Rosary on Wood Table

Rediscovering the Rosary with Archbishop Jose Gomez

An excerpt from Archbishop Jose Gomez’s weekly column in The Tidings…

May is Mary’s month and the Rosary is Mary’s prayer.

It is a simple prayer, one that many of us learned as children. And as we grow older, the Rosary grows with us.

I know many of you pray the Rosary every day. I do, too. I love the Rosary and I’ve had this devotion for many years.

And I know that many of you share my own experience — that the Rosary is new every time I pray it. With each passing year, this prayer takes me to different places in my heart, and to different places in my contemplation of Jesus and his mysteries.

The Rosary is the prayer of the disciple’s journey, a prayer of the heart that is made for praying as we walk along the path of faith, the path of following Jesus Christ.

No Rosary is ever the same, although we are always praying the same words in the same way. It is hard for me to describe, but the Rosary to me seems to be a prayer that is beautifully suited to the nature of our human heart and human mind.

The Hail Marys we repeat with our lips become a kind of background setting as we are lifted up into contemplation.

As we ponder the mysteries of Christ’s life, often our mind wanders to the concerns of our own lives — our cares become prayers for our families and friends, our work and our world — and then we drift back again to considering the Gospel scenes.

Our prayer seems as natural as breathing. We linger on some thoughts longer than others. Time seems to slow down and become part of the quiet rhythm of Hail Marys. We find ourselves dwelling on a single word or group of words in the prayer.

The repetition of Hail Marys in the Rosary is like a litany of love. It reminds me of that Easter scene where Jesus asks St. Peter three times, “Do you love me?”

As we all know, “I love you,” isn’t something we say only once to the ones we love.

We express our love over and over, many times in many ways each day. So every Hail Mary we repeat in the Rosary is like an “I love you” that we are saying to Jesus and to Mary, who is his mother and our mother.

The Rosary tells us that we can be as close to Jesus as Mary is, that we can live for Jesus as Mary does.

And in the Rosary, we are learning how to look at Jesus the way Mary looked at him…

Read the rest of the article on The Tidings website by clicking here…

Related Posts

Falling and Rising Again

Falling and Rising Again

There always seems to be a recurring theme that resonates personally – that of falling and rising again. I imagine it’s a theme that echoes in the heart of each one of us. Because without this assurance of falling, rising and most importantly being accompanied on this journey…

Hidden Saints Among Us

Hidden Saints Among Us

How intriguing. Hidden saints among us.

Have you heard the phrase “what you see is what you get”? This can be interpreted in a variety of ways. Let’s read it literally for the sake of this random musing.

Your Max

Your Max

How many times have you felt like you’ve hit your “max” and somehow you keep plodding along. You find yourself still alive, battered but possibly a little stronger for having withstood what you thought was “your max.