The relevance of the Holy Rosary today

CONSIDERING the rapid shifts on the global stage, leaving us often sharply challenged and confused, we really need now more than ever a stable anchor that would put us on the right groove to help us navigate life smoothly and lead us toward our real and ultimate goal in life. 

 And I believe the Holy Rosary would help us greatly in this regard. It’s a highly recommended devotion that would help us contemplate on the lives of Christ and Mary, our best guides in our earthly pilgrimage. It connects us to the mysteries of our Christian faith and promotes spiritual reflection and peace, which are what we really need in these often chaotic times. 

 Let’s remember that we are meant to have a shared life with God and with everybody else in a blessed communion of saints. And the Holy Rosary, properly prayed with real faith and piety, would greatly help us by keeping us in synch with the mysteries of the salvific mission of Christ and with the help of our most powerful intercessor, our Mother Mary. 

 The Holy Rosary would help us keep a relation of intimacy with Christ and Mary especially these days when we are often tempted to be guided only by our emotions and passions, and the worldly trends that tend to lead us to self-indulgence. 

 It is a form of meditative prayer that combines vocal prayers with the contemplation of the mysteries of the Holy Rosary, thus encouraging both vocal and mental prayer. It is a powerful weapon against evil and a source of grace and peace, particularly in times of conflict or difficulty. 

 According to Archbishop, now Blessed, Fulton Sheen, the Holy Rosary is one of the most profound ways to find Christ. More than a mantra, each mystery actually allows us to reflect on the message of the Gospel and of the key moments in the life of the Christ and Mary. 

 “The Rosary is the book of the blind,” he said, “where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known. It is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men. The power of the Rosary is beyond description.” 

 Sister, now Venerable, Lucia of Fatima, also has these to say about the Holy Rosary: “My impression is that the Rosary is of greatest value not only according to the words of Our Lady of Fatima, but according to the effects of the Rosary one sees throughout history. My impression is that Our Lady wanted to give ordinary people, who might not know how to pray, this simple method of getting closer to God.” 

 We should learn to pray the Holy Rosary properly. We should focus on meditating on the mysteries of Christ’s life while reciting the prayers, approaching it with sincerity and devotion, and allowing it to inspire both contemplation and action. 

 We should approach the Holy Rosary with a great desire to grow closer to God and seek Mary’s intercession. We should avoid a rote recitation of it. Rather, we should strive to make each prayer a heartfelt expression our faith and love for God. 

 We obviously need to pause from time to time to keep or recover the appropriate disposition in praying it. Somehow, we should feel the very the presence of Christ and Mary while we pray the Holy Rosary.

Our intelligence just cannot be on its own

THAT’S right! Our intelligence just cannot be on its own. Without God, it can only go nowhere even if it can spin a very sophisticated web of reasonings and discoveries. Our intelligence needs God to guide it, to enlighten it, and to lead it to its proper end. 

 Our intelligence is first of all a creation of God. Its operation should always be under the guidance of its creator. It may be subjected to various human and natural conditions, like genetics, culture, politics, profession, etc., but these conditions do not detract from the basic truth about it is that it is God who is its origin and end, and guide. 

 And God’s guidance over our intelligence takes place through the faith that he gives us. It would just depend on us on whether we would receive that faith or not, and act according to it or not. We need to see to it that we would always feel the need to be with God, to be guided by faith for us to be on the right path in our life. 

 It’s when we see, think and reason out with faith that we can discern the will and the powerful ways of God in our life. It’s faith that gives us the whole picture of things, blending well the different aspects of our life—the material and the spiritual, the natural and the supernatural, the temporal and the eternal, etc. 

 And faith means that we always do things—starting with our thoughts and intentions, and then with our words and deeds—with Christ and for Christ. And because of that, we would always be thinking and caring for the others, for everybody and for everything else, because that is what Christ does. Christ has no other business than to love all of us, to sanctify and save us, even all the way to offering his life. 

 We need to train ourselves to have the very mind and heart of Christ because that is what we are meant for. We need to strongly and widely propagate this truth of our faith about ourselves, helping one another to pursue and achieve that goal as best that we can. 

 We need to realize that our intelligence just cannot be beholden to the data provided by our senses and our own understanding of things. That would confine our reasoning to the world of the sensible and the intelligible, that is, to the world of matter and of ideas. 

 Thus conditioned, our reason cannot go beyond those levels and would miss the world of the spiritual and the supernatural. It would get trapped in some subjective mode as opposed to what is objective. 

 It’s important that we do some disciplining to our intelligence because it tends to get contented only with the sensible and the intelligible in the many forms that they come and attract us. 

 We know that our intelligence does not create the truth. It does not create the reality. It can only apprehend, reflect, process and transmit the truth and reality. It will always depend on a reality that is outside and independent of itself. 

 And reality just cannot be sensible and intelligible. A lot more goes into it than what our senses can perceive and our intelligence can discern and understand. Our intelligence itself, if used properly, can acknowledge that at the limits of its capability, it can discern a world that is beyond the physical and the ideal. 

 No matter how perceptive and intelligent we are, we can always detect that there is another world that is beyond the sensible and the intelligible. This is the world where our senses and intelligence cannot anymore cope. Our intelligence would need God.

Giving without counting the cost

IN the gospel, there are two occasions when the expression “unprofitable servant” appears. One is the good kind, while the other the bad kind. The latter appears in the parable of the talents (cfr. Mt 25,14-30) where a servant who received one talent, instead of investing it to earn more, just buried it on the ground. He was criticized by his master for his laziness. 

 The good kind is the one mentioned in that gospel episode where Christ told his disciples that when a servant did all that he had to do and did not expect anything special for it, would just say: “We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we were obliged to do.” (cfr. Lk 17,5-10) 

 To have the attitude of the good kind of the unprofitable servant should be a goal in our life. Irrespective of how much we have worked and how many good things we have done, we should not make a big deal since is that is what is actually expected of us. 

 It is our duty to work and to do good, a natural consequence of who and what we are. We should not feel as if we are entitled to some privileges and other perks, over and above what we need to live our life as decently, humanly and in a Christian way, as possible. 

 We are not doing God and the others a favor when we serve them. That is what is expected of us. To serve and not to be served was the attitude Christ had, and it should be the same attitude we ought to have. To serve is the language and the action of love. It authenticates any affirmation of love we do, converting it from intention to tangible reality. 

 Everything should be done gratuitously. This is the law that should govern and characterize our whole life. If our love is authentic, that is, inspired by God’s love for us, then it is shown in serving others wholeheartedly without counting the cost nor expecting any return. It’s completely done for free. 

 Loving and serving cannot and should not be quantified in terms of cost and reward. It is above all these considerations. It’s a purely spiritual operation that should not be spoiled by giving it some material and temporal value. It’s where we can approximate, keep and build up that dignity of being the image and likeness of God and adopted children of his. It’s how we become God-like. 

 As man, we of course have our material and temporal needs. These should be attended to as well. We are body and soul, material and spiritual, and both dimensions have their distinctive requirements that have to be met as best that we could. 

 It’s in this Spirit-inspired loving that makes serving and self-giving an affair where we gain and receive more the more we give ourselves to others. In this regard, Christ said: 

 “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Lk 6,38) And, “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Mt 10,8) 

 This is how God serves and gives himself to us, with complete gratuitousness. He even goes all the way of still loving and serving us even if we do not reciprocate his love properly. This is how we should serve and give ourselves to the others also.