The Lord’s Prayer and Our Lady’s, 27th Wednesday (II), Our Lady of the Rosary, October 7, 2020

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Visitation Mission of the Sisters of Life, Manhattan
Wednesday of the 27th Week in Ordinary Time, Year II
Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
October 7, 2020
Gal 2:1-2.7-14, Ps 117, Lk 11:1-4

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily: 

• Yesterday we pondered the example of Mary of Bethany sitting at Jesus’ feet, allowing him to feed her. She had chosen the better part and the one thing necessary, the activity more important than all others. Today we see Jesus sitting at the feet of his Father in prayer. His example of prayer brought the disciples to ask him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John [the Baptist] taught his disciples.” Jesus had already taught them much about prayer by his parables describing the need to pray with perseverance, patience, humility, purity of intention, faith, without show and in his name. He had taught them much by his example of prayer, constantly going out at night or early in the morning to pray. But they were asking for some direct instruction, to have Jesus open up to them the mystery of intimacy with God. Today we also learn how to sit at Jesus’ feet in the school of Mary his Mother as we celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and within Mary’s contemplative heart, ponder the Blessed Fruit of her Womb, the central mysteries of his life, and the central love of his sacred heart.
• We should be conscious that the Rosary grew over time. At the beginning, Christians accustomed to praying the 150 Psalms, began to substitute 150 Our Fathers when they didn’t have the Psalter with them, especially as they were walking on long journeys. Some began to do the same with 150 Angelic Salutations, the first half of the Hail Mary. Eventually the Rosary as we now have it, particularly through the preaching of the Dominican Order, began to grow. As St. John Paul II wrote in his beautiful exhortation on the Holy Rosary 18 years ago, that in praying the Rosary, “it is natural for the mind to be lifted up towards the Father. In each of his mysteries, Jesus always leads us to the Father, for as he rests in the Father’s bosom (cf. Jn 1:18) he is continually turned towards him. He wants us to share in his intimacy with the Father, so that we can say with him: “Abba, Father” (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). By virtue of his relationship to the Father he makes us brothers and sisters of himself and of one another, communicating to us the Spirit that is both his and the Father’s.” He cites Blessed Bartolo Longo, whose feast day we remembered two days ago, who saw in the Rosary beads “a ‘chain’ that links us to God. A chain, yes, but a sweet chain; for sweet indeed is the bond to God who is also our Father. A ‘filial’ chain that puts us in tune with Mary, the ‘handmaid of the Lord’ (Lk 1:38) and, most of all, with Christ himself, who, though he was in the form of God, made himself a ‘servant’ out of love for us (Phil 2:7).”
• This is a prayer we’re called to take up. Twenty-five years ago today, St. John Paul II, before he would bless the offices of the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the UN, prayed the Rosary in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in the presence of the first Sisters of Life, other religious and a representative from each of the over 400 parishes in the Archdiocese. He spoke to those present, and the whole Church, about the importance of praying the Rosary in the family, saying, “One prayer in particular I recommend to families: the one we have just been praying, the Rosary. And especially the Joyful Mysteries, which help us to meditate on the Holy Family of Nazareth. Uniting her will with the will of God, Mary conceived the Christ Child, and became the model of every mother carrying her unborn child. By visiting her cousin Elizabeth, Mary took to another family the healing presence of Jesus. Mary gave birth to the Infant Jesus in the humblest of circumstances and presented him to Simeon in the Temple, as every baby may be presented to God in Baptism. Mary and Joseph worried over the lost Child before they found him in the Temple, so that parents of all generations would know that the trials and sorrows of family life are the road to closer union with Jesus. To use a phrase made famous by the late Father Patrick Peyton: The family that prays together, stays together!” In Rosarium Virginis Mariae, he would call the Rosary “a prayer of and for the family,” saying, ” The family that recites the Rosary together reproduces something of the atmosphere of the household of Nazareth: its members place Jesus at the centre, they share his joys and sorrows, they place their needs and their plans in his hands, they draw from him the hope and the strength to go on.”
• I would like to focus on that familial aspect of the Rosary, especially as it regards the family of God, the Church. When Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he didn’t teach them a posture of prayer, telling them to kneel, close their eyes and fold their hands. He didn’t instruct them to go through breathing exercises or other techniques to empty themselves of distractions. He didn’t indicate how to listen to God, like Eli taught Samuel to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” He didn’t give them a meditation method. He didn’t even given them a formula of vocal prayer, something seen by the fact that Luke’s rendition of the Lord’s Prayer is different from Matthew’s, a sign that Jesus wasn’t passing out “magic words” as much as trying to pass on an attitude, a whole approach to prayer; he wasn’t imparting a quid ores (a what you are to say when you pray) but a qualis ores (a who you are as you pray), as St. Augustine was wont to say. And what was that approach?
