The family Rosary, ‘a powerful weapon’
- Fr. Kasel
- 25 minutes ago
- 5 min read

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ Jesus,
This Sunday, many of our youth will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation at the Cathedral of St. Paul! Let us pray for all our Confirmation candidates receiving this Sacrament this year, that our Heavenly Father, in the Name of His Son, Jesus, may abundantly bestow the life and grace of the Holy Spirit upon them! Let us pray our good Lord will renew the Life and Love of the Holy Spirit within each of us!
As we continue into the month of May, the month of our Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, let us continue to strive to grow closer to her Immaculate Heart!
One of the best ways to be close to Mary is through praying the Rosary! This week I share with you a meditation on the Rosary and urge you to pray the Rosary each day! I encourage you to reflect over this message a few times this week:
“The Rosary: In the Rosary our Lady teaches us to contemplate the life of her Son.
Love for our Lady is shown in our life in many different ways. The Holy Rosary has been the Marian prayer most recommended by the Church down through the ages. In it, piety gives us a summary of the principal Truths of the Christian Faith; as we consider each of the mysteries, our Lady teaches us to contemplate the life of her Son. She, intimately united to Jesus, at times takes first place; other times, it is Christ Himself who is the first to attract our attention. Mary always talks to us about Jesus: of the joy of His birth, of His death on the Cross, and of His glorious Resurrection and Ascension.
The Rosary is our Mother’s favorite prayer. To say the Holy Ro-sary, considering the mysteries, repeating the ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’, with the praises to the Blessed Trinity and the constant invocation of the Mother of God, is a continuous act of Faith,Hope and Love, of adoration and reparation. (J. Escriva, Holy Rosary, Preface)
Etymologically, the Rosary is a crown of roses, a delightful custom which among all peoples represents an offering of love and a symbol of joy. (Pius XII, Address, 16 October 1940) It is the most excellent means of meditated prayer, constituted in the manner of a mystical crown, in which the angelic salutation, the Lord’s Prayer and the doxology to the August Trinity are intertwined with the consideration of the highest mysteries of our Faith. In it, by means of many scenes, the mind contemplates the drama of the Incarnation and of the Redemption of our Lord. (John XXIII, Encyclical, Grata Recordatio, 26 September 1959)
In this Marian prayer, vocal prayer is combined with the meditation of the Christian mysteries, which is as it were the soul of the Rosary. Thanks to this unhurried meditation it is possible for all to say the same words, while at the same time each one can do his or her own personal prayer. To imagine oneself as a participant in the scenes being considered helps one to say it well. In this way, we shall live the life of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Each day we shall do something new for them. We shall hear their family conversation. We shall see the Messiah grow up. We shall admire His thirty years of hidden life… We shall be present at His Passion and Death… We shall be amazed at the glory of His resurrection… In a word: carried away by Love (the only real love is Love), we shall contemplate each and every moment of the life of Christ. (J. Escriva, op. cit., p. 9)
In considering the mysteries, vocal prayer - the Our Fathers and the Hail Marys - comes to life; our interior life is enriched with deep content, which becomes a source of prayer and contemplation throughout the day. Little by little, it identifies us with Christ’s feelings and enables us to live in a climate of intense devotion: we rejoice with Christ joyful, we suffer with Christ suffering, and we look forward in hope to the glory of Christ Risen. Pope Paul VI said that the liturgy and the Rosary, although existing on essentially different planes of reality, have as their object the same salvific events wrought by Christ. The former presents anew, under the veil of signs and operative in a hidden way, the great mysteries of our redemption. The latter, by means of devout contemplation, recalls these same mysteries to the mind of the person praying and stimulates the will to draw from them the norms of living. (Paul VI, Marialis Cultus, 48)
The family Rosary, ‘a powerful weapon’.
The Second Vatican Council asks all the sons of the Church that the cult, especially the liturgical cult, of the Blessed Virgin, be generously fostered, and the practices
and exercises of piety, recommended by the Magisterium of the Church towards her in the course of centuries, be highly esteemed. (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium, 67) And we are well aware of how insistently the Church has recommended saying the Rosary. It is one of the best and most efficacious prayers in common that the Christian family is invited to recite, (Paul VI, op. cit. 54) and in many cases it will be an aim of Christian life for many families.
Sometimes it is enough to begin by saying just one mystery, perhaps using such signal opportunities as the month of May or a visit to a shrine or chapel of our Lady. Much has been achieved if children are taught to say it from an early age.
The family Rosary is a source of good for everyone, for it attracts God’s Mercy to the home. The saying of the Angelus and of the Rosary, said St. John Paul II, must be for every Christian and even more for Christian families, like a spiritual oasis during the course of the day, from which we can get strength and confidence. (St. John Paul II, Angelus, in Otranto, 5 October 1980) And just a few days later, the Holy Father once again remarked: Guard jealously that tender and confident love for our Lady, which characterizes you. Don’t ever let
it get cold… Be faithful to the traditional exercises of Marian piety in the Church: the saying of the Angelus, the month of Mary, and in a special way, the Rosary. Would that there be a resurgence of that beautiful custom of praying the Rosary in the family. (St. John Paul II, Homily, 12 October 1980)
Today in our prayer we can see whether we approach the Holy Rosary as a powerful weapon (J. Escriva, op. cit., p. 5) to get from the Blessed Virgin those Graces and favors which we need so much, whether we say it with the necessary attention, whether we try to deepen in its rich content, especially stopping and meditating (upon) each of the mysteries for a few moments, and whether we try to get our family and friends to start saying it and so to have more dealings with our Mother in Heaven, and to love her more.” (From: In Conversation with God by Francis Fernandez)
Through the intercession of Mary, Our Lady of the Rosary, St. Joseph, St. Michael, and St. Paul, may God bless us and grant us the grace of true devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary! In Christ through Mary,
Fr. Kasel
Comments