Dear children! May this time be a time of personal prayer for you, so that the seed of faith may grow in your hearts; and may it grow into a joyful witness to others. I am with you and I desire to inspire you all: grow and rejoice in the Lord Who has created you. Thank you for having responded to my call.
Dear children! May this time be a time of personal prayer for you, so that the seed of faith may grow in your hearts; and may it grow into a joyful witness to others. I am with you and I desire to inspire you all: grow and rejoice in the Lord Who has created you. Thank you for having responded to my call.
This rosary meditation focuses on The Second Glorious Mystery — The Ascension. After rising from the dead in the First Glorious Mystery, Jesus physically ascended into Heaven. We profess this every time we recite the Apostle’s Creed — “On the third day He rose again; He ascended into Heaven, He is seated at the right hand of the Father, and He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” We must remember that ultimately we will have to account for our thoughts, words, and actions in front of Jesus who reigns in Heaven. However, the Church gives us tools that allow us to remain close to God and correct our faults before facing our final judgment.
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This rosary meditation focuses on The Second Glorious Mystery — The Ascension. After rising from the dead in the First Glorious Mystery, Jesus physically ascended into Heaven. We profess this every time we recite the Apostle’s Creed — “On the third day He rose again; He ascended into Heaven, He is seated at the right hand of the Father, and He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” We must remember that ultimately we will have to account for our thoughts, words, and actions in front of Jesus who reigns in Heaven. However, the Church gives us tools that allow us to remain close to God and correct our faults before facing our final judgment.
“He will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Like many people, I find the idea of judgment scary. The word “judgment” conveys a trial, assessing guilt, and handing out punishment; none of which are very pleasant. In life, judging has a very negative connotation. We hear how we shouldn’t be so judgmental. Even when we are guilty (either legally or morally) many of us try to avoid admitting our faults and accepting the consequences. Instead we hide, we lie, or play the “blame game.” Deep down we want to be innocent, sinless, and virtuous but we often miss that mark. But in professing our inevitable judgment in the Apostle’s Creed we remind ourselves that we need to work at becoming more Christ-like. Understanding that our actions have consequences motivates us to avoid sin. And we avoid sin, not just to avoid punishment, but also realizing that sin separates us from Jesus Christ whom we love.
The purpose of knowing of our coming judgment is not to scare or depress us. In fact, God does not want to punish any of us. He desires all of us to one day enter into His kingdom. And He provides tools to help us avoid a harsh judgment. The most obvious tool He gives us is the Sacrament of Confession. This is our opportunity to set things straight with the Lord and remain in His grace. It’s our way of doing small course corrections so that we can remain on the path that ultimately leads us into His kingdom of Heaven. To put it another way, by routinely confessing our sins we confront our shortcomings while they are still small and manageable. Without acknowledging our sins those small shortcomings can turn into major problems and separate us from God’s grace not to mention make our lives miserable.
Another tool at our disposal to live in God’s graces is prayer. When we center our lives around God through prayer, that means we are not centering it around sin. In other words, earnest prayer can never be sinful so when we live a life of prayer we live without sin (unfortunately, no one has been able to obtain this lofty goal 100% of the time). The fact that we pray means that we acknowledge that Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father and hears our prayers. After all, what would be the point of praying if we did not believe that Jesus hears us and guides us? When we pray we focus, even if only for a short time, on the Lord and ask for His help, thank Him, and listen to how He calls us to live. In short, we ask for the strength to live for His kingdom and earn our place that He has prepared for us when he ascended into Heaven.
When we meditate on this mystery, may we remember that our ultimate destination is Heaven. May we show our love for the Lord by not delaying our arrival in Heaven with a detour in Purgatory. And may we avoid mortal sin and risk loosing His kingdom entirely. Remembering our final judgment is not a terrible thing. Like remembering the consequences of breaking civil laws, we must always be mindful of the natural law that God imprints on our hearts and minds. Doing so will not only have its benefits in the afterlife, but will also manifest itself as an inner happiness in this life. Let us also remember to pray for those who are far from God’s graces. Let us pray for those who do not want to confront their eventual judgment but instead choose to hide, lie, and redirect blame. Because, as the old saying goes, “You can run, but you can’t hide.”
