Over the last couple of years, I have come to really appreciate what a powerful prayer the Holy Rosary can be. Growing up Catholic, I’ve always had Rosaries, and I know that I learned the basics of praying it over the years from my parents and in my religious education classes. But praying the Rosary wasn’t ever really a part of my prayer life until a couple of years ago.
Each year, at my parish, we have a weekend long retreat for our students who are preparing for Confirmation, and two years ago I suggested that we make rope knotted Rosaries to give to the Confirmation students at the retreat, without realizing just how much work I was suggesting. That year we had around 85 kids making their Confirmation, so that was a lot of knots to tie! I spent several months working on the Rosaries with the help of some of the other students and adults, but I probably ended up making over half of them myself. Talk about a new appreciation for the Rosary!
Around this same time, I began carrying a rope Rosary in my pocket at all times. My brother made me this particular Rosary, and for some reason I just decided to start carrying it around with me. Since I have started carrying this Rosary around with me, I can’t even describe what a benefit it has been to my life. It serves as a constant reminder of Christ’s presence in my life, and of the great example of discipleship that Mary is for us. Being able to slip my hand into my pocket throughout the day, feel those beads, and pray a quick Hail Mary or Our Father has helped me through many difficult days, and helped me immensely to grow in my spiritual life.
Some people might not be sure what the Rosary is all about – why do we repeat the Hail Mary 53 times, and the Our Father and Glory Be 6 times each? What benefit can this seemingly mindless repetition have?
I think that, at some level, I once shared these reservations about praying the Rosary. But I have come to understand that the Rosary is a profoundly Christ-centered prayer, and is so, so much more that just repeating these well-known prayers. Praying the Rosary is to deeply contemplate the message of the Gospels, and, therefore, Christ.
“The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be said to be a compendium. It is an echo of the prayer of Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.” ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE, Apostolic Letter, Pope John Paul II, ¶1 (2002).
[You can see the full text of the Apostolic Letter here - I strongly encourage you to read this in its entirety, as Pope John Paul II lays out very clearly why the Rosary is so important. I want to specifically point you to ¶33 if you have ever had any uneasiness regarding praying the Hail Mary.]
The four sets of Mysteries – Joyful, Sorrowful, Luminous and Glorious – provide us with what is key to praying the Rosary, that is our contemplation of these mysteries during each decade of the Rosary. If you think that praying the Rosary is merely reciting a bunch of prayers, you’re missing the point. Pope John Paul II speaks to this point in his Apostolic Letter:
“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 formulas, in violation of the admonition of Christ: 'In praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think they will be heard for their many words' (Mt 6:7). 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’.” ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE, Apostolic Letter, Pope John Paul II, ¶18 (2002).
If you have never prayed the Rosary, or perhaps never truly prayed it as it is intended to be prayed, I invite you to give it a fair chance. (For an easy to follow "How to Pray the Rosary", click here). I am completely confident that you, like I did, will discover what a truly powerful prayer the Rosary can be in your life, and how it will continually draw you closer to Christ.
Let us follow closely the words of Blessed Pope John Paul II: “I look to all of you, brothers and sisters of every state of life, to you, Christian families, to you, the sick and elderly, and to you, young people: confidently take up the Rosary once again. Rediscover the Rosary in the light of Scripture, in harmony with the Liturgy, and in the context of your daily lives.” ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE, Apostolic Letter, Pope John Paul II, ¶43 (2002).
Monday, July 18, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Be Steadfast in Faith and Resist Your Opponent
“Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings.” 1 Peter 5:8-9
We face many temptations in our daily lives, serious temptations. Satan is real, he is not just a figment of our imagination, or a story invented to scare us into acting correctly. Satan tempts us all, hoping that we will follow his lies, instead of the Truth offered to us by God.
The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: ‘The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.’ Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This ‘fall’ consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: ‘You will be like God.’ The devil ‘has sinned from the beginning’; he is ‘liar and the father of lies.’” (CCC 391-392).
Satan, like all of God’s creation was created good, but angels, like men, were given free will by God. Satan and the other demons who joined him chose their path freely, and their choice, as we see, was irrevocable, permanent. It was an irrevocable choice because that is how it was made by Satan and his companions, not because of any lack of forgiveness from God. St. John Damascene teaches us that "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death." (CCC 393).
We Christians should have no great difficulty in recognizing that the temptations of Satan are very real in our lives and the lives of our fellow believers, as is pointed out in 1 Peter. Every time we pray the words that Christ taught us, the Our Father, we petition, ask, God to “deliver us from evil”.
The Catechism tells us that “In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who "throws himself across" God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.” (CCC 2851).