• Everything can be summarized by the first word he taught them: Abba! He taught them to turn not to some cosmic life-force way out in the heavens, or to some slavemaster or judge or apathetic Creator, but to a “Father.” This is the open secret to what Jesus teaches us about prayer. We see his own prayers: “I give you praise, Father, … for having revealed these things to the merest of children.” “I thank you, Father, for having heard me. I know that you always hear me.” “Father, glorify your name!” “Father, take this chalice away from me!” “Father, forgive them!” “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.” Jesus’ prayers were all to the Father, to whom he turned with great trust and love. In teaching us how to pray, Jesus was trying to form us to enter into his own divine filiation and to pray with loving confidence. He told us in the Sermon on the Plain that if earthly parents aren’t sadists but know how to give good things to their children, so God the Father won’t give us a stone when we ask for bread, or a poisonous eel when we ask for fish, but will give himself — the Holy Spirit — no matter what we ask for. To pray as Jesus taught is to enter into that relationship of love with the Father. Everything else Jesus taught us about prayer flows from that. He trains us to seek the Father’s glory, kingdom, and will. He helps us to trust in the Father’s providence, forgiveness, knowledge of our weakness and protection. But everything comes back to the relationship with the Father he is seeking to bring about.
• But he puts an adjective on the word Father: “Our.” We don’t pray just for ourselves or alone. We pray for and with all of the others who are sons and daughters of that same Father, those who are our brothers and sisters.  We begin to look at each as the other really is, as a spiritual sibling, as a beloved fellow son or daughter of the same Father to whom with Jesus and Mary we turn. That’s what today’s first reading is essentially about, in St. Paul’s conflict with St. Peter, Barnabas and the Judaizing Christians who had come down from Jerusalem. When Peter (Cephas) and Barnabas stopped eating with their Gentile brothers and sisters in Antioch out of not wanting to be criticized by those from Jerusalem who thought that in order to be a good Christian, you first needed to be a good Jew and eat only kosher food and live separately from the uncircumcised, Paul opposed them publicly. We need to learn that lesson. We’ll hear on Saturday morning St. Paul’s saying, “For through faith you are all children of God in Christ Jesus. For all of you… were baptized into Christ. … There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise.” When we’ve entered into Jesus’ sonship, we become spiritual siblings and earthly distinctions of separation shouldn’t perdure. Our spiritual bonds are stronger than race, or sex, or class or social conventions. That’s why St. John Paul II, in his Rosary exhortation, finishes the paragraph on the Our Father by saying, “the Our Father makes meditation upon the mystery, even when carried out in solitude, an ecclesial experience.” The Rosary is supposed to strengthen the communion of the Church.
• I’d like to finish with two thoughts. The first is about the Rosary and the Mass. In many Churches with beautiful stained glass windows, like St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford where I was pastor, the stained glass windows were all of the mysteries of the Rosary. I used to love to ask people whether they noticed the pattern of what was depicted and, once they did, why out of all possible Gospel scenes that could have been portrayed, the mysteries of the Rosary were chosen. Sometimes senior citizens would say that that was because everybody used to pray the Rosary during Mass when the liturgy used to be celebrated in Latin. That’s not the reason! It’s because the Rosary has always been viewed as a “compendium of the Gospel,” a summary of the mysteries of our faith. In contemplating the Blessed Fruit of Mary’s womb in the mysteries of the Rosary, we’re made more apt to hear him speaking to us in the Gospel of the Mass and to beholding him under the appearances of bread and wine on the altar. Praying the Rosary well is a great preparation for the celebration of the Mass and a means to help us link all the mysteries and events and work of our life to what the Blessed Fruit of Mary’s womb is doing for us on the altar.
• The second thought is about the Mass as an extension of how Jesus teaches us to pray to the Father with him. The Mass is one long prayer to God the Father through Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit who helps us to cry out “Abba!” It was in the first Mass — from the Last Supper to Calvary — in which Jesus begged for the glorification of his Father’s name, inaugurated his kingdom, gave us our daily supersubstantial nourishment, died to take away the sins of the world, prayed that the Father would keep us from the evil one, and expressed his desire that all of us would be as united as he and the Father are united. And so today, with Mary, let us dare to enter into this prayer of Jesus at the altar as he continues to teach us both how to pray and how to live!

The readings for today’s Mass were: 

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