The Rosary is a Great and Mighty Thing Precisely Because it is Prayer With Mary (TA)

Disclaimer: Homily Transcriptions

Please be aware that the provided transcript serves as a representation of a Homily designed for an audience and is not a literary work. It does not capture pauses or speech emphasis from the original presentation, and there may be errors within the text. We make every effort to rectify them, but our primary goal in offering this text is not to create a literary document.

Additionally, the speech is delivered in English. We have intentionally enabled the transcript for web browsers that automatically translate English into a natural or local language based on your language settings. However, it’s important to note that these translations may not always be accurate, especially in the context of religious discussions.

With these two considerations in mind, we gladly present, for a limited time, the transcript of the Gospel and Homily for all Meditation Media posts marked with the symbol (TA) at the end of the title (indicating “Transcript Available”).

The Rosary is a Great and Mighty Thing Precisely Because it is Prayer With Mary (TA)

The Lord be with you . . . and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Glory to you all Lord.

The angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town of Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin betroth to a man named Joseph of the House of David. And the Virgin’s name was Mary. And coming to her, he said, hail full of grace. The Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at what was said and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

The angel said to her; Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father. And he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

But Mary said to the angel; How can this be, since I have no relations with a man? And the angel said to her in reply; The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. And behold, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age.

And this is the sixth month for her, who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible for God. Mary said, Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word. Then the angel departed from her. The Gospel of the Lord.

Homily

We have an interesting series of movements in our readings today, a movement backwards in time in a certain way. Our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, of the disciples at prayer with Our Lady is that moment of anticipation of the great day of Pentecost, after the resurrection of the Lord. Our Responsorial Psalm takes place in time prior to that.

The Magnificat

It is the Magnificat, the great hymn of praise, the very first Christian music. Our Lady’s voice lifted heavenward in thanksgiving. And our Gospel reading prior to that, that moment at the fullness of time. When Gabriel comes to Our Lady, Heaven speaks to her, she responds, and the Word is made flesh. But note how in that temporal sequence, we have the Lord coming into the world, we have the presence of the Lord proclaimed and celebrated, and then we have the people of God united in prayer around and with that one through whom the Lord has come into the world.

That one who is the very first to completely with full throated joy celebrate his arrival in the world. Note how wondrous that is. And in considering these things and in placing the readings before us today as we celebrate our lady under her title, the Lady of the Rosary, the Church is teaching us something.

The Rosary is Not Merely A Prayer to Mary

The Rosary is not merely prayer to Mary, strange as it is to put that. It is not merely a prayer that is effective. But rather, it is a great and mighty thing precisely because it is prayer with Mary. And that preposition is not insignificant. In considering these things, the Church puts before us a very fundamental truth.

We want to understand the Lord by looking at the way He actually saves us, not the way we wish it was done. Not the way we’d prefer it would be done, because let’s be honest. How many of us would have said, Lord, a really good idea would be for you to humble yourself, become human, and then die on the cross and rise again.

Look At the Way the Lord Brings Us Salvation

Most of us probably would not have started there, would we? In other words, naturally the heart of man wants salvation to be something different. Something less. But by paying attention to how the Lord actually saves us, we learn a great deal. We see that when Jesus Christ is ready to come into the world, He will come into this world only by means of Mary.

Hail, Full . . .

There is no other way. With Mary, through Mary, in Mary, and by Mary. Jesus Christ is made flesh. And how does that happen? Heaven calls and our lady responds. But note how heaven calls: Hail full of grace. The Lord is with you.

How many times in the course of your own life have those words past your lips? We can’t count them. We learn them at such a young age. And, we say them so automatically and often without even thinking. Taking those words for granted, but note what we have. Their origin is in heaven. The beginning of the Hail Mary is not with the church.

. . . of Grace

The beginning of the Hail Mary is not with you or with me. It is with Almighty God Himself. Those great words by which our Lord struck her heart and called her. Those great words which heralded that the Savior is to come into the world. This is why St. Louis de Monfort, without exaggerating, says, in a very certain way, the world was saved by the Hail Mary.