This rosary meditation focuses on The Fourth Joyful Mystery — The Presentation of our Lord. In this mystery we see Mary and Joseph present Jesus at the temple as was the Jewish tradition. They encountered a man named Simeon whom the Holy Spirit said would not experience death until he had seen the Anointed One. Upon seeing Jesus, Simeon said “Now Master, You can dismiss Your servant in peace; You have fulfilled Your word” (Luke 2:29). Simeon is an example on how our faith requires patience, endurance, and moral fortitude. While there are times when we may not feel God’s presence in our lives our faith tells us that He is always near and always hears our prayers.
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This rosary meditation focuses on The Fourth Joyful Mystery — The Presentation of our Lord. In this mystery we see Mary and Joseph present Jesus at the temple as was the Jewish tradition. They encountered a man named Simeon whom the Holy Spirit said would not experience death until he had seen the Anointed One. Upon seeing Jesus, Simeon said “Now Master, You can dismiss Your servant in peace; You have fulfilled Your word” (Luke 2:29). Simeon is an example on how our faith requires patience, endurance, and moral fortitude. While there are times when we may not feel God’s presence in our lives our faith tells us that He is always near and always hears our prayers.
I sometimes come across postings on the Catholic Answers web forums from people who feel discouraged since they do not feel close to Jesus. They talk about how they pray, go to Mass, fast, and read the Bible and yet they do not feel the Lord’s grace. I think we can all look to Simeon as an example that even the most just and pious need to be patient and have faith that the Lord will present Himself in the way that will ultimately lead us to Him. However, while God desires all of us to be in His heavenly kingdom, the road is a long one fraught with temptation and sin. But if we can hold on and remain faithful, even when it seems like God does not hear our prayers or notices our good deeds, we will be rewarded with the eternal happiness of Heaven.
Why must our faith be difficult to live at times? Why don’t we get direct answers to our prayers from a thundering voice in the clouds? Why must we endure such hardship and struggle? I think Mother Teresa can help us find an answer. In her private letters to Rev. Michael Van Der Peet she once said (as reported in this Time article):
Jesus has a very special love for you,” she assured Van der Peet. “[But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear — the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak … I want you to pray for me — that I let Him have [a] free hand.
Here was a woman who embodied everything great about the Catholic faith and yet at times she felt distant from God’s love. She, like Simeon, was just and pious and yet she endured periods of time when she felt a great emptiness in her heart. Kolodiejchuk, a senior Missionaries of Charity member, explains that perhaps that emptiness is what drove her to do such great work. She never felt like her job was done or that God was prematurely rewarding her when there was still so much for her to do. Perhaps this was God’s way of making sure that pride did not hinder her important work. Mother Teresa still continued to do the Lord’s work and even put up a good face to others (the statements about her spiritual difficulties were not known until after her death). And, like Simeon, her patience paid off as she is now closer to Jesus than any of us ever can be in this world.
When we meditate on the Fourth Joyful Mystery let us remember Simeon and how his faith and patience was ultimately rewarded. We must pray for those who have fallen on the long and difficult road of faith that they get back up and have the strength to live as Jesus calls them. Remember, God has a plan for each of us and that plan will ultimately lead us to His heavenly kingdom. We just need to allow the Holy Spirit to guide us, especially in those times when it feels like God is the most distant from us. It is those times of great hardship when Jesus presents Himself to us although it may not be in the way we expect or we may not be listening. Remember in your prayers to not only speak to the Lord, but also allow Him to respond for He will show you the way to Him.
