On the Most Holy Rosary

Discussion in 'On prayer itself' started by darrell, Sep 19, 2007.

  1. darrell

    darrell New Member

    The Lord has made known his salvation.

    The atheists would have us believe that the Christian religion is based on a fairy tale or a fraud. There are those who suggest that Jesus never even existed—He’s just a myth. That’s a bit hard to swallow considering our calendar is based on Him: this is the year 2007 AD—anno Domini—the year of the Lord. Clearly, something very significant happened 2007 years ago, something that changed the way we keep track of time, and that something was a poor carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth. Without a doubt, He existed, which leaves us with the question: who was this Jesus?

    Some try to say that he was simply a wise teacher or a prophet, and I suppose if all He had left behind were His profound words, that might be possible. But He left behind much more than words. He left behind an empty tomb… He also left behind His Apostles and Disciples who were witnesses to the empty tomb and to His many miracles; they were witnesses to the Resurrected Christ, and these followers of Jesus were persecuted and killed for their testimony. Would they have chosen a road of self-denial and persecution for a myth? Would they have gone to their deaths for a lie or a fraud? Here we have the witnesses—the early Christian martyrs who willingly went to their deaths rather than deny the Truth.

    When I closed Lee Strobel’s book, I knew that this Jesus was either a fraud, or He was and is the Son of God. And I didn’t believe He was a fraud—the evidence didn’t support that. At that point, I would have said I found the Christian faith to be reasonable, but I didn’t want reasonable. I wanted more; I wanted something solid and with substance, something real to grab a hold of, something immovable to stand on. I wanted the fullness of truth. I wanted a rock. I still didn’t know if it was possible to know the truth, but for the first time since Johnny’s death, I began to feel excitement and the stirrings of hope.

    ♦ ♦ ♦


    Christians themselves can be the cause of unbelief. However, they are also the cause for belief; for it is when we see people’s lives changed that we can believe in Jesus. Many are the accounts of those who have encountered the Lord, in near death experiences, in illuminating moments where individuals experience His great love, experiences where God speaks in an audible voice or an interior voice, and these experiences change the individual forever. For the rest of us, and I think this is the majority, we are asked to walk by faith. This is a mystery we cannot fully comprehend because God is God, and we are His creations. Does a sculpture understand the hands that molded it? Is an idea aware of the mind that conceived it? No, but we are more than created things; we are human beings, made in the image of our God, and He loves us. A child in the womb is warm and safe; baby is aware of mother, but this is the limit of its knowing. When baby is born into the world, it comes to know mother in a new way. As the child journeys through life, it grows in knowledge and understanding. So too, just as I respond to each of my children individually, our Father in Heaven gives generously to all who listen for His voice, each according to his or her need. For what man knows God's counsel, or who can conceive what our LORD intends? (Wisdom 9: 13) Just as Jesus promised St. Paul: "My grace is sufficient for you,” (2 Corinthians 12: 9), so too, in our lack of understanding we can trust in the higher purpose of our Father in Heaven.


    In those weeks and months after Johnny was killed, as my heart ached, as my very being cried out in anguish for things to be made right, even as all seemed hopeless to me, God’s grace flowed abundantly. As I read books in search of the truth, as I talked and cried with friends, and with strangers, God lit my path in still other ways.

    I made an appointment to meet with Father Jim, and I shared with him everything I had been going through, including my feelings of guilt. I asked for the Sacrament of Reconciliation, and I made a good and sincere confession; it had been a while. When Father Jim said the words of absolution, I knew in my heart that if there was a God, He had already forgiven me. Looking back, I recognize the grace. It’s like climbing a mountain: as you’re walking, you focus on the path in front of you; but when you stop and turn around, you realize how far you’ve come, and you see things you didn’t see before. Father Jim loaned me a couple of books: Heaven, the Heart’s Deepest Longing by Peter Kreeft, and St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica.

    The sheer size of the Summa Theologica overwhelmed me; I wasn’t ready for it. I came close to setting Kreeft’s book aside as well, because I wasn’t looking for philosophy; I needed something more concrete (as if ideas and reason weren’t real). Except everything Kreeft said made perfect sense. He has a way of stating things in a very down-to-earth way, and at the same time, his writing is so deep and rich that, for me anyway, I have to work my way through it. Usually, I have to read it two or three times before I’ve got a handle on it. Kreeft became one of my favorite authors. This passage in Heaven, the Heart’s Deepest Longing was an epiphany for me:

    "There is a very old wisdom, quite out of fashion today, that says we are not supposedto be happy here. In fact no one is really happy here, and the “pursuit of happiness”, which the American Declaration of Independence declares one of our “inalienable rights”, is in fact the surest and silliest way to unhappiness. This is not a wisdom we like to hear, and for that reason we had better give it extra hearing. It is a wisdom not just from the past, but also from within, from the soft spot in us that we cover up with our hard surface, from the vulnerable little child in us that we mask with our invulnerable adult. Our adult pretends to want pleasure, power, wealth, health or success, then gets it, then pretends to be happy. But our child knows what we want—and, as children, we know we don’t have it. Romanticists are wrong: children are not happy. They are too honest with themselves for that illusion…
    No one is really happy…it is precisely when life treats us best that the deepest dissatisfaction arises…That’s why rich and powerful modernity is not happier than previous cultures...
    Our greatest bitterness comes not only in the sham sweetness of riches and power but also in the middle of our truest earthly sweetness: hearing a symphony, seeing a sunset, complete sexual love. It is highest life that sets us longing for something more than this life."


    Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Christ, had such an impact on me that I bought the sequel. In The Case for Faith, Strobel used the same format of interviewing various experts to address some of the biggest and most common objections to Christianity: suffering, evil, evolution, etc. Interestingly, the first person interviewed in this book was Peter Kreeft! All my doubts and questions disappeared as I read, and by the end, I was left with only one major hurdle to belief—the seeming hiddeness of God.

    Why would our Father remain out of sight of His children? Why would our Creator remain hidden from His Creation? The Christian answer seemed almost cryptic, a clever invention: while it makes sense (because it’s true), “free will” didn’t fully satisfy. After all, an all-knowing God knows that in my heart I will follow Him if only I can know that He is real. And yet He asks us to believe and to follow Him.

    One day in the middle of all this turmoil, my friend Laura Kinney called me on the phone. I thought back to the day of Johnny’s funeral: after the Mass, there came a moment to myself; I looked around the church and spotted Laura sitting alone by the baptismal font. Our eyes met, and she smiled and walked over to me. She told me that a day would come when everyone else had gone and I would be all alone and would need a friend, and she told me to call her when that day came. I hadn’t remembered to call Laura, but she remembered to call me. I don’t recall much of our conversation that day, but what really struck me was the timing of her call: it came just as all seemed hopeless to me. Laura also spoke of the hand of God and the face of God, but her words didn’t make sense to me at the time.

    As I’ve been reflecting on all this and trying to put it together in a coherent way, I recently pulled another book by Peter Kreeft off the shelf, Three Philosophies of Life. I began reading his commentary on the book of Job, and only now made sense of Laura’s words about the face of God. Kreeft explains that the thing Job longed for most, the thing we all long for most, even if it means death, is to see God’s face:

    "Saint Augustine, in his sermon “On the Pure Love of God”, imagines God coming to you with a question similar to the one he asked Saint Thomas. The point is a kind of self-test to find out whether you have “the pure love of God”, that is, whether you are obeying the first and greatest commandment, to love God with your whole heart and soul, in that deep, obscure center of your being where your “fundamental option” decides your eternal destiny. Augustine supposes that God proposed to you a deal and said, “I will give you anything you want. You can possess the whole world. Nothing will be impossible for you. You will have infinite power. Nothing will be a sin, nothing forbidden. You will never die, never have pain, never have anything you do not want and always have anything you do want—except for just one thing: you will never see my face.” Would you take that deal? If not, you have the pure love of God. For look what you just did: you gave up the world, and more—all possible worlds, all imagined worlds, all desired worlds—just for God. Augustine asks, “Did a chill arise in your heart when you heard the words ‘you will never see my face’?” That chill is the most precious thing in you; that is the pure love of God."


    Just this morning, as I was praying, I thought of a “black hole”, a star so dense that it has collapsed on itself. The gravitational pull is so strong that not even light can escape it, and we can’t see the collapsed star; all we can see is a void. But just because all we can see is darkness, doesn’t mean there’s nothing there. On the contrary, the mass is so dense and great that nothing can escape its pull, not even light; everything is drawn to it. When we look beyond the event horizon (the boundary of the black hole—the point, a distance from the center, at which the force of gravity no longer overpowers light), we again see stars. The farther from the black hole, the more scattered the stars, and as we get closer to the black hole, the number and closeness of the stars becomes greater and greater. The effect is that all the heavenly bodies appear to point to a dark void.

    Spiritually speaking, this was the point I had come to: I seemed to be staring at a dark void, a God I couldn’t see. Yet everything appeared to be pointing to a God who was very real. I had done everything I could to find the truth, examined all the evidence, and the facts supported that there was a God, that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Truth. It seemed there was nothing more I could do to know the truth of our existence in this life; I was left with a Mystery (of course. After all, God is God, and I am just a man.) And this left me with a choice. I could choose to go on not believing in anything, which would be to choose despair, because I understood that if there was no God, then there were no absolute truths, no right and wrong, and no justice; it was all relative. If the atheists were right, when we died that was it, and whether or not we had a “good” life depended largely on the circumstances we’re born into—pure chance. I knew that in the Christian view, even in a life of nothing but suffering, there was hope in eternity. As Peter Kreeft said, “The point of our lives in this world isn’t comfort, but training and preparation for eternity.” I realized that to believe in anything other than the promise of Christianity meant there was no hope.

    "The goal of this life is to live with God forever."
    --St. Ignatius Loyola

    “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
    --St. Augustine

    God made me to know Him, love Him and serve Him in this world, and be happy with Him forever in the next.
    --BASIC CATECHISM OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

    Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen.
    --Hebrews 11: 1
    I decided that seeing wasn’t believing. I decided that faith was the only choice that made any sense. I chose God, and decided to start getting to know my Father in Heaven, and His Son, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Right then and there, I told Jesus that up until that point, I had lived my life for myself; I was going to live the rest of it for Him. And I meant it. I was His. For the first time since Johnny’s death, I felt hope.