How often does the devil throw himself across God’s plan in our own lives? How often do we know exactly what we should be doing in order to say “yes” to God, but then we are distracted from that path, and choose to walk away from God toward sin?
“When we ask to be delivered from the Evil One, we pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with deliverance from the evils that overwhelm humanity, she implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ's return.” (CCC 2854).
While the lines from 1 Peter may at first dishearten us, I believe that it is not just an omen of impending doom. These verses are here to encourage and strengthen us as Christians, to know that the Evil One is seeking to devour all Christians, but that we can resist his temptations by remaining steadfast in our faithfulness. God gives us every grace that we need to hold true to this challenge, we must only choose to accept and embrace the graces that are poured out upon us.
We must take it as encouragement that Satan seeks to throw us off our path to God, for that means that we must actually be walking upon the path to God. If we were not seeking the Truth and Freedom that exist only in God, then Satan wouldn’t have to bother with tempting us.
Some people might say that we shouldn’t think about Satan, that by thinking about him we might be more likely to let him influence our choices. However, we encounter the temptations of Satan in so many ways throughout each day, that I believe it is critical that we remember the words in 1 Peter – so that we can always be steadfast in recognizing the Evil One in our lives, and that so we may choose to reject the glamour of evil as he seeks to distract us from the Truth and Love of God.
We face many temptations in our daily lives, serious temptations. Satan is real, he is not just a figment of our imagination, or a story invented to scare us into acting correctly. Satan tempts us all, hoping that we will follow his lies, instead of the Truth offered to us by God.
The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: ‘The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.’ Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This ‘fall’ consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter's words to our first parents: ‘You will be like God.’ The devil ‘has sinned from the beginning’; he is ‘liar and the father of lies.’” (CCC 391-392).
Satan, like all of God’s creation was created good, but angels, like men, were given free will by God. Satan and the other demons who joined him chose their path freely, and their choice, as we see, was irrevocable, permanent. It was an irrevocable choice because that is how it was made by Satan and his companions, not because of any lack of forgiveness from God. St. John Damascene teaches us that "There is no repentance for the angels after their fall, just as there is no repentance for men after death." (CCC 393).
We Christians should have no great difficulty in recognizing that the temptations of Satan are very real in our lives and the lives of our fellow believers, as is pointed out in 1 Peter. Every time we pray the words that Christ taught us, the Our Father, we petition, ask, God to “deliver us from evil”.
The Catechism tells us that “In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos) is the one who "throws himself across" God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.” (CCC 2851).
How often does the devil throw himself across God’s plan in our own lives? How often do we know exactly what we should be doing in order to say “yes” to God, but then we are distracted from that path, and choose to walk away from God toward sin?
“When we ask to be delivered from the Evil One, we pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with deliverance from the evils that overwhelm humanity, she implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ's return.” (CCC 2854).
While the lines from 1 Peter may at first dishearten us, I believe that it is not just an omen of impending doom. These verses are here to encourage and strengthen us as Christians, to know that the Evil One is seeking to devour all Christians, but that we can resist his temptations by remaining steadfast in our faithfulness. God gives us every grace that we need to hold true to this challenge, we must only choose to accept and embrace the graces that are poured out upon us.
We must take it as encouragement that Satan seeks to throw us off our path to God, for that means that we must actually be walking upon the path to God. If we were not seeking the Truth and Freedom that exist only in God, then Satan wouldn’t have to bother with tempting us.
Some people might say that we shouldn’t think about Satan, that by thinking about him we might be more likely to let him influence our choices. However, we encounter the temptations of Satan in so many ways throughout each day, that I believe it is critical that we remember the words in 1 Peter – so that we can always be steadfast in recognizing the Evil One in our lives, and that so we may choose to reject the glamour of evil as he seeks to distract us from the Truth and Love of God.
Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. Amen.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just
I love celebrating America’s Independence Day each year on July 4 – spending time with friends and family, eating lots of good food, going to our local parade, and watching the fireworks from the best vantage point ever. I am so thankful to live in a country that is as free as the United States of America. I see in the news the challenges faced by people in many countries around the world, and I don’t know if I would be able to persevere in the face of those difficulties. I don’t know if I would have had the courage to sail off across an ocean to find a place where I could practice my religion free from persecution – to have to flee everything I knew to try to find some measure of personal freedom.
We Americans have a very strong notion of what freedom is – it’s what the our founding fathers fought for and ensured through our Constitution, it’s what thousands of great men and women since have died to protect, it’s what most Americans hold very dear – but this freedom is only a shadow of what true freedom is.