Last Sunday was the feast of the Holy Family. The Gospel reading was the Fifth Joyful Mystery about finding Jesus in the temple. I wrote a rosary meditation on this mystery earlier, but I had another thought as I was listening to it at Mass that I wanted to share.
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Last Sunday was the feast of the Holy Family. The Gospel reading was the Fifth Joyful Mystery about finding Jesus in the temple. I wrote a rosary meditation on this mystery earlier, but I had another thought as I was listening to the Gospel at Mass that I wanted to share.
In Luke’s Gospel, after finding Jesus in the temple, Jesus said that He had to be in His Father’s house. The Gospel then says that Mary and Joseph, “did not grasp what He said to them” (Luke 2:50). I have a hard time understanding why Mary and Joseph were so confused by Jesus’ words. After all, He was immaculately conceived. An angel came to Mary saying that she was going to be the mother of God. Choirs of angels sang at His birth. Three wise men sought him out and gave Him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. Those aren’t events that just happen to any regular human being. So why were Mary and Joseph so confused despite the fact that they understood that Jesus was God made man?
I now realize that Mary and Joseph’s confusion is no different, in some respects, to our confusion of Jesus’ message today. How many times does Jesus speak to us through the Mass, prayer, the Bible, and the teachings of the Church? He may not physically appear to us, but that does not diminish His message of love, peace, and faith. And yet, we still do not understand His teachings and struggle to live according to His will. We still fall into temptation and sin. We still choose to live for this earthly world and not His kingdom. We even have the advantage of knowing of His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into Heaven and yet our actions reflect a confusion and sometimes a total lack of understanding of Jesus’ teachings. So when the Gospel writers talk of Mary’s confusion of Jesus’ words, perhaps they are commenting more on our human condition of not understanding Jesus’ nature.
As we enter a new decade may we make a resolution to better understand Jesus’ teachings. Let us also resolve to live and treat each other as Jesus tells us. May we have the courage to let the Holy Spirit lead us through life’s difficult situations. As Mary asks us repeatedly, may we make room in our hearts for Jesus through prayer, meditation, and fasting. Finally, may this be a new decade of decades (rosary decades that is) as we resolve to pray the rosary more than ever. Happy 2010 everyone!
The Catholic Church celebrated All Souls Day on November 2. On that day we prayed for the souls in Purgatory who are undergoing their final purification before entering Heaven. However, I want to remind everyone that these souls are in constant need of our prayers. Praying for them should not be something we do once a year after we come down from our Halloween sugar high. We should remember the deceased every day throughout the year in all our prayers.
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The Catholic Church celebrated All Souls Day on November 2. On that day we prayed for the souls in Purgatory who are undergoing their final purification before entering Heaven. However, I want to remind everyone that these souls are in constant need of our prayers. Praying for them should not be something we do once a year after we come down from our Halloween sugar high. We should remember the deceased every day throughout the year in all our prayers.
The Church’s tradition is that the souls in Purgatory need our prayers to complete their purification. They no longer have the ability to pray for themselves so they are completely dependent on God’s mercy and our prayers. The Catechism of the Catholic Church recommends “almsgiving, indulgences, and works of penance undertaken on behalf of the dead” (CCC #1032).
To think of it another way, one day you will be completely dependent on others’ prayers just as the dead are dependent on your prayers today. So don’t just pray alone for the deceased, but ask other people to pray for souls as well. As more people pray, the more souls will enter into God’s kingdom for all eternity. And one day, the people who you teach to remember the deceased in their prayers will be helping you enter into Heaven.
Purgatory must be a crowded place. Our Lord dictated the following prayer to St. Gertrude the Great to release 1,000 Souls from Purgatory each time it is said. Imagine how great it would be if we all prayed this every day so that millions of souls could enter into eternal rest?
Eternal Father, I offer Thee the Most Precious Blood of Thy Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the masses said throughout the world today, for all the holy souls in Purgatory, for sinners everywhere, for sinners in the universal church, those in my own home and within my family. Amen.