    At the time, I would have said my decision was purely rational (and Faith is rational. Nothing makes more sense). Again, looking back, I see so much grace: in the emails from strangers, in the phone call from a friend at my darkest hour, in coming across a passage just as I’m reflecting on that very topic, in a friend telling me of a dream just as I cry for help, in the people who have come into my life, and in the words of the daily scripture readings. Holy Spirit speaks! The skeptics can dismiss it all as coincidence. “For those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, no explanation will suffice." (Joseph Dunninger) Just as the stars in the heavens point to the seeming void of a black hole, so too I see all these things pointing to a very real God. I see His hand everywhere.

    I met with Father Jim several times before he was reassigned to another parish. On our last visit, I said something about figuring out what God wanted me to do with my life. “What do you think God wants you to do?” he asked.

    “I don’t know… Observe the sacraments, try to live a good life and do what’s right the best I can.”

    Father Jim smiled.

    Who Has Seen the Wind?
    Christina Rossetti

    Who has seen the wind?
    Neither I nor you:
    But when the leaves hang trembling
    The wind is passing thro'.
    Who has seen the wind?
    Neither you nor I:
    But when the trees bow down their heads
    The wind is passing by.


    Blessed be the Lord, for he has heard my prayer. Alleluia!
     
  2. Mario

    Mario Powers

    Darrell,

    I believe this was one of your best posts ever. In fact, I was unwilling to shrink it down to this one passage; there were many gold nuggets. This week, I gave a religion lesson to my 13-yr-old, Therese. The focus of discussion was 1Pet 2:9-10:

    ...declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were no people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

    I told Therese that the truth of our Faith remains cold facts until we know ourselves to be rescued:

    from darkness.....................to light
    from isolation......................to belonging
    from condemnation..............to mercy

    Now I see even more clearly that the Beatific Vision is the pearl of great price!

    1John 3:2 Beloved, we are God's children now; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

    Thank you!

    In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
     
  3. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Hi Darrell. thank you for your post. I am sorry, it was only after you posted I realised I had forgotten to put up the section for Inspirational Stories.

    I hope, eventually you get this all published for I think it very much speaks to the heart of modern western man. I think in a real way your son Johnny has opened the doors of heaven for you by going there first. God writes straight in crooked lines, as they say.
     
  4. darrell

    darrell New Member

    For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
    --John 3: 16 (King James Version)

    I read somewhere that John 3: 16 is the most often quoted scripture (it was the first one I committed to memory as a boy). I think this is because, more than any other scripture, in a single sentence it states what is required to be a Christian: if we wish to have eternal life, all we must do is to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Son of God, that the Divine became human, that He was born, lived, gave Himself over to death and rose from the grave that we might be saved. This leaves us with a very important question: what does it mean to believe? Some Christians maintain that it simply means to believe it is true, nothing more, and if they make this profession, no matter what they do for the rest of their lives, they will go straight to Heaven when they die. However, actions speak louder than words—to believe means to act.

    Once, a famous tightrope walker walked a tightrope across Niagara Falls and back again. The crowd cheered. Then he asked the crowd if they believed he could walk across pushing a wheelbarrow. “Yes! Yes!” the crowd shouted. So he pushed the wheelbarrow across the falls and back again, and the crowd cheered. Next, he asked the crowd if they believed he could walk across pushing the wheelbarrow with a person in it. “Yes! Yes! We believe you can do it!” the people shouted. Then the man asked for a volunteer to get in the wheelbarrow, and the crowd grew silent…

    Very clearly, to really believe means to act.

    There’s a purpose to all this we go through in this life (otherwise God wouldn’t ask us to go through it—He could have created us in Heaven to begin with like the angels). So this doctrine of “Faith alone” is lacking in individual accountability. When the Apostle John said “believe”, he wasn’t talking about “lip service”; he was saying we need to “walk the walk”, because if we truly believe , we are called to live a certain way and to follow a different path; we are called to holiness; we are called to be disciples. To believe means to step forward in faith, hope and charity.

    Faith is the theological virtue by which we believe in God and believe all that he has said and revealed to us, and that Holy Church proposes for our belief, because he is truth itself. By faith “man freely commits his entire self to God.” For this reason, the believer seeks to know and do God’s will. “The righteous shall live by faith.” Living faith “work through charity.”
    --Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1814


    ♦ ♦ ♦

    One day not too long after my decision to follow Jesus, I was sitting in our home office in front of the computer when God revealed something of myself to me. I looked over at the wall which was covered entirely with my cycling awards, plaques and medals, and I suddenly realized what a selfish endeavor my bike racing had been. That trophy-covered wall was really “Darrell’s Wall of Glory”; it was all about me. I saw how cycling had become more important to me than anything, how at times I had even resented my own family for taking time away from my riding. Bike racing had become an idol for me. I went out to the garage for a box, took everything down off that wall, and packed it away. Father Jim had told me to pray before a crucifix, and so I started hanging crosses on that wall. I gave cycling to Jesus that day. I told Him that I would never race again unless He told me to, and other than to cruise around the neighborhood with the kids, I haven’t ridden the bike since.

    Later on, I came to understand that even though at the time, my efforts had been for my own personal glorification, I could still give it all to Jesus. God is omnipresent; He exists throughout time all at once; He is not constrained by time (He is not constrained by anything!). The Lord can take our offerings, all the prayers ever prayed throughout all of time, and He can place them anywhere and anytime He wants. The God who was, and is, and ever shall be, can take a prayer prayed today and apply it to today, to the future, or to the past!