What is freedom, really? True freedom is so much more than our typical notions of freedom, and perhaps much more difficult to obtain. True freedom is saying “yes” to God – not just when it is convenient or easy, but always.
“Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.” (CCC 1731)
Our God loves us enough to give us free choice, to let us choose. We face many choices between the good of God and evil. We choose, no one makes us do good and no one makes us sin. Our choices are not accidents, not mistakes, not dumb luck, but deliberate actions. We have the power to act or not to act, just as the Catechism tells us.
How do we choose to act in our lives on a daily basis? How free are we? How free do we really want to be?
“The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to ‘the slavery of sin.’” (CCC 1733)
Think about the times in your life when your actions have been sinful, when they have gone away from God? How free did you feel at that moment? Now think about the times when your actions have been truly good and in accordance with God’s will? I think that if we are honest with ourselves, the answer is clear – we know deep down inside that we are the most free, are most at peace with ourselves when we choose what is good and just.
Jesus told those who believed in him, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32). Truth is real, truth became man, suffered, died, and rose again, so that we might have life. Truth created the universe, created man, and gave us the freedom to choose for ourselves.
True freedom is not just doing whatever we want to make ourselves feel good at the moment. That is just a shallow figment of the true freedom that awaits us. Our human freedom allows us the ability to become who God created us to be – to be sons and daughters of God the Father – and to therefore be able to one day share in eternal union with Him. This can only happen if we deliberately exercise our freedom to choose what is good and just. Our morality as Christians and God’s laws are in place for our happiness, to guide us and show us what we need to do, how we need to act, in order to reach that true freedom we all seek.
One of the most cited quotes comes from St. Augustine, a man who knew all too well where choosing to sin, choosing a life of earthly pleasure would lead, as he experienced it for many years. He said that “Our hearts are restless, oh Lord, until they rest in you.” If we search within our own heart, we know that this is true. Only the choice of God, and everything that that choice entails will truly make us happy and set us free.
Today, the day after the celebration of our nation’s independence, let us truly ask our God for the grace necessary to overcome our sinful choices, and to only choose what is good and just, to always say “yes” to Him, so that we may be truly free.
We Americans have a very strong notion of what freedom is – it’s what the our founding fathers fought for and ensured through our Constitution, it’s what thousands of great men and women since have died to protect, it’s what most Americans hold very dear – but this freedom is only a shadow of what true freedom is.
What is freedom, really? True freedom is so much more than our typical notions of freedom, and perhaps much more difficult to obtain. True freedom is saying “yes” to God – not just when it is convenient or easy, but always.
“Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.” (CCC 1731)
Our God loves us enough to give us free choice, to let us choose. We face many choices between the good of God and evil. We choose, no one makes us do good and no one makes us sin. Our choices are not accidents, not mistakes, not dumb luck, but deliberate actions. We have the power to act or not to act, just as the Catechism tells us.
How do we choose to act in our lives on a daily basis? How free are we? How free do we really want to be?
“The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to ‘the slavery of sin.’” (CCC 1733)
Think about the times in your life when your actions have been sinful, when they have gone away from God? How free did you feel at that moment? Now think about the times when your actions have been truly good and in accordance with God’s will? I think that if we are honest with ourselves, the answer is clear – we know deep down inside that we are the most free, are most at peace with ourselves when we choose what is good and just.
Jesus told those who believed in him, “If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32). Truth is real, truth became man, suffered, died, and rose again, so that we might have life. Truth created the universe, created man, and gave us the freedom to choose for ourselves.
True freedom is not just doing whatever we want to make ourselves feel good at the moment. That is just a shallow figment of the true freedom that awaits us. Our human freedom allows us the ability to become who God created us to be – to be sons and daughters of God the Father – and to therefore be able to one day share in eternal union with Him. This can only happen if we deliberately exercise our freedom to choose what is good and just. Our morality as Christians and God’s laws are in place for our happiness, to guide us and show us what we need to do, how we need to act, in order to reach that true freedom we all seek.
One of the most cited quotes comes from St. Augustine, a man who knew all too well where choosing to sin, choosing a life of earthly pleasure would lead, as he experienced it for many years. He said that “Our hearts are restless, oh Lord, until they rest in you.” If we search within our own heart, we know that this is true. Only the choice of God, and everything that that choice entails will truly make us happy and set us free.
Today, the day after the celebration of our nation’s independence, let us truly ask our God for the grace necessary to overcome our sinful choices, and to only choose what is good and just, to always say “yes” to Him, so that we may be truly free.
Almighty and merciful God,
In your goodness take away from us all that is harmful,
So that, made ready both in mind and body,
We may freely accomplish your will.
(CCC 1742)
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