Homily for October 4, 2026
Twenty-Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time
The Rosary
If
someone wanted to start a vineyard full of grapes, they would have to do two
main things: plant the grape vines – and then build the trellis, the wooden
structure that supports the vine. Without something to cling to, the grapes
would rot on the ground, and the plant would never be able to grow. But with
the trellis, the grapevines grow tall and strong, and produce rich fruit.
Likewise,
we human beings cannot grow strong in our spiritual life if we do not have
support. Certainly Jesus is the lifeline – He says in John’s Gospel, “I am the
Vine, you are the branches. If you remain in Me and I in you, you will bear
much fruit.” But even a healthy grapevine needs support for it to grow. The
support are the many devotional practices of our Church – the Sacraments, the
Bible, lives of the saints – and today we focus on a singular pillar, the Holy
Rosary which is the cornerstone of devotion to Mary.
Why is
the Rosary so powerful? Because it is essentially a way of entering into the
life of Jesus Christ Himself. What is the central word of the Hail Mary? Let’s
pray it together…Jesus! The Hail Mary is all about Jesus, and Mary is the path
through which we approach Him. Pope St. John Paul II said, “The Rosary is
looking at the life of Christ through the eyes of Mary.” A more recent Catholic
quipped, “The Rosary is a bible study on beads.”
As our
lips pray the Hail Mary, our minds meditate on the events in the life of
Christ. Each Rosary is divided into five “decades”, sets of ten Hail Mary’s,
and we are invited to consider a different event in Christ’s life – starting
with when the angel Gabriel told Mary she would be the mother of God at the
Annunciation, continuing through His birth, His life and miracles, His passion
and death, and His Resurrection. So, the Rosary really combines all three
types of prayer: vocal prayer (where we pray pre-written prayers), mental
prayer (where we put ourselves in the scenes of Christ’s life and imagine what
they would look like), and contemplation (which is giving God loving attention,
beyond words). All three are combined – we pray the words with our lips, we
meditate on the life of Christ in our mind, and we place ourselves in His
presence. What a powerful encounter with Him!
And I
can testify to the power – a friend of mine from college used to struggle with
a real addiction to lust, and as much as he wanted to be free, he kept falling
back into it. He prayed and prayed, “God, when will I be free?” He felt God say
to him, “When you have prayed one Rosary for every time you have committed
these sins, you will be free of them.” And he found that to be true – the
Rosary obtained for him a gradual but real liberation.
But one
might object – why so repetitive? Isn’t it better to pray spontaneously? Both
are good! Every major world religion prays repetitively – the Hindus recite
mantras on japamala, strings of beads; while Muslims have a string of 99
beads called the misbaha on which they recite “Allahu akbar”,
proclaiming that God is great. Repetition is a way to inscribe in your mind and
heart the words you recite, and to calm your mind to open it to the divine.
Early Christians had a custom called hesychasm, which was the meditative
recitation of a one-breath prayer to calm the mind and put ourselves in God’s
presence. Their classic prayer is called the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ,
Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” St. Josaphat prayed this so much that
he would continue murmuring it in his sleep!
So
reciting Our Fathers and Hail Mary’s can be a way to enter into a deeper union
with Christ, as long as we don’t think that they’re just magical incantations.
No, we have to intend what we say, and actually think about the mysteries of
Christ’s life as we pray them.
But
let’s be honest – we all get distracted, especially while praying the Rosary.
So there are actually four things we can meditate on when we pray the
Rosary. In addition to the events of Christ’s life, we can think about the
words we pray, which come right from Scripture. “Hail Mary full of grace, the
Lord is with Thee” – this is the greeting that the Archangel Gabriel gave to
Mary upon telling her she would be the mother of the Savior. “Blessed are you
among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb” – this comes from Mary’s
cousin Elizabeth who rejoiced when Mary came to visit her. We can also think
about any intentions we want to offer the Rosary for: the sick, our deceased
relatives, our kids, the people in our family who are far from the Lord.
Finally, we can think about a virtue associated with each mystery – for
example, when we think about the angel Gabriel telling Mary that she would be
the mother of the Savior, it took a tremendous amount of trust and faith for
her to say “yes”. We can apply that to our own life: do we have trust in God?
Are we struggling with it? We can ask him to increase that virtue in our life,
and consider how to live it out.
All of
the saints loved the Rosary. St. Padre Pio used to say, “The Rosary is my
weapon.” He would demand, “Bring me my weapon!” St. Louis de Montfort once
said, “Never will anyone who says his Rosary every day be led astray. This is a
statement that I would gladly sign with my blood.”
And the
Rosary saved the faith of an entire country. Back in the 1600s, Oliver Cromwell
was given the task of converting all of Ireland to the Anglican Church that had
been founded by King Henry VIII. He did that by oppressing Catholics in Ireland
– he passed the penal laws, which made it illegal for Catholics to hold
property. He outlawed public Masses and hunted down priests to throw them in
prison. While those tactics worked on the British, the Irish were tougher
fighters – they began crafting “penal Rosaries” – small one-decade Rosaries
that they could easily hide in their hands in case they encountered occupying
soldiers. They held secret Masses in their homes and were willing to accept
poverty and persecution to hold onto their Catholic Faith.
Frustrated,
Cromwell wrote back to the King of England these words, “All is not well with
Ireland yet. You gave us the money, you gave us the guns. But let me tell you
that every house in Ireland is a house of prayer, and when I bring these
fanatical Irish before the muzzles of my guns, they hold up in their hands a
string of beads, and they never surrender.”
We have
a more dangerous enemy than Cromwell – the Evil One wants our utter, eternal
destruction. But in the face of his temptations, his wiles, and his attacks, we
also hold up our string of beads, and never surrender – because we are
connected to the Vine, Jesus Christ, and supported by His Blessed Mother
through the Holy Rosary.