PS: Sorry for the long delay between postings. I’m trying to finish up some rosary meditations but I’m having problems finding the right message.
The rosary has the ability to heal and mend what is broken in our lives. Fr. Dwight Longenecker, on Catholic Online, discusses how praying the rosary brings us inner peace by replacing all that is earthly with what is heavenly.
Image by Ted Abbott via Flickr
The rosary has the ability to heal and mend what is broken in our lives. Fr. Dwight Longenecker, on Catholic Online, discusses how praying the rosary brings us inner peace by replacing all that is earthly in our life with what is heavenly.
From the article:
In a mysterious way Christ’s perfect life and the perfect love he shared with his mother, flow into the wounded places in our lives. This grace empowers us to return to the confessional with a clearer vision. It helps us to be open to the healing Christ brings through the Eucharist, and it gives us the strength to continue the daily hard work of being transformed into Christ’s image.
I really like this idea of replacing our “wounded places” with Christ’s love. It goes hand-in-hand with many of the message from Mary at Medjugorje when she asks us to clean out all that prevents us from fully accepting God’s graces.
The article also discusses how our lives mimic the values and themes seen in each mystery of the rosary:
Pope John Paul II, in his encyclical Rosarium Virginis Mariae writes, “The rosary marks the rhythm of human life, bringing it into harmony with the rhythm of God’s own life.”
Pope John Paul II said that we can reflect on all the joys, sorrows, and challenges in our lives by looking at the ones shown in the mysteries of the rosary. Over time, through rosary prayer, our ways begin to mimic Jesus’ ways revealed in those mysteries. For example, we see Jesus taking up the cross in the Fourth Sorrowful Mystery. We know that Jesus fell down repeatedly and yet He always got back up and continued on. We can learn that we all have our “crosses” in life and at times we might fall (either by sin or just lacking faith and spiritual energy). However, to imitate Jesus we must get up and continue working towards His kingdom.
The next time we pray the rosary, let us ask ourselves what each mystery reveals about our own lives. Are we imitating what Jesus did in those mysteries or are we ignoring His teachings and example?
This rosary meditation is on the Fourth Luminous Mystery — The Transfiguration. In this mystery, Jesus took his apostles, Peter, John, and James up to a mountain to pray. There His clothes turned dazzling white and Moses and Elijah appeared with Him. Then a voice came from the clouds saying, “This is my chosen Son; listen to Him.”
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This rosary meditation is on the Fourth Luminous Mystery — The Transfiguration. In this mystery, Jesus took his apostles, Peter, John, and James up to a mountain to pray. There His clothes turned dazzling white and Moses and Elijah appeared with Him. Then a voice came from the clouds saying, “This is my chosen Son; listen to Him.”
In this mystery, Jesus reveals himself as being God made man. This instance separates Jesus from the prophets of the Old Testament. Yes, He performed miracles and preached God’s word, but so did the prophets. The Old Testament is full of stories of people using the grace of God to perform miracles such as Moses parting the Red Sea. But in the Transfiguration, Jesus shows that He is no mere prophet following God’s will, but He IS God’s will, God’s word, and God’s truth in human form. I think this is why Moses and Elijah appeared next to Jesus; as if God was contrasting Himself with the prophets that came before Him.
God, Creator of all that exists and ever will exist, the ultimate truth, our final judge, the alpha and the omega, humbled Himself and came down to earth in a human form so that we may know Him personally. God desires all of us to live in His grace and love and so He became man through Jesus Christ so that we may better understand His ways. Our human minds cannot possibly understand God’s infinite complexity and He knows that. So like an adult trying to explain a complex idea to a child, God revealed Himself in a very simple and direct way — by taking a form which people could see, hear, and touch.
