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In this month of October, we honor the Blessed Virgin Mary as Our Lady of the Rosary; we celebrated this feast on October 7.
All of the saints and indeed the Church herself encourage us to pray the Rosary on a daily basis.
We find in this simple and repetitive prayer a profound meditation on the Gospel, as we ponder the mystery of the Incarnation in the Joyful Mysteries, the revealed grace of the Lord’s ministry in the Luminous Mysteries, the overwhelming suffering of Christ’s Passion in the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the triumph of the Resurrection in the Glorious Mysteries.
When we pray the Rosary, we are asking the Blessed Virgin Mary to open the storehouse of her heart and share with us her living experiences of her beloved Son.
Especially in these months of such great challenge, I encourage everyone to pray the Rosary daily, asking for the efficacious intercession of the Mother of God.
Mary is ‘essential’
Mary is an essential part of our salvation, for it is through her that God entered the world in our human nature.
Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Mary conceives the Word of God in her womb in the moment of her consent to the Lord’s plan in the Annunciation.
This young woman, wrapped in silence and mystery, becomes the Mother of God, offering her body as a new, virginal Garden of Eden, where Christ, the new Adam, can enter the world.
How extraordinary!
Mary gives God a human face and body, present in our flesh, born as a vulnerable and fragile baby.
To her is entrusted the King of the Universe to nurture, protect, form, and love.
After such extraordinary events, the hidden years of Nazareth must have seemed ordinary and uneventful.
Yet, even here, the Holy Family teaches us the blessings of marriage, family, work, and the mundane tasks of daily life.
Mary is present at the wedding at Cana; ever observant, she notices that the wine has run out, a potential source of embarrassment for the newly-married couple.
By pointing out the fact to Jesus, an unspoken hope hangs in the air that He will do something about it.
His initial response is one of resistance, yet Mary neither gives up nor confronts her Son directly. She simply tells the stewards, “Do whatever He tells you.”
In that one directive, quietly uttered at a party 2,000 years ago, we have a summation of our Christian discipleship.
By knowing, loving, and listening to Jesus, we come to discern what He asks us to do, and then we have the fundamental choice: to obey the Lord or go our own way.
Mary shows us what that obedience looks like, how much it costs, but most importantly, the great fruit that it will bear unto eternal life.
Other roles of Mary
As Our Lady of Sorrows, Mary stands at the foot of the cross, fully sharing in the Crucifixion of her Son, rooted to that spot of torture, dehumanization, and death.
In the darkest of all days, she remains there as our Mother of compassion and a sentinel of the Resurrection.
Many artistic depictions of the deposition from the cross draw visual parallels between the Lord and His Mother, to express her participation in the mystery of our salvation. Christ is pale in death; Mary is pallid in her sorrow.
Mary holds the dead body of her Son, reminiscent of scenes from His birth.
By sharing in the Passion of Christ, Mary becomes our Mother precisely at the foot of the cross, always loving us through every sorrow and gently leading us to the glory of the Resurrection.
Although the Scriptures do not narrate it, Jesus must have appeared to His Mother on Easter morning.
Certainly, she, to whom the Lord was most profoundly bound, experienced His resurrected and glorified presence.
Significantly, Mary prays with the apostles and the faithful women in the Upper Room in their novena to the Holy Spirit, and is the gathering point for the early Church when the Holy Spirit descends in wind and flame.
How profound that she, who gave birth to the Head in Bethlehem, is present for the birth of the Body in Jerusalem.
Her dual motherhood of both Christ and the Church illustrates the inseparable union of the Lord and His Mystical Body.
Her own Assumption into Heaven, body and soul, illustrates the glorious destiny of every faithful Christian disciple, as we await the fullness of the salvation won for us in Christ.
Mary is the first disciple of the Gospel, daring to place her trust and hope in the promise made to her by Gabriel, birthing, nurturing, and forming the Word made Flesh, instrumental in His first miracle, watching at the foot of the cross in compassionate vigilance and witnessing to the Resurrection and instrumental in the birth of the Church.
In Mary, we discover that the fundamental stance of a Christian disciple is one of radical receptivity.
Mary receives the Word of God and follows the divine will in every single detail of her life thereafter. She surrenders her entire existence to the plan and purpose of God.
When we set the compass of our life to the North Star, who is Christ, every single aspect of our human existence — vocation, prayer, belief, relationships, work, time, money, affections, desires, sufferings, past, present, future — only have value to the extent that they lead us to the Lord and the service of the Gospel.
I entrust this challenging moment we are passing through, as well as all of our evangelizing efforts in our Go Make Disciples initiative to the powerful intercession of the Mother of God.
As she was instrumental in the birthing of both Christ and the Church, so too may she lead us to her Son with the love, faith, and trust she so nobly exemplifies.