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Our Lady of the Rosary
Hello and welcome to Spend Five with Jesus for this Saturday, October 7th, 2023. I am the friar. I’m happy to be with you today.
Today is the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. And as a Dominican, I simply cannot say enough about the rosary. It is such an important spiritual help to me. I pray it every day. I know many people pray it every day. And it really is an act or a prayer of confidence because we’re asking the Blessed Mother really to pray on our behalf.
That’s what we’re asking. We’re asking that she lead us to her son Jesus, which is really all that Mary wants to do. She wants to lead us into this powerful relationship with Jesus. It was her yes to God, her full and complete yes to God, and this is what she wants us to recognize and to really strive for in our own life is this complete yes to God.
In the first reading today, these are actually the readings of the day. And so we continue with Baruch, who we were introduced to yesterday. And one of the things that I think is important for us maybe that we don’t think enough about is in fact the lessons that we hear from Baruch.
So Baruch is still writing this letter. He is acknowledging the sins of the people. He uses very powerful language in recognizing that God was sinned against, that was rejected. You provoked your maker with sacrifices to demons, to know gods. You forsook the eternal God who nourished you. You grieved Jerusalem who fostered you.
And so it really is this kind of turning back to God. Remember we mentioned yesterday that that cycle of sin, punishment, repentance, return, which was so important for people to recognize. But I want to kind of take this in a little bit of a different direction since this is the Feast of the Holy Rosary.
And that is that if I want to talk about the Dominican habit because you’ll notice that Dominicans, in fact, wear the rosary as part of their habit. And they wear on the left side of their body. Okay, it would be your right if you’re looking at them, but it’s the left side for for me when I’m wearing it.
And the reason for that was because it was it was to mimic or to show forth the way in which someone in the Middle Ages would have worn a sword on that side. And the rosary becomes a tremendous weapon. Now, I don’t mean a weapon to kill people or things like that, but a spiritual weapon to help us to recognize that our lives can be filled with temptations.
They can be filled with so many temptations that want to take us away from God, that want us to reject God, that want us to sin, to do our own thing, not to think about the way in which God has done these wonderful things for us. And then to really recognize, as we see in the Gospel, that this is all part of God’s great promise.
I mean, think about what Jesus is saying. First of all, he is praying for the disciples who have returned because so many wonderful things they have seen, they have witnessed when they were sent out. They see all these things. Jesus says, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky because of the ways in which the 72 disciples accepted the Holy Spirit and preached this word of the Holy Spirit.
And that when we’re in union with the Holy Spirit, we are able to do all kinds of amazing things. And then Jesus reminds us the importance, when we’re in moments like this where things are going well or we see clearly what God is doing, then in fact we have to be grateful.
And that’s what God receives from Jesus. God the Father receives from God the Son. I give you praise, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because those who trust in God like children are the ones who in fact will see these wonderful things.
And then Jesus reminds them that they have seen wonderful things and they should be unbelievably grateful for this because so many people wanted to see the very things that they are seeing in their time with Jesus.
So I would encourage you today to think about a couple of things. One, I think it’s always important to increase prayers of gratitude in your spiritual life. It’s so easy. I find it so easy to forget to thank God for the wonderful and tremendous things that are happening in my life. I’m much more likely to ask God’s help when things aren’t going so well. But not as good at really thanking God when blessings are poured out in my life.
And then secondly, make the rosary a regular part of your life. It is such an easy prayer to learn. It’s such a great way to pray to God. It is a great way to meditate on significant moments of Scripture. Look on on this website, thefriar.org, because there’s a section where you can even listen along and pray as you hear the rosary.
For the traditional rosary, you may have learned the Dominicans have slight differences in the rosary that they pray. And I work in a Lasallian school, so you’ll notice the Lasallians have a different prayer for the rosary altogether, do some other religious communities like the Franciscans. So make the rosary a part of your day. Ask Mary to come deeply into your life so that she may draw you closer to her son, Jesus.
On the friar, you can listen to our homilies (based on the readings of the day) and reflections. You can also ask us to pray for you or to pray for others. You can subscribe to our website to be informed whenever we publish an update.
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