I began talking about the Rosary last weekend, and I described the literal string of prayers that we say as flowers in a crown that we present to our Blessed Lady. There is a type of satisfaction we gain from simply getting through these prayers as a gift to our Lady (because of our affection for her as her sons and daughters), and in fulfilling her desire that we meditate as we do so on the several mysteries of the life she shared with her Son. This is not quite so easy as it sounds, especially if you leave the rosary for the end of the day, as I sometimes do.
Today, I thought I’d also run through some of the original promises made by her through S. Dominic and Blessed Alan to all those who would take up her Rosary. I already mentioned last week that the Rosary gradually destroys vice and sin within us and increases virtue, and those are some of the promises. Our Lady also said that those who say the Rosary recommend themselves to her in a particular way and she would defend them from misfortune and eternal death. Moreover, she said that they would not die without receiving the Sacraments, such as when death occurs suddenly, which we all hope will not happen to us. She said she would personally retrieve from purgatory those who made the Rosary a particular devotion of theirs, and that those who preached it or spread it to others in any way would be helped by her in necessity and would acquire the patronage of multiple Saints and angels.
When I was looking through these promises again this last week, I was thinking of S. Bernadette of Lourdes and the little shepherd Saints of Fátima and considering that these simple children and their parents and family who taught them basic devotion got it right, and that it was their very simplicity that won them the graces of God, by which they were able to receive the visions of our Lady and becomes apostles of the Rosary. Lots of us today say the Rosary because of the inspiration of these quite recent visionaries of Lourdes and Fátima.
Encouragingly, among the final assertions of our Lady to S. Dominic was that those who recite the Rosary are her beloved children and the brothers and sisters of her divine Son.
This fourth Sunday of Easter is what we have come to call Good Shepherd Sunday, because of the Gospel reading, and what I shall now say I have said many times before. If we go back to the Garden of Eden, we may remember that the great sin of Adam and Eve, beyond disobedience, was their determination to be their own moral guides, to decide for themselves, to shake off the rule of God over their hearts. Through the Old Testament, through Moses the Law-giver and the several prophets, God our Lord sought to restore that rule of His over the hearts of a chosen people, which rule would one day extend to the ends of the earth through the ministry of the Church.
“The Lord is my Shepherd; how can I lack anything?
Psalm 22 (23) [link]
He gives me a resting-place where there is green pasture,
leads me out to the cool water’s brink,
refreshed and content.
As in honour pledged, by sure paths He leads me;
dark be the valley about my path,
hurt I fear none while He is with me;
Thy rod, Thy crook are my comfort.
Envious my foes watch,
while Thou dost spread a banquet for me;
richly Thou dost anoint my head with oil, well-filled my cup.
All my life Thy loving favour pursues me;
through the long years
the Lord’s house shall be my dwelling-place.”
The first line of this psalm in the Latin and the early English translations is ‘the Lord rules me,’ which we now often read as ‘the Lord is my Shepherd.’ In the life, sufferings and death of our Lord, we are given to see the Heart of God, the Sacred Heart, Which does not wish for men and women to die, but to live forever with Him. He invites us then to respond in love to His invitation, that we may permit Him to rule over our hearts again, to direct us. He doesn’t take away our freedom – He respects us too much to do that – rather, He invites us to choose Him freely, and so to choose eternal life. He seeks to draw us away from the fatal choice that Adam and Eve made and towards the one that was made instead by our blessed Lady and her divine Son.
All the preachings of the teachers of the Church since the early days of the Apostles and men like Paul and Barnabas in our first reading were intended to do this. In effect, the Church as our mother, through the Sacraments, seeks to dress us all in the white garments of baptism described in our second reading today and stand us before the throne of God and the Lamb in innocence and purity. All of this begins with a first effort on our part to follow after Christ, the Good Shepherd, Whose voice we know, under Whose rule we rejoice, to Whom we hope to forever belong.
“My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them everlasting life, so that to all eternity they can never be lost; no one can tear them away from My hand. This trust which My Father has committed to Me is more precious than all else; no one can tear them away from the hand of My Father. My Father and I are one.”
Gospel of S. John, 10: 27-30 [link]
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 