Because at those words, and her response to those words Jesus Christ, great and mighty, takes flesh in her womb and is present among us. Note how marvelous that is. And her response to those words is a remarkable thing because it is not merely yes. Heaven says you are the one who is truly filled with grace.

There is nothing that is displeasing in you. There is nothing in you that is not a gift. And, there is nothing in you that is not grace. Hail, full of grace. The Lord himself is with you. And yet Mary’s answer is, and the meaning of that for me, is that I am the handmaid of the Lord. Note that she does not name herself Queen.

No Earthly Exalted Title

She does not give herself some exalted earthly title. She gives herself the most exalted title of all. I am the one who is at your service. I am that one who is at the service of your word and your will and all that you will do and therefore, I am at the service of the salvation of the world. What a remarkably beautiful reality that is.

This woman who is at the service of salvation because, precisely because, she is at the service of Jesus Christ. And we see that immediately as soon as the word is made flesh within her, she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth. And the sound of her voice in greeting is enough to stir the life of her cousin with the movement of the Holy Spirit.

Note the Second Part of the Hail Mary

And note then the inspired second part of the Hail Mary. Blessed are you among women. Blessed the fruit of your womb. Said when Mary’s pregnancy wouldn’t even have been visible. Note how remarkable it is. Heaven says hail full of grace. And the Holy Spirit inspires earthly tongues to respond. Blessed indeed are you.

And blessed is your son. The fruit of your womb. The great and mighty Savior who comes to us in you, through you, with you, and by you. How absolutely wondrous. And it is in this moment, Hail full of grace. Blessed are you that once again, we hear our lady’s response to heavenly inspired speech. And what is that response?

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit takes its joy in God my Savior because he has noticed me humble that I am.

Heaven Has Seen Her . . . Has Seen Us!

What a remarkable moment. Celebrated by earthly lips and yet thankful that heaven has seen her. How absolutely marvelous. And what do we see but this praise directed to Our Lady redounds to the glory of God Himself. As she is struck again with wonderment at what God has done in her. What God has begun in her.

And how what God has done and begun in her is not a gift for her alone. But it involves the salvation of all of His people. And the completion of all of his promises. And so that marvelous hymn of inspired praise, the song of the woman pregnant with God, the praise of the one who holds the Lord within her.

He scatters the proud in their conceit. He pulls the mighty from their throne and lifts up the lowly. And, He has remembered his promise. Not just to me, but to Israel, to all of our fathers. Note how marvelous this is. Our Lady seeing and recognizing that what is happening in her affects the entire world, is for the good and the salvation of all people.

The Church Gathered Around Our Lady

Small wonder then, that as the Church gathers to pray that the Lord fulfill his promise of sending the Spirit upon it. Where do we find them? But around that woman upon whom the Spirit first descended. Note how marvelous. In Nazareth, as a result of Gabriel’s visit, the Holy Spirit came down upon her, and the body of Christ is formed in the womb of Mary.

And we see in our first reading, the church gathered around Our Lady at prayer, and shortly thereafter what will happen? That same Spirit of God will come down upon Our Lady a second time, and the body of Christ will be formed again on earth, not in the womb of Mary, but with Mary, and around her, put into good order.

What a wonderful… series of events to contemplate here and how much we learn just from this simple look into these things. But we are hearing these things because today we celebrate that great rose garden of the mysteries of Christ, the Rosary. And what is the vital beating heart of the Rosary? Hail, full of grace.

The Lord is with thee. Hail, full of grace. Hail, full of grace. Note how that moment of heaven speaking is echoed across the beads of the rosary in sets of ten but echoed through the rosary. And note what happens. We turn to Our Lady with those words. Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. And we speak the words that are most pleasing to her.

There Are No Words More Pleasing . . .

There are no words more pleasing to Our Lady than these. It matters not who the composer of the hymn might be. It matters not how holy the saint that wrote it. Because no composer is so skilled. No saint so holy. Nor so profound as God himself. And these are the words by which God calls to her. These are the way God calls her to himself and opens her heart.

