The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary was
instituted by Pope Pius V to honor the Blessed Mother and the prayer of
the Rosary for the miraculous Christian victory over the Turks at
Lepanto on October 7, 1571. Pope St. Pius V declared this feast to
celebrate the powerful intercession and protection of the Blessed Virgin
Mary, and the power of the prayer of the rosary to obtain victories
for the life of the Church. Today, the whole Universal Church
remembers,
celebrates, and makes present to our hearts, the great gift of Our
Lady's maternal intercession and intervention in the battles of the
Church, through the simple and profound prayer of the Rosary: The
Triumph of Her Immaculate and Maternal Heart in all of our battles… at
the ecclesial level, family level, society level, world level, and
personal level.
It is a great gift for me to have been invited to give a reflection at
this Major Seminary on this Marian feast day: I feel so honored to speak
to men who are preparing for
the priesthood in this house of and for
formation, and on a feast day that directs our gaze to the prayer of the
Holy Rosary. Yesterday, praying for this reflection, I sensed such a
deep connection between the seminary life and the Holy Rosary. I
place this sense in your hearts and in the hearts of those who have been
entrusted with the responsibility of forming your hearts for the sublime
vocation to the priesthood, of total identification with the Heart of
Christ, His sentiments, His Words, His Mysteries, His life and His
mission. The major seminary is a house, a place where you are formed
to gaze at, to contemplate the Mysteries of Christ, to ponder, reflect,
carefully keep in your hearts those mysteries, to form your personal “I”
into a living reflection of
these mysteries… to mature and to grow to become a living
image of Jesus’ Priestly Heart. The aim of this period of
formation, of discipleship, as JPII taught us in the Post Synodal
Apostolic Exhortation, Pastores Dabo Vobis, n. 42, is for your hearts:
·
To develop
a relationship of deep communion and intimacy with Christ. .
·
To
receive a deeper catechesis, a deeper knowledge of the Teachings of
Christ.
·
To
learn to pray with the heart and be immersed in Jesus’
silent prayer to the
Father.
·
To learn
to listen, ponder, keep and live the Word. A Gospel like life.
·
To be
ready to give the total gift of self to Jesus.
·
To be
formed to be sent to share in his mission of salvation.
John Paul summarized it in
one sentence:
The Seminary is the School of the Gospel,
and I would like to present
you, in this context, the prayer of the Holy Rosary as a simple yet
powerful way to contribute to contemplating the Gospel, to “learning
Christ”, His Life and His Words, His Heart and His Mission, so you can
learn to be like Him, through the School of Our Lady's Heart. In this
process of learning Christ, I believe that praying the HR is a great
instrument to accompany and to foster, this Christ-like formation.
In the Apostolic Letter
on the Rosary, given by JPII to the whole Church on Oct 16, 2002, when
he proclaimed the Year of the Rosary and introduced the luminous
mysteries, JPII taught
us that the Holy Rosary, though being Marian in character, is at heart a
Christocentric prayer, that in the sobriety of its elements
has all the depth
of the Gospel message in its entirety.
So it can be said that the
Rosary is a “compendium of the Gospel” … quoting Paul VI. What a
beautiful connection, the Seminary is the School of the Gospel and the
Rosary is the compendium of the Gospel! The Rosary is a simple but
powerful way of entering into the School of Our Lady's Heart to learn
the Mysteries of Christ, to learn about Christ, to learn Christ…to know
His love…
“the Christian
people,” said JPII, “sits a the school of Mary and is led to contemplate
the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his
love”. (n.1)
On Oct 2, 2005, Our Holy Father Benedict XVI, directing our eyes to the
AL
given by his predecessor, said at the
beginning of the synod on the Eucharist:
“the Holy Rosary, is a unique contemplative
prayer through which, guided by the Lord's heavenly Mother, we learn to
fix our gaze on the face of the Redeemer in order to be conformed to his
joyful, luminous, sorrowful and glorious mysteries”.
