Who can blame Mary for TREASURING that moment of
leave-taking of the simple shepherds and eminent wise
men? They had come to honour her
newly-born Son, Jesus. She PONDERED all this in her heart (Lk.2.19).
Some years later there was that traumatic time of Mary
and Joseph losing Jesus, finding Jesus in discussion with the teachers in the
Temple in Jerusalem. Understandably they
were mystified at the distress He had caused them. We are told that “HIS MOTHER STORED UP all
these things in her heart”. (Lk.2.51).
Like many a mother Mary made life-long emotional journey
with her beloved child – from the moment of His conception in the womb to His
burial in the tomb. With tender, sometimes bewildering, love Mother and Son
shaped each other’s lives.
The Gospel is the Good News about Jesus – the love-gift
of God the Father to mankind. In fact Jesus Himself was, and is, the Good News – through
whom Divine Merciful Love was, and is, poured out
upon the delinquent human family.
From a life of about thirty four years Jesus gave three
of them to Pastoral Caring and
Forgiving – inter-laced with the spectacular calming of storms, raising the
dead to life, expelling unclean spirits, and forgiving sins - something God alone can do. , ‘Mary would have been thrilled
at the way her Son was acclaimed, terrified by the way opposition mounted
against Him.
All this must have transformed her relationship with
Almighty God to whom she had pledged herself, “Behold the Handmaid of the Lord.
Be it done unto me according to thy word,” (Lk. 1.38).
The Story of Jesus is no captivating fiction. It is the
real-life Salvation History of Mankind with the Son of God becoming flesh for our sake and for our salvation. In
addition reading the Jesus Story in Sacred Scripture we should pray ourselves
into the Story through meditating upon its events and teaching, allowing
ourselves to be shaped/reshaped by it.
Over many centuries Catholics have found the Rosary an immense help, if it is recited at a
gentle pace that allows us to absorb
the particular event in the life of Jesus as we meditate on each
of the Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary.
In so doing we recruit Mary who actually
experienced the whole Jesus Story – with
the immediacy that belongs uniquely to a mother. Now glorious in heaven she
accompanies us in our own personal journey through the Jesus Story.
I now share with you a few of the profound insights
of Pope Saint John Paul 11 written in
2002 when he gave to the Church the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary.
“With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to
contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of
His love… Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though
from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer….To recite the Rosary is
nothing other than to contemplate with
Mary the face of Christ.
POPE
Francis has decreed this present year to be a Jubilee of Mercy. He has described the Face of Almighty
God as being the Face of Mercy and the Face of His Beloved Son, Jesus, as being
the Human Face of Divine Mercy. He wrote, “No- one has
penetrated the profound mystery of the incarnation like Mary. Her entire life
was patterned after the presence of mercy made flesh... …She treasured divine
mercy in her heart in perfect harmony with her Son Jesus.”
The more the
world denies or ignores the significance of Jesus, as the human embodiment of
Divine Merciful Love the more it needs to pray the Rosary as a celebration of
Salvation Divinely Merciful History – bearing in mind that Jesus is the
Redeem and Mary the Mother of the Redeemer. This is
why the prayer, ‘Hail, holy Queen,’ calls Mary, Mother of Mercy’.
Peter Clarke, OP
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