JMJ
October 14, 2016
St. Callistus I
Dear Family of Mary!
Finally, St. John Paul II reminds us that Our Lady is the most powerful of intercessors, and the Rosary is a good way to receive her intercession!
March 18, 2012
“Dear children! I am coming among you because I desire to be your mother – your intercessor. I desire to be the bond between you and the Heavenly Father – your mediatrix. I desire to take you by the hand and to walk with you in the battle against the impure spirit. My children, consecrate yourselves to me completely. I will take your lives into my motherly hands and I will teach them peace and love, and then I will give them over to my Son. I am asking of you to pray and fast because only in this way will you know how to witness my Son in the right way through my motherly heart. Pray for your shepherds that, united in my Son, they can always joyfully proclaim the Word of God. Thank you.”
St. John Paul II wrote:
Praying to Christ with Mary
16. Jesus invited us to turn to God with insistence and the confidence that we will be heard: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Mt 7:7). The basis for this power of prayer is the goodness of the Father, but also the mediation of Christ himself (cf. 1Jn 2:1) and the working of the Holy Spirit who “intercedes for us” according to the will of God (cf. Rom 8:26-27). For “we do not know how to pray as we ought” (Rom 8:26), and at times we are not heard “because we ask wrongly” (cf. Jas 4:2-3).
In support of the prayer which Christ and the Spirit cause to rise in our hearts, Mary intervenes with her maternal intercession. “The prayer of the Church is sustained by the prayer of Mary”. If Jesus, the one Mediator, is the Way of our prayer, then Mary, his purest and most transparent reflection, shows us the Way. “Beginning with Mary’s unique cooperation with the working of the Holy Spirit, the Churches developed their prayer to the Holy Mother of God, centering it on the person of Christ manifested in his mysteries”. At the wedding of Cana, the Gospel clearly shows the power of Mary’s intercession as she makes known to Jesus the needs of others: “They have no wine” (Jn 2:3).
The Rosary is both meditation and supplication. Insistent prayer to the Mother of God is based on confidence that her maternal intercession can obtain all things from the heart of her Son. She is “all-powerful by grace”, to use the bold expression, which needs to be properly understood, of Blessed Bartolo Longo in his Supplication to Our Lady. This is a conviction which, beginning with the Gospel, has grown ever more firm in the experience of the Christian people. The supreme poet Dante expresses it marvelously in the lines sung by Saint Bernard: “Lady, thou art so great and so powerful, that whoever desires grace yet does not turn to thee, would have his desire fly without wings”. When in the Rosary we plead with Mary, the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 1:35), she intercedes for us before the Father who filled her with grace and before the Son born of her womb, praying with us and for us.
Mary’s intercession is like the wings that give flight to our prayer. How many times have we each had miracles happen when we turn our needs over to Our Lady!! The Rosary is the perfect prayer of petition and supplication to the Lord!! May we pray the Rosary now with much more conviction, faith, hope and love! God is waiting to hear from us! He is waiting to bless us. And He is waiting to embrace us as we pray the Rosary with Mary!!
Thank you, oh Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, for praying for us and with us to the Lord, our God!
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2016
PS. For those who live in Northern Indiana, the movie “Apparition Hill” is being shown for one week, starting today, at Movies 16 in South Bend. Here is a link to the showtimes:
https://www.amctheatres.com/movie-theatres/south-bend/amc-showplace-south-bend-16
This movie has been widely acclaimed! Check it out!!