Since our present Holy Father has reminded us to fix our gaze, to
contemplate the face of Christ as to be conformed to his mysteries, I
would like to journey with you, through the powerful insights of
the Apostolic Letter on the
Rosary. May this simple journey lead us to a deeper contemplation.
JPII taught us that through the Holy
Rosary , we learn:
To
Contemplate Christ through Mary
RVM, 10
The contemplation of Christ
has an incomparable model
in Mary. In a
unique way the face of the Son belongs to Mary. It was in her womb that
Christ was formed, receiving from her a human resemblance which points
to an even greater spiritual closeness. No one has ever devoted himself
to the contemplation of the face of Christ as faithfully as Mary.
RVM, 12: The Rosary is an exquisitely
contemplative prayer. Without this contemplative dimension, it would
lose its meaning, as Pope Paul VI clearly pointed out: “Without
contemplation, the Rosary is a body without a soul, and its recitation
runs the risk of becoming a mechanical repetition of words… it empties
it from its deep meaning and from its most powerful effect in our
hearts…which is to communicate Christ through the heart of Mary.
“By its nature the recitation of the
Rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace, helping the
individual to meditate on the mysteries of the Lord's life as seen
through the eyes of her who was closest to the Lord. In this way the
unfathomable riches of these mysteries are disclosed”. Benedict XVI in
Lourdes: She offers her heart and her gaze in order to contemplate
the life of Her Son.
To
gaze at Christ Life with the eyes of Mary
Through the prayer of the Holy Rosary we
learn to contemplate, to gaze with our hearts, to gaze with love like
the Heart of Mary… we learn to gaze with her eyes. “The
eyes of her heart already turned to Him at the Annunciation…when she
conceived Him by the power of the Holy Spirit…. Then through her interior gaze, in the months that followed she began to
sense and live in his presence and to picture his
features. When she gave birth to Him in
Bethlehem, her eyes gazed tenderly on the face of Her Son, as she
held him in her arms.. wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a
manger (Lk 2:7) Mary’s gaze, ever filled with adoration and wonder,
would never leave Him. We must learn to gaze with the eyes of Her Heart!
Her gaze as in the presentation was one of deep silence before the
mystery. At times, Our Lady, gazed at Jesus, with a questioning look,
as in the episode of the finding in the Temple. She always had a penetrating gaze, capable of deeply understanding Jesus, even to the
point of perceiving his hidden feeling and anticipating his
decisions, as at Cana.
Let us learn, to gaze through the eyes of
Her Heart! At other times it would be a look of deep sorrow,
especially beneath the Cross, where her vision would still also be
filled of suffering and at the same time, that of a mother giving birth,
for Mary not only shared the passion and death of her Son, she also
received the new son given to Her… and in him, received us all. On the
morning of Easter her eyes would be a gaze of radiant joy of the
Resurrection… Life has conquered death! You must learn to gaze with
the eyes of Her Heart! And on the day of Pentecost, she gazed
filled with fire, it was an ardent gaze with the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit”. And, how did She gazed at the Eucharist? Can we imagine
the contemplation of the Blessed Virgin Mary when the Eucharistic Jesus
was elevated before Her eyes? What must the Blessed Mother have felt as
She heard from the mouth of John, Peter, James and the other Apostles
the words spoken at the Last Supper: “This is my body . . . this is my
Blood” (cf. Lk 22:19-20)? The body given up for us and made present
under sacramental signs was the same body which She had conceived in Her
womb!! Can we try to understand the love and adoration of the Heart of
Mary for Her Eucharistic Son? The Son She had for nine months in Her
womb…the son She held in Her arms as a child…the Son She saw on the
Cross offering Himself…the dead Son She held in Her arms and later
contemplated resurrected and radiant…and now, Her Son in the profound
humility of the Eucharist. How She must have kept Her heart and eyes
fixed on Him!!! And in Heaven, Our Lady keeps gazing immersed in the
contemplation of the Blessed Trinity, gazing as a beloved daughter of
the Father, as Mother of the Son and as a Spouse of the Holy
Spirit..gazing at the Blessed Trinity and gazing at the Church, gazing
at us…her children..