    Lord, I cannot see your face, but I recognize your awesomeness in the wonder of your creation, in the peace you give to my heart, in the understanding that is beyond words, in all the little graces which I did not deserve, but which you have so generously given. I see you guiding me in these words I’ve been writing, in all your promptings, in the words of the sacred scriptures, through the people you bring into my life, and in ways I know I do not even recognize. O Lord, I was a selfish and egotistical man, but you have been merciful to me in my unbelief. For most of my adult life, I went my own way, and now I offer it all to you, my Lord, and my God. I offer every race, every mile ridden, all the crashes, the road rash, jammed fingers and bruised kidneys, the dehydration and heat stroke, all the sweat and pain, every effort that I made for myself, I now offer to you, my God, for your glory. Please accept my offering, O my King, that it may glorify you. Let my life glorify you, O Lord.
    In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
    Amen.

    Now that I had chosen to believe , that left me wondering what that meant for the rest of my life. For most of fifteen years, I had pursued my own dreams; but I had given up the “Church of the Bike” for Jesus, and I was serious. For all those years I had dedicated myself to becoming some kind of cycling superstar (with very limited results), but now I was on a different path and determined to be a disciple. I just needed to understand what that meant exactly; that’s what I was saying when I told Father Jim I needed to figure out what God wanted me to do with my life. All those years, I had driven myself, sweated, gone without sleep and suffered unbelievably, all for my own selfish glory. If I was sincere about following Jesus, how could I not give Him that same level of effort?
     
  5. padraig

    padraig Powers

    I'm impressed Darrellyou remind me of someone who had to battle his way to the truth.
     
  6. Mario

    Mario Powers

    Inverse operation.

    Darrell,

    What a marvelous opportunity for you!

    When Geralyn instructed our Danny about the four operations of arithmetic, he learned that division and multiplication are inverse operations; for instance, a missing factor of a product in a mutiplication problem can be determined by dividing the product by the known factor.

    In the spiritual life, the core sin in our natural life "before" Christ can be transformed by grace to become a supernatural asset in the hands of the Lord after each of us surrenders to Him. Before his encounter on the road to Damascaus, Saul was driven to destroy the Faith in its infancy. Afterwards, Paul was still driven, but only to lead souls to Christ.

    When you set aside your trophies, you became free in the Lord to use your finely-tuned disciplines to serve no longer your ego, but God's glory. Though I'm sure you'll protest that you've a long way to go, still, what a wonderful asset in the hands of Jesus!

    God's inverse operation! Alleluia!

    1Cor 15:9-10 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am...

    In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
     
  7. darrell

    darrell New Member

    Now that you know the story of the person I used to be and how I was brought to my knees and came to have faith, now we can return to the praying of our Rosary. First, let me state very clearly that I make no claim to being any great expert on prayer, for I know that there are many souls who have been praying much longer than I, and with much greater fervency and devotion. I don’t even know if the way I pray is the right way, but I do know that the Lord sees not as we see: He looks into our hearts. When it comes to prayer, think of me as that person in the choir with a horrible voice and who cannot carry a tune, but who loves to sing praises to God. I offer these meditations, not claiming to possess any great insights, but rather to share how reflecting on these Mysteries helped me at a time when I was still in much sorrow. If I have any little understanding, it is only by the grace of God, and to Him I give all honor and glory.

    Praise You Father! Praise You Jesus! Praise You O Most Holy Spirit!


    My initial feelings upon choosing to live by faith were of great hope and joy. God exists! Life has meaning and a purpose! There is more than this earthly life, and if we respond sincerely to the grace of God, we have the hope of eternity in Heaven!From out of the midst of anguish over the death of my son, my newfound belief gave me peace and understanding. Life made sense again. However, my grief remained. My faith gave me hope, but it lay somewhere in the future, some day an unknown distance ahead when after my death, I would leave this earth and forever be with God and those who had gone before. I really didn’t think that I would ever be happy again in this life as God didn’t take away all my pain, anger and sorrow, at least not all at once, but I had made peace with that.

    God doesn’t always change people all at once; sometimes He allows us to suffer for a while, and there’s a reason. Suffering can be redemptive; suffering can be purgative; suffering can bring us closer to God.

    In those days when I was learning to pray the Rosary, after working all night, I would go to the morning Mass and then home to bed. Rising about six hours later, I took my Rosary in hand and walked. At the time we lived in a house in an older neighborhood without any beautifully landscaped green belts or parks, and my route took me along a canal which ran through what basically compared to an unkempt alleyway. A block wall, cracked and broken in places, ran along the north side and was littered with piles of rubble, tree trimmings and other junk thoughtlessly dumped there. I remember an old bicycle frame and a grocery cart had been discarded in the canal itself. Little clouds of ancient, stale dust rose around my feet as I walked along. Everything was dirty and ugly.

    I remember one evening in those days arriving for work and seeing the most incredible sunset. I stood in the parking lot looking at it and realizing how incredibly beautiful it was, but it gave me no joy. A friend pointed out that at least I was still able to recognize the beauty, even if I wasn’t yet at a place where I could enjoy it.

    I suppose you could compare my spiritual state at that time to a man wandering in the desert without water. Parched, he stumbles upon a nearly empty spring, and the few meager sips of water provide him with incredible relief and give him hope—one might even call it joy. But then the man looks out at the vast stretch of desolate miles still to be crossed, and already his throat becomes dry as he contemplates the trek ahead.