Hail full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. And note what happened. In speaking that way, we are not speaking about a person, but like Gabriel, we are speaking to a person. Notice, even if you are the only person physically present in the space, by definition the Rosary can never be prayed alone.

Because the Rosary is a prayer that requires I speak to somebody else. Note how marvelous that is. And so, whenever we reach out our hand to our beads and we begin praying that prayer, we are with someone. In fact, we are with that one through whom Jesus Christ has come into the world and through whom Jesus Christ is pleased to continue coming into the world, to give us his grace and the gift of salvation. What a great thing that is. That the very essence of the rosary is that it is uniting ourselves in prayer with Mary, the mother of Jesus. How wondrous. And as we look then, we see something else. St. Louis de Montfort is very fond of saying that the greatest of all the mysteries of the Lord is his Incarnation.

. . . to Our Lady Then These

Because it contains all of the others within it. Just like the acorn, the seed of the oak tree, contains within it the eventual size of that tree. All of its wood, all of its lumber, all of the shade that it will eventually shed. All of the growth of the tree, the depth of its roots, is hidden in that seed, not yet visible, but there.

And what do we see then, as Gabriel leaves Mary after her words? Hidden, cloistered within her womb is Jesus Christ, not in his partiality, but in his fullness. All of the mysteries of salvation enclosed at that moment. Truly present among us, the Lord who has come to bear the cross. Truly present among us, the Lord who will rise from the dead.

Furthermore, truly present among us, the Lord who will teach. Truly present among us, the Lord who will change water into wine at Canaan. All of that is present. Not yet visible to the eyes, but enclosed within her. This is one reason why the saints refer to Our Lady as the treasury of the Almighty. That place where the Lord keeps and hides His greatest treasure, His greatest wealth.

And why? So that we might receive from that treasury. And that is exactly what the praying of the Rosary is. Note how beautiful it is. Because it is all in the context of our and her relationship with Almighty God who desires to save us.
The Rosary consists in only three things. And I want to stress that because there is a lot of confusion.

Three Parts to the Rosary

There are only three parts to the Rosary. And now you’re looking at me, Father, there’s a lot of prayers in the Rosary. Most of them are optional. There are only three things that one needs to pray the rosary. Our Fathers, Hail Mary’s, and the consideration of the mysteries of the Lord. Everything else is technically optional.

It’s not that the optional is bad, but sometimes, let’s be honest, our hearts focus on the wrong things. We fall in love with the optional, we lose sight of the necessary. And so, note though, Our Fathers. And so the Rosary can rightly begin simply with naming a mystery and beginning with the Our Father. But note, we begin taught by the Lord how to pray, we turn to Our Father in the Spirit of Jesus and call out.

And the fruit of our calling out to the Lord now. is then a turning to Our Lady that we might see and understand what is important in the mystery that we are looking at. Note how marvelous that is and how simple that is. This is why across the centuries the Rosary has been found to be so mighty and so life giving.

Why it has been so powerful when the Church uses it in time of need. Why it has been so effective. When the saints and the mystics have laid their hands to the beat to grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ. We call out to Our Lady in the words by which heaven won her heart, and how could she not respond?

Our Lady Directs Our Spiritual Eye

We turn and to her as we begin to look at the mysteries of her Son and what does she do? She who knows them better than us can begin to direct our spiritual eye. To details that we would miss by ourselves. To things that we could not see or understand or recognize on our own. What a great gift we celebrate today.

But in the end, what we celebrate is not simply that we can turn to Our Lady. But that we can, in all truth, pray with Our Lady. And that with makes a great difference. And how wonderful that we can reflect on it here on this first Saturday, this Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, when in just a couple minutes, we will come forward.

We will stretch out our hands or open our mouths and we will receive that same Jesus Christ who will be hidden within us. He who was pleased to hide himself within Our Lady. And we have before us that wondrous example of Our Lady’s Prayer, and we can pray with Her here today in this place as well when we go back to our benches.

My soul, too, proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My spirit, too, rejoices in God my Savior, because He who is mighty likewise has come to me. in my lowliness here in this place. There is so much to learn when we sit with Our Lady. Amen.