holy Family because the Creed really tells their story! This is what we are being given today through Our Lady of Medjugorje! She is descended among us to be our Mother, and to make a home for us here on earth during these most difficult times. Through the Rosary we can always find our way home to Our Mother, where she can comfort us, direct us and teach us through our meditation on the life of Her Son, Jesus. No matter how dark the world becomes, we will always have a home in the Rosary. This is the great victory for each one of us, that we are not alone in this world, and that Our Mother is Queen of Heaven and Earth. She will help us conquer all adversities through love.

In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

Cathy Nolan

© Mary TV 2014

PS. Please check out the new "Tea with Rosie" on our home page! John, who gives his testimony, sounds just like Blessed John Henry Newman!

"Medjugorje is the spiritual center of the world."
Saint John Paul II
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