God gave the apostles a very direct command to listen to Jesus. And yet, after all they had seen and heard, they abandoned Jesus at His crucifixion. Unfortunately, we continue to imitate the apostles’ behavior whenever we disobey God’s will and sin. Imagine our arrogance to have received the word of God directly from Jesus and then deliberately disregard it because it conflicts with how we want to live or it seem too difficult. We say we are followers of Christ, but when it comes time to humble ourselves to God’s will and accept Jesus’ teachings we often tell Him, “thanks, but no thanks.” In the Transfiguration, God gave us very simple and direct order on how we are to obtain grace and that is to listen to His son, Jesus Christ. And yet, each one of us can probably think of an instance where we refuse God’s grace through our words, thoughts, or actions.
So let us take a moment to remember the awesome gift God gave us through His son, Jesus Christ. We should remember the gift of the Catholic Church starting with the first pope, St. Peter, who was there at the Transfiguration and later personally appointed by Jesus to lead His people. God told us to listen to Jesus which means we should learn what the Church teaches so that we may know Him, follow Him, and love Him. God gave us a tremendous gift by making Himself more accessible through Jesus. We should pray for all of those who are wasting this precious gift by not following God’s will. We must pray for a world that seems to have gone out of its way NOT to listen to God’s message.
God made Himself available to all of us through Jesus Christ. The question is, do we make ourselves available to God by listening to Him?
Today’s rosary meditation is the second Luminous Mystery — The Miracle at the Wedding at Cana. At a wedding party, Jesus turned water into wine in His first public miracle. This started his ministry of healing the sick, giving site to the blind, and mobility to the paralyzed. There are two main threads that are common to all the Gospels and they are Jesus’ miracles and parables. Why are Jesus’ miracles so critical to his ministry? And, if He could perform all these miraculous deeds, why did He not eliminate everyone’s problems and hardships instantly? Why do we still have sick, blind, and paralyzed people today if it is so easy for the Lord to heal someone?
In order for Jesus’ miracles to have any meaning you must understand the reason behind them. They are not performed for the sole purpose of making peoples’ lives easier. We cannot reduce Jesus to a mere genie who will grant us all our wishes. They are performed in order to increase our faith and open us up to His word. When Jesus gives sight to the blind He does a lot more than just heal one person. The miraculous act is a sign of His divinity and power so that many more will come to recognize him as Christ our king and follow His path. We are like children where His miracles are a way of getting our attention so that we will be more receptive to His message. The miracles are not only for the one who is healed, but also for those who witness them so that our doubt will be transformed into unquestioning faithfulness.
However, Jesus’ asks a lot of those whom He heals. They must make a firm commitment to transform their lives, follow Him, live according to His will, and have faith that He will guide them to His heavenly kingdom. Luke’s Gospel talks of Jesus healing ten leapers. Of that ten only one came back to thank and praise Him at which point Jesus said that his faith made him well. The other nine eventually died, as we all do, so their physical healing was only temporary. But the one who returned to the Lord received more than temporary, physical healing. He received the gift of faith which is the true purpose of the miracle and more important than any physical healing we receive in this life. Ask yourself, would you return and thank Him for His wonderful works? If yes, then ask yourself how many times you have thanked our Lord for the great miracle of a new day? For the miracle of friends? For the miracle of family? Many times we are the nine healed leapers who are given so much and yet we never return to thank the one who provides it all.
Do we pray for miracles for the right reasons? Do we ask for them in order to grow in our relationship with our Lord or do we ask for them just so that our lives will be made easier? We must remember that a miracle that only makes our lives easier is worldly and temporary and will eventually fade away and be replaced by different challenges. Let us remember that God always hears us even when our request for a miracle goes unanswered. God, in His infinite wisdom, knows that many of our requests only serve to make our present lives easier and would not bring us any closer to Him. Like a good parent, He knows when to tell us “no.” Jesus did not come to us to make our lives easier in this world, but rather He came so that we may be with Him for all eternity in our next life. Let us pray this decade that Jesus’ miracles heal our soul, increase our faith, and lead us closer to His love.