    Joy seemed to me to be a thing of the past, and like the man wandering in the desert, the remainder of my life appeared to be an arduous path of sorrow. I had determined to undertake the journey—to know God and do His will—and my heart ached for God. A newborn baby hears mother and father talking, and in its desire to communicate, baby cries out, “Gah-gah!” So too our hearts cry out for our Father in Heaven. I really didn’t know what I was doing, but I understood prayer to be communication. The problem was in my past experience prayer always seemed to be a one-way conversation: I had sent up my selfish, juvenile requests, and I had never seemed to get an answer.

    In order for real communication to occur, we must listen.

    The Rosary is a meditative form of prayer in which we reflect on the life of Jesus and the meaning it has for us in today’s world. For many months, I prayed only the Sorrowful Mysteries; as time went on, I came to understand that no one would ever see the light of Jesus in me if all they saw was pain and sorrow; I came to realize that God in fact wanted to heal my heart, to erase the pain, suffering and disappointment and bring joy back into my life, if only I would choose to let Him. But that came later, and so for many months I walked and listened to what the Spirit had to say to me through the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. My walks lasted typically three to five miles, and I went along in silence, reflecting on each mystery. I did not begin to say the prayers of each decade until I came to some small understanding of the Mystery, and sometimes I walked as much as two miles before I felt the Spirit speaking to my heart. I didn’t know if this was the right way or wrong way, but it’s the way I did it.

    The other night, I came across this passage in the Apostolic Letter,On the Most Holy Rosary:
    Listening and meditation are nourished by silence. After the announcement of the mystery and the proclamation of the word, it is fitting to pause and focus one’s attention for a suitable period of time on the mystery concerned, before moving into vocal prayer. A discovery of the importance of silence is one of the secrets of practicing contemplation and meditation. One drawback of a society dominated by technology and the mass media is the fact that silence becomes increasingly difficult to achieve. Just as moments of silence are recommended in the liturgy, so too in the recitation of the Rosary it is fitting to pause briefly after listening to the word of God, while the mind focuses on the content of a particular mystery.
    --Pope John Paul II

    Darrell
     
  8. maryrose

    maryrose Powers

    Darrell,
    I jus read all this thread from the top and it is really inspirational. I am looking forward to hearing more of your journey.
    Mary
     
  9. Mario

    Mario Powers

    On the road.

    Darrell,

    You said: I had determined to undertake the journey—to know God and do His will—and my heart ached for God.

    That ache was so precious to God! He didn't even send an angel to correct you on the right way to pray! Imagine that: desire and love trumps the correct form! How wonderful is the gentle and tender love of Our Lady!

    Forever in the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
     
  10. padraig

    padraig Powers

    I didn't know there was an Apostolic Letter on the rosary, Darrell, you don't have a link, do you? :shock: :eek:
     
  11. darrell

    darrell New Member

  12. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Excellent. I had no idea so many Popes wrote on the rosary,
     
  13. darrell

    darrell New Member

    The Sorrowful Mysteries

    Then you shall call, and the LORD will answer, you shall cry for help, and he will say: Here I am! If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; If you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; Then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday; Then the LORD will guide you always and give you plenty even on the parched land…

    …He will renew your strength, and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring whose water never fails.
    --Isaiah 58: 9-11

    The First Sorrowful Mystery: The Agony in the Garden

    Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." He took along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to feel sorrow and distress. Then he said to them, "My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch with me." He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will." When he returned to his disciples he found them asleep. He said to Peter, "So you could not keep watch with me for one hour? Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." Withdrawing a second time, he prayed again, "My Father, if it is not possible that this cup pass without my drinking it, your will be done!" Then he returned once more and found them asleep, for they could not keep their eyes open. He left them and withdrew again and prayed a third time, saying the same thing again. Then he returned to his disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Behold, the hour is at hand when the Son of Man is to be handed over to sinners. Get up, let us go. Look, my betrayer is at hand."
    --Matthew 26: 36-46


    Speak Lord, for your servant is listening…

    What was Jesus’ agony? What made Him sorrowful… even unto death? Jesus knew His hour had come, that He would be betrayed, unjustly condemned, beaten, scourged, mocked and humiliated, tortured and executed. The Church teaches us that Jesus was fully God and fully man, and in His humanity, His body rebelled against the suffering to come. He told the three Apostles with Him, "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak."

    Many times in my own walk of conversion, I have confessed certain sins and resolved “to go and sin no more.” And yet over and over again I have stumbled and committed the same offense. It is only by the grace of God that any of us will ever overcome our weaknesses. Jesus, He who was strong, knew our weakness. He who had never sinned bore our sin. His Spirit willed to take on the separation caused by our sin, that He might reconcile Himself to us. We were, and are, His passion.

    ♦ ♦ ♦

    As I walked along that canal, my heart full of grief, my very being cried out, “Why? Why? Why did my beautiful little son have to die?” Initially, for the most part, I focused on my own pain and sorrow—self-centered navel gazing. Only after I began to look outward did I recognize that no one had cornered the market on pain and suffering in this fallen world, and I began to consider the suffering of others.

