The Rosary Light and Life - Current Announcements - Nov-Dec 2009

As we look at the liturgical calendar we realize that a great deal of it is devoted to honoring the Blessed Virgin. We celebrate her feasts, of course, and we consider October and May to be "Mary's months." But at these times our devotion to Mary is something added onto the Church's existing schedule of prayer.

As we enter Advent, however, we encounter a liturgical season that is altogether suffused with Mary's presence - indeed, each day of Advent invites us to identify ourselves more and more closely with Mary, whose quiet example gives the entire season its special character of listening and waiting.

Mary provides the example for our lives at all times; this is nowhere more evident than in the days leading up to the birth of Our Savior at Christmas. Mary shows us what it means to listen to God's word - not merely "to hear," but truly to listen, with attention, love, and a willingness to act. Her quiet dialog with the angel Gabriel allows God's Word to enter her heart, and there to take flesh.

As the Advent season unfolds, Mary continues to equip God's Word with the qualities we recognize in the human Jesus. She provides the flesh and blood, and the human voice that will save the world. But she is not alone in this undertaking. Each generation calls Mary blessed because Mary calls each generation - each of us - to act as she did, and to present the world with the human face, and the human love of God's Son.

Mary's reward, of course, is her bodily Assumption, which allows her to enjoy now what the Virtue of Hope enables us to look forward to in the future. At first glance, we may be puzzled to consider the Assumption during Advent; the Assumption, after all, is the reward for a life of perfection, and Advent is a time of beginnings. However, if we look at our lives as a whole - and particularly at Mary's life - we see that the beginning and end are inseparable. Mary's saying "yes" to the angel sets in motion the actions that will be crowned by her Assumption.

With this issue of "Light and Life" we have the good fortune to encounter Mary through the eyes of Dominican theologian, Fr. Paul Connor. His essay, "The Feminine Genius," has been part of our Advent reflections for the past two years. That reflection comes to an end with this issue of our newsletter.

THE FEMININE GENIUS, III

The fourth glorious mystery of the Rosary, Mary's Assumption body and soul into heaven, is another avenue to appreciating the unrepeatable gift God has given to women. It is a much greater gift than those given to those few who have become masters of word, melody, or art, architecture, science, or governing. Such peak human achievements have certainly enriched the lives of succeeding generations, but women have been given the gift by God to tend to human life in crucial ways men do not and cannot. This is a signature feature of their unique genius.

The women who live out this gift are living persons. And persons are immortal beings. Women alone can bear them with love, bring them into the world, nourish them, and attend to every need with the delicacy of maternal instinct, care, and sacrifice. Women give human persons their first steps into life, and their first features of character. Women educate them at the irreplaceable levels of self-discovery, personal responsibility, and pursuit of right and good and avoidance of wrong and evil. Women cultivate in children wholesome family and social interrelating. More than men, it is women who teach persons how to communicate, to play, to share, to pray. Mothers are always forgiving if they can but influence their child to true self-realization and achievement. What mother will not comfort her offspring, at whatever age, and attempt to heal, inspire, and encourage? What mother ever gives up hope for her children, or does not pray for their welfare? What woman will forget the life that God has let her conceive and bring up to reach for its destiny?

