Fr. Roger J. Landry
Meditations for the Worldpriest Virtual Rosary
March 31, 2022
On Thursday March 31, 2022, I was asked to lead the Rosary for the Worldpriest Virtual Monthly Rosary. Below is a recording of the prayer of the Rosary as well as the meditations prepared on the Luminous Mysteries, together with an introduction and concluding prayer.
To listen to the audio recording please click below:
Here are the written texts that guided the meditations:
Introductory Words
Earlier this month, on March 12, the Church celebrated the 400thanniversary of the most famous canonization ceremony of all time, when Pope Gregory XV proclaimed the sanctity of Ignatius Loyola, Teresa of Avila, Francis Xavier, Philip Neri and Isidore the Farmer, giants in the history of the Church who, through their example, writings, ecclesial foundations and heavenly intercession, continue very much to help and guide the Church.
Their 400thanniversary is something that should joyfully be celebrated not just on March 12 or even the whole month of March but all of 2022.
For that reason today, as we ask them to join us in prayer for all the intentions we bring to God through our Lady during this holy Rosary, we will ponder, during each of the mysteries, some aspects of their life and writings.
Let us begin: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
The First Luminous Mystery — The Baptism of the Lord in the Jordan
When John was baptizing at the Jordan River, it was a sign of conversion and the need to be washed free of sin, but it was not yet a sacrament capable of cleansing us from sin. Everything changed when his cousin Jesus approached and descended into the waters. He sanctified the waters so that Christian baptism would be able to deliver on what John’s baptism indicated needed to be done — wash us free from all sin — and even more than that, have God the Father adopt us as his beloved sons and daughters in whom he is well pleased and have the Holy Spirit not only come down on us but dwell in us as his temple. What an awesome gift Baptism is!
This was the gift Saint Francis Xavier, the greatest missionary in the history of the Church after Saint Paul, brought to multitudes in Goa, the Pearl Fishery Coast of India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Japan and died on the shores of China seeking to bring there, too. By the reports he sent to St. Ignatius in Rome, he ended up personally baptizing 700,000 Christians. In Travancore on the southern tip of India, he baptized 10,000 in a month, until his arm went completely numb. That right arm is now enshrined in the Church of the Gesù in Rome as a witness not only to his heroic perseverance in bringing so many to the Christian life, but also of the importance of baptism for salvation.
We pray through his intercession asking for the grace of wonderous gratitude for the gift of our baptism, the most important day of our life, and for zeal like him to do our part in carrying out the Lord’s great commission, going to the whole world, proclaiming the Gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to carry out everything Jesus has commanded, conscious that Jesus is with us always until the end of time.
The Second Luminous Mystery — The Wedding Feast of Cana
In Cana of Galilee, due to his Mother’s intercession, Jesus worked his first public miracle, changing 180 gallons — the equivalent of 912 seven-hundred-and-fifty-milliliter bottles — of water into precious wine. But the Church has always grasped that that act of compassion and love was not the only miracle that day. Jesus also took the “water” of the institution of marriage from the beginning with Adam and Eve and raised it to the “wine” of a sacrament, a sacred, life-changing means of intimate communion with him. From that point forward, the marriage between a Christian man and woman would become a sign of his own marital communion with the Church and a means by which man and woman, receiving his spousal love, would be strengthened to love each other as he loved them first.
We see this reality of Christian marriage lived in full splendor in the life of Saint Isidore the Farmer, patron of Madrid, and his marriage to Saint Maria Toribia. They were poor, but they knew how rich they were in God and shared the little they had, including their meager meals, with the poor. They had one son, Illan, whom they received with gratitude from God, but who died young, and so they needed to sanctify not only the death of a beloved child but also the hardship of not being able to conceive others. Eventually they took a vow of continence in order to turn their incapacity for children into an act of devotion. In their marriage they helped each other stay united to God and to grow in holiness.
Through Saint Isidore’s and Saint Maria’s intercession, we pray in a special way for all married couples, that they might cooperate fully with God’s desire to sanctify them through good times and bad, poverty and prosperity, sickness and health all their days. We pray also for a greater love and appreciation, among believers and within society, for the gift of marriage, given to us so that we might grow in the image of God.
The Third Luminous Mystery — The Proclamation of the Kingdom of God and the Call to Conversion
At the beginning of his public ministry, Jesus proclaimed, “The time is fulfilled. The Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the Gospel.” In him, the fullness of time had come. God’s kingdom was at hand because the King himself was present. And that reality is meant to change our life. We’re supposed to convert from our old ways, from everything keeping us from living with the King, and from this point forward, live with faith in him, in what he is doing, and in everything he is saying.
One of the greatest conversions of all time happened in the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola. As a young man, he sought worldly glory in the service of his earthly king, as a valiant soldier on the battlefield. But after his right leg was shattered by a cannonball and left calf torn off in the Battle of Pamplona, he needed to convalesce for several months. Having exhausted all of the chivalrous romances on his shelves, he turned to a Life of Christ and a book on the lives of the saints. He was pierced by his own shallowness compared to the saints’ substance and roused by the courage of the martyrs in fighting the good fight on the battlefield that mattered most. After reading about Saint Francis and Saint Dominic, he asked one of the most important questions in history: “These men were of the same frame as I. Why, then, should I not do what they have done?” Led by their example and many graces, he made the commitment to serve the true King and to sacrifice everything to extend his kingdom, eventually founding the Jesuits and through them generations of Christians, saints and martyrs.