    One young woman very close to me was pregnant with her first child when her husband beat her and killed the baby; now she can never have children and suffers with a number of illnesses. I learned of a man whose wife and all his children had been killed in a car accident; I could only imagine the pain he must have been going through. Another friend had two children with a form of blood cancer. The world was full of people who lied and cheated each other, who neglected, used, abused and killed each other. Wars were being fought, and people were being slaughtered for the sake of wealth and power. In my own country many people were living extravagant and decadent lives while in other parts of the world children starved to death. Suffering and injustice was everywhere.

    Why? Why must there be so much pain? How could God bear so much suffering in the world? And I realized that He did bear it…that was His real agony in the garden. He saw the suffering of every man, woman and child throughout all of time, all the sorrow and injustice, the separation caused by our sins... He saw every bit of it and prepared to take it all upon Himself.

    He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground.
    --Luke 22: 44

    I came to understand that all of us brought suffering into the world through our selfish choices and actions, and that night in the garden, Jesus, the Word Became Flesh, prepared to take all of it upon Himself; God who is love prepared to give all of Himself, to empty Himself on the cross. In His humanity, His body rebelled against the suffering; His sweat became like blood, and three times He prayed fervently, "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will." In His humanity, Jesus did not want to suffer, but God’s response to our selfishness was total sacrifice—selflessness… Love.

    It was not the will of the Father to let the cup of suffering pass from His Son, and so Jesus chose the cross. If Jesus was willing to suffer for me, I determined to accept my own cross, and I continued to walk.

    Lord Jesus, we know that the flesh of this weak body will die. Give us a spirit willing to say to our Father, “Thy will be done,” that we may have eternal life.

    The hour approaches, and Jesus calls us: “Get up, let us go.” And like Jesus taught us, let us pray fervently.

    Our Father, who art in Heaven…

    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…

    Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, a world without end. Amen.

    O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy Mercy.

    Our Lady, Queen of Peace, Pray for us!
     
  14. Mario

    Mario Powers

    Gracias!

    Darrell,

    I used your insightful post for my meditation this morning. Thanks!

    You'll appreciate this: as I was contemplating the Garden scene, I dozed off! :lol: I guess it was too early in the morning.

    In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
     
  15. darrell

    darrell New Member

    Who would believe what we have heard? To whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? He grew up like a sapling before him, like a shoot from the parched earth…

    …There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, while we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole…
    --Isaiah 53: 1-5
     
  16. Mario

    Mario Powers

    Imitation of Christ.

    Darrell,

    What a profound description of our Savior. This passage and your previous one from the Gospel of Matthew can be very instructive in grasping Ignatian spirituality of which I am familiar. One particular goal St. Ignatius pursued was that of holiness: conforming to the will of God through the conquering of self. To that end, a Christian must cultivate a relationship with Jesus and depend upon grace to uproot his core sin. Ignatius identified three: pride, vanity, and sensuality.

    The gospels reveal how Jesus dealt with these three temptations, especially during his Passion. Pride is the elevation of oneself, one's ideas, and one's abilities. In the Garden, Christ reveals that humble submission is the path to be taken to demolish pride. To step aside and let the other have their way is to follow Christ's example. "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will."

    Vanity is bowing down to human respect, allowing what others think about us to govern our decisions. This is why so many follow the crowd. Those who do so would never allow themselves to be put in the position Jesus did: …There was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, one of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem.

    Finally, there is the sin of sensuality. Persons who succomb to this are minimalists, always looking for the easiest way out, they are very self-indulgent. No pain, no gain is anathema to them; suffering is abhorrent! Jesus never backpedaled from suffering and pain: He was in such agony and he prayed so fervently that his sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground. --Luke 22: 44 Two scenes from The Passion of Christ come to mind, (1) when Jesus stands up to indicate he is willing to endure more scourging, and (2) when he embraced the Cross thrust upon him.

    All of this he did in submission to the Father and out of love for us! What a marvelous example to emulate! What a manly Commander-in-Chief to follow!

    In the Hearts of Jesus and Mary!
     
  17. darrell

    darrell New Member

    Thanks Terry for you insightful feedback. Yes I like that scene in The Passion of the Christ and when the man asks Jesus, "You fool, why do you embrace your cross?"

    Therein lies our treasure...

    God willing I will have a meditation on the Second Sorrowful Mystery in a few days.

    Darrell
     
  18. darrell

    darrell New Member

    The Second Sorrowful Mystery: Jesus is Scourged

    Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged.
    --John 19: 1

    …by his stripes we were healed.
    --Isaiah 53: 5

    Speak Lord, for your servant is listening…


    No crucifix I’ve ever seen, even ones that had blood flowing from the wounds of the corpus, came close to portraying what our Lord must have really looked like. A Roman scourging was a brutal thing, and as I walked and prayed, in my mind I imagined Jesus hanging by chains from a pillar, the Roman soldiers beating him. First they struck Him with rods which raised welts all over His body and limbs. Next they flogged him with the flagrum, a whip of leather strands with lead tips embedded with broken glass and nails. This scourging literally shredded the skin and flesh. “Even as many were amazed at him—so marred was his look beyond that of a man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals” (Isaiah 52: 14).I thought of the men who tortured our Lord: what kind of men could do such a thing? Surely they weren’t simply solders following orders, for there are some things no right-minded person could do…

    ♦ ♦ ♦

    In first grade, the other children and I waited for the school bus down the street from my house. When we arrived in the mornings, we placed our book bags and lunch boxes in a line on the sidewalk—the first kid to arrive was first in line, the second to arrive was behind the first, and so on—each thus securing his or her place in line. Then we went off to play until we heard the bus coming at which point we all rushed back to take our respective place in line and then board the bus.