Mary has lived to the full every aspect of God's gift to humankind that John Paul II named the “feminine genius.” The Holy Father repeatedly appealed to women throughout the world to follow Mary by searching the core of their being to come into touch with their genius and to live it out in our times. He thought that Western civilization especially has become much too masculinized, and that it needs desperately the counterbalance of genuine feminine influence in every walk of life. He forecast that women could change the world unbelievably for the better if each one embraced the core of her being, her feminine genius. If, the Pontiff said, under severely negative circumstances, each woman refused to surrender her gift and calling to tend the human lives within and around her, the world would become humane, trustful, honest, respectful, even loving. When they cannot change circumstances, women have the capacity much more at their bidding than do men, the Pope said, to accept unjust burdens and suffering for the good of persons dear to them – even of those who cause their suffering. Their “yes” imitates Mary's “fiat.” It is the love in the hearts of women that guides them into selfless giving to help human life survive and thrive. The feminine capacity is on full display in the Gospel passage the Church uses for Mary's Assumption and other Marian feasts. Mary set out and traveled to the hill country in haste, to a town of Judah, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice …, ‘Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.' …And Mary said, ‘My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.' The passage ends with Luke's observing, “Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home” (Lk 1:39-56). In this passage both Mary and Elizabeth personify the genius proper to their gender. Notice, for example, how selfless each is in her focus on others. Mary herself is pregnant, yet she travels – most likely on foot – over 90 miles of hilly, thief-infested countryside, to help her kinswoman in her more advanced pregnancy. Elizabeth does not bask in this singular respect and love, but instead voices her awe and wonder that Mary should do this. Elizabeth has realized that Mary has become the Mother of God. Far from turning in on themselves, both women turn their attention and energies to the good of the other and to that of the children they bear. Mary goes further, responding to Elizabeth's praise by crediting God in such profound acknowledgment and gratitude that the Church finds no equal in all of Scripture. Through the centuries, the Church has concluded her evening prayer with Mary's Magnificat. It is a great mystery of human sinfulness today that, especially in Western countries, so many women are not offering their true genius to the world. Untold numbers deny themselves and human history the gift of new life and its enrichment. Beyond contraception and abortion, women join men in trivializing love meant for marriage – and even in abandoning marriage itself. There are many reasons for these ills: neglect, disrespect, abuse, ignorance, and weakness. But in every woman's heart, deeper than injustice, cultural pressure, and self-seeking lies God's gift of the feminine genius and its tending to life, no matter the cost. It cost Mary a great deal to open her being so widely to life that the Author of Life could enter her womb and beg her care. It cost her much more to tend that Life into adulthood and beyond, finally to standing in union with Him at the cross, which claimed His life and caused her the utmost pain. But how much more did it cost to accept the Father's plan to widen her heart to embrace all sinners until the end of time, with that maternal love that longs to forgive, to comfort, to heal, to inspire? With Mary, each of us who treasures the feminine genius must pray for women to discover their gift, and to activate their selfless giving to all the human life they encounter. Finally, do take note of the wonderful surprise of “secret” of fulfillment that Mary's genius and her Assumption reveal. By not seeking self-satisfaction, but by giving herself totally to the life with and around her, Mary let God give her fulfillment, not only day by day, but ultimately in heaven. Contemplating the fourth glorious mystery of the Rosary can help anyone see the meaning that Mary's genius and Assumption hold for us. That her entire being, body and soul, is sharing life with God and God's family is not only Mary's – but also our destiny. This ultimate fulfillment is the conclusion God wishes for each of our life's journeys. Each of us can learn from Mary to respond to the Father's providential events in our daily lives, and to the Spirit's prompting to live out our feminine or masculine potential fully. God will surprise such self-giving with personal fulfillment – not only day by day on earth, but forever in heaven.

WE ARE FREQUENTLY ASKED whether Confraternity members must pray twenty decades of the Rosary to fulfill the requirements for membership. The answer to this question is no. Pope John Paul II presented the Luminous Mysteries as a suggestion, which he hoped would contribute to the devotion of lovers of the Rosary. The present Holy Father has made no comment, so Confraternity members will continue to fulfill the requirements for membership by praying the traditional fifteen decades of the Rosary.

For those who wish to learn more about Pope John Paul's promoting the Luminous Mysteries, the Rosary Center offers a helpful new book, The Rosary, The John Paul II Method, by Robert Feeney. We offer it for $7.95 plus shipping & handling, and hope it will prove helpful to devotees of the Luminous Mysteries, as well as those who wish to learn more about them. To order please visit our secure web order page.

Back to Light & Life Page | Way back to Rosary Center Home Page