JMJ
October 12, 2016
Dear Family of Mary!
February 25, 2012 “Dear children! At this time, in a special way I call you: ‘pray with the heart’. Little children, you speak much and pray little. Read and meditate on Sacred Scripture, and may the words written in it be life for you. I encourage and love you, so that in God you may find your peace and the joy of living. Thank you for having responded to my call.”
St. John Paul II continues to talk about memory and how important it is to remember rightly. He says that Mary remembered in the Jewish sense of remembering which was much more tangible than our western idea of remembering. Her remembering was making the event present to her, bring the event before her as if it was happening in the present. This kind of remembering is a grace that God gives us when we remember with love, with commitment and with reverence. Here are his words about Mary’s kind of remembering:
Remembering Christ with Mary
13. Mary’s contemplation is above all a remembering. We need to understand this word in the biblical sense of remembrance (zakar) as a making present of the works brought about by God in the history of salvation. The Bible is an account of saving events culminating in Christ himself. These events not only belong to “yesterday”; they are also part of the “today” of salvation. This making present comes about above all in the Liturgy: what God accomplished centuries ago did not only affect the direct witnesses of those events; it continues to affect people in every age with its gift of grace. To some extent this is also true of every other devout approach to those events: to “remember” them in a spirit of faith and love is to be open to the grace which Christ won for us by the mysteries of his life, death and resurrection.
Consequently, while it must be reaffirmed with the Second Vatican Council that the Liturgy, as the exercise of the priestly office of Christ and an act of public worship, is “the summit to which the activity of the Church is directed and the font from which all its power flows”,(15) it is also necessary to recall that the spiritual life “is not limited solely to participation in the liturgy. Christians, while they are called to prayer in common, must also go to their own rooms to pray to their Father in secret (cf. Mt 6:6); indeed, according to the teaching of the Apostle, they must pray without ceasing (cf.1Thes 5:17)”. (16) The Rosary, in its own particular way, is part of this varied panorama of “ceaseless” prayer. If the Liturgy, as the activity of Christ and the Church, is a saving action par excellence, the Rosary too, as a “meditation” with Mary on Christ, is a salutary contemplation. By immersing us in the mysteries of the Redeemer’s life, it ensures that what he has done and what the liturgy makes present is profoundly assimilated and shapes our existence.
The Rosary can help us to make present the mysteries of Jesus’ life in such a way that we experience them anew, and they have the same impact on us now as they had when they happened. We can be witnesses of Jesus’ life. This kind of remembering will change us. It will make us very much more personally attached to Jesus, personally involved with Jesus and His life. The Rosary is a great tool for remembering as it gives us the memories, and the time to experience them. We need to fill our memories with the life of Jesus, because these are our fundamental truths. We have been and are loved by Jesus, God and Man, who loved us to His death and rose to bring us life. We are his beloved. This is the truth that a right memory of Jesus will give us.
In Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
Cathy Nolan
©Mary TV 2016