    One morning, I arrived early and was very excited to be in the number two spot. A short time later a friend arrived and we went off to pursue the business of six-year-old boys. When we heard the bus coming, we ran back eager to claim our positions near the front, but when we got there I was shocked to find that an older and much larger boy had tossed my things aside and stolen my place! I collected my books and lunchbox and tried to reclaim my spot in line, but the bigger boy easily shoved me aside. Dejected, I went to the back of the line, and on boarding the bus complained to the driver. Her response was, “All I saw was you trying to cut in line.” I tried to explain and plead my case, but she was indifferent to the injustice…

    That incident at the bus stop was my first encounter with a bully, and I hesitated to include such a small and childish concern while reflecting on the Passion of Our Lord… I’ve always had a strong sense of right and wrong and have always been outraged by injustice, and I wondered if this wasn’t related to these early experiences in my life. I encountered many more bullies growing up—I’ve been ganged up on by street thugs and robbed at knife point, and I’ve seen a lot of injustice in my life. Seeing others picked on or treated unfairly became a sore point for me. There were times I even fantasized about getting revenge on some of the bullies who tormented me. Even now, whenever I encounter rude, insulting or mean behavior, I tend to want to confront. I tell myself it is to stand up for what is right, but I recognize on some level that child who was pushed and pushed back. I learned to consider my own reactions as well as consequences to others before acting, but I confess there have been many times my emotions have gotten the better of me. The Serenity Prayer comes to mind:

    Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
    Amen.

    I never carried through with seeking revenge on any of the bullies from my past, but there were those who did. In April of 1999, two tormented teenage boys went on a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing thirteen people and wounding twenty-four others. It was reported the boys were targets of bullies; however, they were also involved with violent computer games and satanic music. What turned these boys into killers? Exactly one month later, another troubled teenager shot and wounded six people at Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia. Then, eight years later, the deadliest school massacre in history happened when a disturbed young man killed thirty-three people at Virginia Tech University, close to where I went to high school. Shooting sprees appear to be escalating in frequency and number; already, less than two months into 2008, there have been five school shootings in the United States. In addition to these school shootings, just two weeks ago, a Missouri gunman killed five people at a city-hall council meeting. The most recent shooting happened just last week at Northern Illinois University and left another five people dead. What’s going on? What has caused people to lose sight of the sacredness of life? Clearly something has gone terribly wrong with our society.

    ♦ ♦ ♦

    “What’s wrong with the world? What’s wrong with people?” These were the questions my heart screamed out as I walked along that canal, as I pictured the scourging in my mind, as I tried to understand the men who had held those flagrums. In her visions, Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich described the torturers as malefactors: “They resembled wild beasts or demons.” But they were men, and just like those young men who wounded and killed at Columbine and Virginia Tech, they were once children. Where did they go wrong? What happened to them that caused them to become as wild beasts or demons? What was missing in their lives that made them lose their right minds?

    Jesus was missing from their lives. Love was missing…

    As I walked and prayed, I understood that it was our sin that scourged Jesus. It was our selfishness and disobedience that separated us from God and from each other. We all of us were responsible to some extent; we all of us scourge Jesus. The good God has given us a beautiful creation and each other, and He asks us to love each other and take care of each other; but in desire for wealth and power, people and the environment are exploited; men use and abuse each other. Carelessness and a lack of concern for others are whips that sting. Indifference and ruthlessness lash and rip flesh. All of these things that we do to each other, that separate us from each other, that wound each other—the indifference, ruthlessness, carelessness and thoughtlessness, the meanness, maliciousness, cruelty, and outright sadism—all these ways that we wound each other, these were the lashes that shredded Jesus’ flesh. Our wounds were, and are, His wounds.


    Lord Jesus, give us a heart like Yours, a heart that loves, a heart that desires not the things of this world, but a selfless heart, a heart willing to endure and to give everything. Lord Jesus, heal our wounds by your stripes.

    Our Father, who art in Heaven…

    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…

    Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, a world without end. Amen.

    O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy Mercy.

    Our Lady, Refuge of Sinners, Pray for us!
    Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich, Pray for Us!
    [/i]
     
  19. padraig

    padraig Powers

    Thanks Darrell, I always think when I read accounts like yours that bear on the Passion that I am not at the beginning of the beginning of the beginning of a glimmer of understanding of what it all meant ; and this always makes me feel guilty. I struggle with the Sorrowful mysteries, like someone drowning in a sea of tears. :(
     
  20. darrell

    darrell New Member

    The Third Sorrowful Mystery: The Crown of Thorns

    And the soldiers wove a crown of thorns and placed it on his head, and clothed him in a purple cloak, and they came to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck him repeatedly.
    --John 19: 3, 4



    Speak Lord, for your servant is listening…


    Here in the south-central desert of Arizona, a great many of the plants have thorns on them. We have quite a few bougainvilleas around our yard, and every year when it’s time to cut them back, I usually get stuck a few times. Those thorns really sting. Picture the big, tangled bird’s nest of thorns the soldiers shoved onto our Lord’s head, and imagine how it must have stung—scalp wounds tend to bleed a lot so the blood must have trickled down His face and into His eyes and matted His hair. As I reflected on this mystery, on the mocking and beating of our Lord by the cruel soldiers, it occurred to me that the crown of thorns was everything that’s wrong with this world; the thorns are the disorder resulting from the fall from grace.