Through his intercession, we pray in this mystery for the grace of our conversion, that we might grasp that what God wants of us is not a minor course correction or the elimination of a bad habit, but a death and resurrection, ultimately a new life, in which we seek first the Kingdom of God and his holiness. We also pray for the conversion of all those who are striving to build their own kingdom, that they might recognize that the King of Kings has indeed come, say to him, “Thy Kingdom Come!,” and strive after holiness, as Francis, Dominic and Ignatius have before us.
The Fourth Luminous Mystery — The Transfiguration of the Lord
Jesus had Peter, James and John hike with him up an exceedingly high mountain to pray, where they saw him speak with Moses and Elijah about the exodus from death to life he was to accomplish in Jerusalem, witnessed him transfigured in divine glory and were told by God the Father, “This is my Son, my beloved, listen to him.” Each of us is similarly called to the exertion of faith, to follow Jesus in the new and eternal Passover, on which he leads us, to listen to him, especially when he calls us to follow him along the way to Calvary, and to behold him in prayer, however he appears to us.
Saint Teresa of Jesus, the great foundress of the Discalced Carmelites and the first female doctor of the Church, lived this mystery. She followed the Lord Jesus, with great effort, into the dark valleys and luminous mountains of prayer, as the Lord sometimes was hidden by a cloud and at others times appeared to her full of light. She listened to him and his word and sought to follow him, even at great personal cost and suffering, as she left her convent to found 17 new ones during her lifetime. While Peter on the Mountain wanted to build a booth for Jesus, Moses and Elijah, she allowed Jesus to build a booth within her, what she called an interior castle, and she not only followed him into the inner recesses of that mansion, but wrote a map so that we might follow her, by God’s grace, along the same path. And through the mystical transverberation he gave her, the Lord Jesus transfigured her heart on the inside by what she described as a dart of his divine love.
Through her intercession, we ask for the grace to make the effort, the commitment, the exertion that prayer always involves. We ask for the help to persevere in prayer as Jesus seeks to lead us more deeply into divine intimacy. We beseech the gift to listen more attentively and obediently to Jesus, especially when asks us to do things we might not initially desire. We implore what we need to see and love Jesus, whether he is transfigured in light, in blood, or in the distressing disguise of the poor. And we pray for those who do not pray, who have never been taught to pray, who have given up on prayer out of discouragement, that they might hear and heed Jesus’ invitation to come with him up the mountain.
The Fifth Luminous Mystery — The Institution of the Holy Eucharist
We are two weeks from Holy Thursday, when Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, in fulfillment of the ancient Passover rite, took bread and wine into his hands, totally changed them into his body and blood, and gave himself under those appearances to his apostles to eat and drink. Jesus in the Holy Eucharist is the source and the summit, the root and the center, of Christian life. The Eucharist is the res mirabilis, the unbelievable reality, in which poor and humble servants are able to consume God. It is the means by which we enter into Jesus’ new and eternal Passover from death to life, as Jesus promises, “The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him on the last day.”
Someone who never lost the awe every Christian should have for the gift of the Holy Eucharist was St. Philip Neri, the cheerful re-evangelizer of Rome in the 16thcentury and the founder of the Oratory. As a layman and later a priest, Philip did so much to try to spread Eucharistic love. He organized 40-hour devotions. He led people on pilgrimages and Eucharistic processions. He built exquisite Churches and chapels where their beauty could remind everyone of the pulchritudinous gift of divine love incarnate. And he made Jesus in the Holy Eucharist the starting point, goal and priority of his whole life. As he got old, the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist would seize hold of him in Mass and he would go into lengthy ecstasy. He needed for that reason to celebrate Mass in a private chapel. After the consecration of the Sacred Host and Precious Blood, the server would blow out the candles and leave him for a couple of hours, when he would be in transfixed adoration of the Lord Jesus. Eventually the server would return, light the candles, tug on Philip’s chasuble, and help him finish. Philip’s thanksgiving after receiving Holy Communion would be similarly as prayerful and profound.
We pray, through his intercession, that God may grant us the grace to share St. Philip’s love and awe for the Eucharistic Lord. We pray for a rebirth in Eucharistic amazement throughout the entire Church, so that Catholics who come to Mass may make Jesus in the Eucharist their priority of their life, so that those who have stopped coming may recognize the Gift they’re neglecting and return, seeking to make up for lost time, and so that those Christians who don’t yet believe in Christ’s words about the Eucharist may come to the full light of faith and learn to love and adore Christ so humbly present for us under simple appearance of bread and wine. We pray for all priests and future priests, that they may understand what they are doing, imitate the mysteries they celebrate, and model their life on the Eucharist. Finally, we pray for all those who know and love the Eucharistic Lord but do not have access to the Sacraments due to war, conflict, religious persecution, shortage of priests or other reasons, that the Lord will satisfy their hunger with this Bread from Heaven.
Our Father…
Concluding Remarks
We have prayed this Rosary in communion with the five great saints canonized 400 years ago this month. They show us how to live what the mysteries of the Rosary contain and to obtain what they promise. We ask their continued intercession, that we may bless, love, adore, serve and announce the Fruit of Mary’s womb with the zeal they did. We ask for the grace to live our baptism and bring others to the sacred waters, to revere the gift of marriage and reciprocate God’s spousal love, to live full-time in God’s kingdom converted from worldly ways, to keep the glory of Christ’s divinity always before us as we journey through the valley of tears, and to draw our very life and nourishment from the Holy Eucharist, the same Jesus whom Mary carried within for nine months, nourished at her breasts, embraced in her arms, and after the resurrection, received again at the Masses celebrated by St. John and the apostles.
Saints Teresa, Philip, Isidore, Francis Xavier and Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us!
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