To ponder the memories of Christ with Mary
St. Luke tells us repeatedly that the
Virgin Mary kept all
things in her heart and even says that she
did it: carefully.
She pondered lovingly and carefully all things about Christ. The Blessed Mother is not only the maternal custodian of Jesus but of his
words, his life, mysteries, actions and gestures.
.Because she kept and pondered everything
in Her Heart, Our Lady is the Marian memory of the Church (BXVI, Jesus
of Nazareth, 224): Mary's
memory is first of all a retention of the events in remembrance, but it
is more than that, it is an interior conversation with all that has
happened. Thanks to this inner dialogue, she penetrates into the
interior dimension, she sees the events in their inter-connectedness and
she learns to understand them”. Through the Holy Rosary, we remember,
Mary's memories of Jesus (n.11): “Those memories, said JPII, were to be
the rosary which She recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly
life”.
The rosary is the beautiful remembrance
of Mary.
Learning
Christ through Mary
To enter in the School of Mary is
"to put ourselves in living
communion with Jesus through the heart of his Mother.
(RVM, 2) The Heart of Mary is the greatest
school to learn about the mysteries of Christ. Who better than her can
teach us about Jesus?.
! “
Christ is the supreme Teacher, the revealer and the one revealed. It is
not just a question of learning what he taught but of “learning him”.
In this regard could we have any better teacher than Mary? From the
divine standpoint, the Spirit is the interior teacher who leads us to
the full truth of Christ (cf. Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:13). But among
creatures no one knows Christ better than Mary; no one can introduce
us to a profound knowledge of his mystery better than his Mother”. (RVM, 14)
Being Conformed to Christ
with Mary
Christian spirituality is distinguished
by the disciple's commitment to become conformed ever more fully to
Christ. (RVM, 15) :This process of Conformity with Christ is an
essential element of your vocation as seminarians and future priests.
In the spiritual journey of the Rosary, based on the constant
contemplation of the Mysteries of Christ through Mary's eyes and heart,
we learn to know Jesus Heart, to hear His Words, to associate deeply
with his sentiments, and actions… gestures and responses… we learn his
true image, we learn to be like Him. The Rosary mystically transports us
to Mary's side as she is watching over and cooperating in the human
growth of Christ in the home of Nazareth. This enables her to train us
and to mold us with the same care, until Christ is “fully formed” in us
(cf. Gal 4:19). So we can grow, as Christ in the home of
Nazareth, in grace, wisdom and stature before God and men.
In order to contemplate, ponder the
mysteries of Christ and be transformed and conformed to Christ, we need
the experience of silence and prayer, attentive listening and a ready
and loving disposition to assent and to respond, to obey… only with the
proper dispositions our hearts will grow and develop a true faithful and
consistent knowledge of that mystery, and a coherent response and choice
of life that is according to Christ's life.
The Rosary is a pilgrimage of life… the
pilgrimage of Christ and Mary…and also yours. In the School of the
contemplation of the mysteries of the HR you journey through your
process of formation… it is a rhythm… the birth, growth and maturation
of your vocation of your personal assent to God's Will, your preparation
to minister and preach
the word and to be sent for
apostolic mission, the sufferings of your inner battles, detachments,
and the purification and elevation required for identification and
conformation to Christ’s Heart and life, and the glory, of experiencing
the powerful effects of the Paschal Mystery, to live and die, to rise in
Christ and with Christ, to choose for Christ. The glory, the true glory
of preparing to be ordained a priest, another Christ, the glory of being
called to serve, to give your life, to die and to live for a vocation of
love to the extreme…yes, love is the true glory, the true crown of the
human heart.
May your seminary life, be a
time of deep formation into the mysteries of Christ, to be conformed to
Christ, to learn Christ, from the Heart Closest to His, Mary's Heart.
May the prayer of the Rosary be a powerful journey into the School of
Their Hearts.
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Being
Formed at the School of the Holy Rosary