    To the man he said: "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat, "Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; for you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return" (Genesis 3: 17-19).

    When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, all of God’s children, all of us paid a terrible price: the ground brought forth thorns. Sweat, toil, pain, suffering and injustice became the rule of this fallen world. Death came into the world; “to dirt you shall return”. That first sin forever changed the perfection and order of God’s original creation, and our first parents were cast out of the Garden of Eden. The very fabric of nature was rearranged, and entropy (disorder) came into existence: the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the universe is moving from a state of order to a state of disorder. The world became terribly wrong.

    There’s a scene in the movie Grand Canyon that illustrates this wrongness really well. Two middle-aged friends are sitting in the Coliseum, not the Coliseum in ancient Rome where so many were sacrificed in blood sport, but the modern Coliseum in California where men worshipped twentieth-century idols. We see the first man, his beautiful and much younger girlfriend at his side, totally focused on the game and thoroughly enjoying the excitement of the moment. The first man’s friend does not seem to be as thrilled with the spectacle, and this second man does not watch the game so closely. He looks around at the crowd, at the cheerleaders and at the beautiful young women seated in the first rows courtside. We sense a certain disquiet about this second man; perhaps his life has not turned out the way he had planned…

    After the game, the two friends say farewell. The first man and his beautiful, young girlfriend leave in his sports car, a type afforded only by the extremely wealthy. The second man heads home in his luxury sedan, but before long, he’s stuck in traffic. In no mood to inch along in a traffic jam, at the first opportunity, he turns off onto a side street. He gets turned around and finds himself in an unknown part of town, not a good part. Suddenly, his car breaks down. He tries to call for help on his mobile phone, but it quits working too. Was this string of unfortunate events simply bad luck in a disordered world?

    The man calls for assistance from a pay phone at a local store, then returns to his disabled vehicle. As he waits nervously for help to arrive, a car full of gang bangers pulls up. The thugs begin to harass the man, and it looks as if they will not be content to just rob him, but intend to do him violence. Just when it looks like it’s the end for the man, a tow truck pulls up, and the driver gets out and begins hooking up the man’s car. Incredulous, the gang leader asks him what he thinks he’s doing, and the tow-truck driver replies, “I’m just doing my job.” The gang leader and tow-truck driver negotiate, and unbelievably, the gang leader agrees to let the man go unharmed, not out of any true sense of charity on the gang leader’s part, but rather to demonstrate his power. Was the timely arrival of the tow truck purely a fortunate turn of luck? Or Providence?

    Later, at the garage, the tow-truck driver and the man he saved discuss what has happened. The tow-truck driver says, “It’s not supposed to be this way.” It’s not supposed to be this way. The world is not supposed to be this way! All of the bad things that happen in our lives, all of the ways that we hurt each other, all the disorder: It’s not supposed to be this way.

    I’ve been reflecting on all the disorder in this fallen world. We see this trend to disorder in nature. For example, we had our back yard landscaped a few years ago, and it was beautiful; but I’ve had to work hard to maintain order. It wasn’t long before gophers began wreaking havoc on my drip system, and every year after the winter rains, the weeds invade and begin to overwhelm. The world is hostile to us: Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you. Thorns prick; insects pester; spiders and scorpions bite and sting. Even something as seemingly benign as a paper cut could be infected by deadly bacteria and lead to shock and even death. The desert where I live can be beautiful when seen from an air-conditioned car, but exposure to the elements in the summer without water for more than a few hours can quickly turn into a survival situation.

    Nature brings forth disorder in much more powerful and destructive ways. Excessive rain, drought or hailstones can destroy crops. In a matter of seconds, a landslide can wash away a road that took months or years to build. Floods, tornados, volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and hurricanes destroy homes, communities and even entire regions. We struggle against the very planet we live on. In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you. By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; for you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.

    Then there are the things we do to each other. On our roadways, impaired, aggressive, hostile, or simply careless and indifferent drivers take innocent lives. Parents kill their own unborn children and call it a “choice”, and we wonder why our kids bring guns to school and kill each other. Recently, I read that restaurants in China are serving fetal soup! Just in the past month, I’ve learned of other ways we wound each other in these times. I read of bands of youths roaming the streets terrorizing people. Just for kicks, these gangs jump unsuspecting victims and beat them. They call it “happy slapping” – random violence for its own sake.

    I was shocked to learn that the human slave trade still flourishes in the twenty-first century. Every year, millions of people are transported across international borders against their will. Hundreds of thousands of women and children are smuggled into the United States for the purpose of being sold for sexual exploitation.

    God placed us here to help each other and care for each other, but instead we wound each other. All these ways that we strike each other through carelessness, neglect, indifference, deception, abuse, hostility and exploitation – all the wrongness and disorder of a fallen world – this was the crown of thorns that the soldiers shoved onto our Lord’s head.


    And they struck him repeatedly.


    Our Father, who art in Heaven…

    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…
    Hail Mary, full of grace…

    Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, a world without end. Amen.

    O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of Hell. Lead all souls to Heaven, especially those most in need of Thy Mercy.

    Our Lady, Queen of Heaven, Pray for us!
     

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