A Plan of Life – Chapter 6: Devotion to Mary

CHAPTER 6: DEVOTION TO MARY Consider the words of St. Josemaria: “Do you want to love our Lady? Well, then, get to know her. How? By praying her rosary well.” This devotion is centuries-old and has been regularly recommended by the popes. It is also endorsed by the words of

the Second Vatican Council: “The practices and exercises of devotion recommended by the teaching authority of the Church in the course of centuries are to be highly esteemed.”

Now is not a time to argue but to pray, to pray the holy rosary — “a prayer which well becomes the sense of the people of God,” in the words of Paul VI. People generally enjoy looking at their family albums — remembering their loved ones and commenting on the pictures as they pass from hand to hand. Similarly, as we the people of God are a big family, the scenes from the lives of our loved ones, Jesus and Mary, should be very dear to us. In the rosary we contemplate them.

Contemplation is an essential characteristic of the Christian life. Praying the rosary fosters this theological dimension of life as we dwell on the mysteries in the lives of our Lord and the Blessed Virgin, and then pray in a dialogue of praise and petition. And not just once but many times, for great love is never content with just a little.

The rosary is the life of Jesus, related by the Blessed Virgin and contemplated by us. A Christian who knows how to pray the rosary is like a child who knows how to cry out to his mother for her aid or consolation. There are many personal instances of this prayer: the pilgrim’s rosary prayed along the way to a shrine of our Lady during the month of May; the family rosary said in the evening on an ordinary day; the deliberate rosary on the lips of a sick person; the fast-moving rosary as one drives along the highway; the often interrupted rosary said on a crowded street or bus; the virginal rosaries in the silence of the cloister; the little rosaries in the minds of children; the well-said rosary of lovers; the well-worn rosaries of those who A PLAN OF LIFE 15 HELPING YOU FIND GOD WHEREVER YOU ARE have been married for years; the friendly rosaries in the hands of a priest; the maternal rosaries of the sister who cares for the sick or teaches the young. All are different, and yet all are the same.

Paul VI has written: “Your rosary is a stairway; you ascend it together, step by step, approaching our Lady, which means meeting Christ.”

Another traditional devotion to our Lady is the Angelus, an invitation to take a few minutes to pray at the moment of noon, using the words of the angel and our Lady’s reply when it was announced to her that she was to be the mother of the Savior. This prayer commemorates the greatest event in the history of the world: the incarnation of the Son of God and the redemption of mankind. The Angelus points out the role of the Blessed Virgin in the work of our redemption and the intimate relation of her life with the life of Jesus.

Remembering our Lady each Saturday is another way to honor her frequently. It is “an ancient and modest commemoration,” as Paul VI called it. Among the many ways to venerate her, one is to continue the old Christian custom of reciting or singing the beautiful and ancient hymn “Hail Holy Queen” (Salve Regina) on Saturdays.


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