Make the Sign of the Cross and pray the Apostles' Creed Pray the Glory be to the Father Pray ten Hail Marys Announce the fifth mystery; £ then pray the Our Father ——Hp Pray the Glory be to the Father • Pray ten Hail Marys Announce the fourth mystery; then pray the Our Father Pray the Glory be to the Father When a group prays the Rosary, a leader usually says the first Apostles' Creed, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory be to the Father. T h e group answers with the second part . With the Glory be to the Father after the last decade, the Rosary is ended. However, Catholics customarily add the Hail, Holy Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail, our life, our sweetness, and our hope! T o thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee we send up our sighs, mourn- ing and weeping in this vale of tears. Pray the Our Father Pray three Hail Marys Pray the Glory be to the Fother Announce the first mystery; then pray the Our Father Pray ten Hail Marys — : Pray the Glory be to the Father _ '—Announce the second mystery; | then pray the Our Father . Pray ten Hail Marys ,Pray the Glory be to the Father Announce the third mystery; then pray the Our Father Pray ten Hail Marys Turn , then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy towards us, and, after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O pious, O sweet Virgin Mary! V. Queen of the most Holy Rosary, pray for us: R. T h a t we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. L E T US P R A Y O God, whose only-begotten "Son, by His life, death, and resurrection, has purchased for us the rewards of eternal life, grant, we beseech Thee, tha t , meditating upon these mysteries of the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary , we may imitate what they contain, and obtain what they promise, through the same Christ, our Lord. Amen. MEDITATIONS FOR THE BY JOSEPH A.BREIG N I H I L OBSTAT : J O H N A . 8CHULIEN, S . T . D , CENSOR LIDRORUM I M P R I M A T U R : ® MOYSES E. KELEY ARCHBISHOP OP M I L W A U K E E DECEMBER 3 1 , 1 9 5 2 COVER PAINTING BY MIMI KORACH CATECHETICA! GUILD EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY ST. PAUL, MINNESOTA COVER COPYRIGHT 1 9 5 3 B T ARTISTS AND WRITERS GUILD, I N C . , AND CATECHETICAL GUILD EDUCATIONAL SOCIETY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THROUGHOUT T H E WORLD. DESIGNED AND PRODUCED BY ARTISTS AND WRITERS GUILD, I N C . P R I N T E D I N T H E U.S.A. BY W E S T E R N P R I N T I N G AND LITHOGRAPHING COMPANY. PUBLISHED SIMULTANEOUSLY I N CANADA BY P A L M PUBLISHERS, MONTREAL. (Sonienls T o ALL FAMILIES 1 T H E ANNUNCIATION 2 T H E VISITATION 3 . T H E BIRTH OF OUR LORD 4 T H E PRESENTATION OF OUR LORD IN THE TEMPLE 5 T H E FINDING OF OUR LORD IN THE TEMPLE 6 T H E AGONY OF OUR LORD IN THE GARDEN 7 . T H E SCOURGING AT THE PILLAR 8 T H E CROWNING WITH THORNS 9 T H E CARRYING OF THE CROSS 10 T H E CRUCIFIXION AND DEATH OF OUR LORD 11 T H E RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD 12 T H E ASCENSION OF OUR LORD INTO HEAVEN 13 T H E DESCENT OF THE HOLY GHOST UPON THE APOSTLES 14 T H E ASSUMPTION OF OUR BLESSED MOTHER INTO HEAVEN 15 T H E CORONATION OF OUR BLESSED MOTHER IN HEAVEN PAGE 4 9 14 18 22 2 5 29 3 3 3 6 3 9 4 2 4 5 49 5 3 56 60 ord E V E R Y C H I L D who comes into the world is free to accept or not to accept, sooner or later, membership in the family into which he is born. He can ratify that membership by loving his father and mother, his brothers and sisters, his uncles, aunts and cousins; or he can repudiate it by refusing to love them. In each human being there is this wonderful and awful, this frightening and yet consoling, freedom of choice. God made men and women for God, first to serve Him, then to be His sons and daughters and to live with Him, sharing His infinite goods. But man, by an imperious act of his free will, decreed otherwise. Man chose to go his own way. He selected for him- self the role of Prodigal Son. He imagined that men would be like gods, although in fact they became like swine. And God, were He not God, might have TOE BIRTH OF OUR LORD 1 9 said, "So be it. Have your way. The catastrophe is of your making; live with it." But God is God, and out of evil He is able to bring good. The fall of man, wicked though it was, opened the way for God to become, in the eyes of mankind, what Chesterton has called, in a marvelous poem, "God beyond God." The missal, with a similar holy daring, tries to express the same stunning mystery in the statement about the fortunate fall that brought so great a Redeemer. Francis Thompson, too, felt the shattering impact of God's goodness: He wrote of Christ as a hound pursuing him down the laby- rinthine ways of his own mind and bringing him at last to bay. "Blessed is he," said Jesus Christ, "who shall not be scandalized in Me." The goodness of God, as shown forth in the Incarnation, is a scandal, a stum- bling-block, to the intellect of fallen and sinful man. Chesterton has been criticized for saying that faith is believing the incredible. But the mysteries of the Faith, and above all the Incarnation, are frankly in- credible. To the eyes of our natural minds, they are too good to be true. Only by a supernatural gift of God do we believe them as they demand to be be- lieved—firmly and constantly, without the shadow of a passing doubt, without questioning. Only by the gift of God do we become as little children who, be- - 2 0 MEDITATIONS FOR THE FAMILY ROSARY cause they are innocent, can stand wide-eyed in the stable under the Star and not be crushed under the measureless weight of the goodness of God. The story is as simple as a child's tale, and yet too profound for anyone but God Himself completely to understand. It goes like this: The Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity would not abandon man to his self-chosen and unspeakably dreadful fate. In justice to the Divine Nature that is Theirs, They insisted upon a divine reparation for man's sin against God. But the sin was man's, and there had to be a human reparation, too. To man, human reparation was possible; divine reparation impossible. Very well; the Second Person of the Trinity, God Him- self, would become man, would take a human na- ture. In that nature He, the Divine Person, would make the divine and human reparation. He would reunite man with God, and He would do so by do- ing for man something that is impossible even to God in His own nature and is infinitely abhorrent to Him. He would die for man—even the unspeak- able death of the Cross. Now to say that the very thought of this makes the mind reel is still to fail to come within an infinity of expressing the awful reality. Yet such is the grace which was poured forth from the Cross that mere men and women, millions of them, have died dread- THE BIRTH OF OUR LORD 2 1 ful deaths as martyrs in Christ and for Christ. We have almost become accustomed to such Christian heroism. We can even see ourselves, if necessary, ris- ing to such heights through God's grace. We can go through life with a constant determination to die any death rather than deny Christ. Thus it is that somehow we feel at home in the company—in the very family—of Him whose awful holiness would otherwise crush us. He is our Infant, our Child, our Brother, our Father. True, He is our Creator and will be our Judge; but we think of Him chiefly as our Beloved. He is our God, but neverthe- less He is thevnoblest and most loved member of our human family. He died for us, but now He lives for us, and with us, and in us; and we live by His life flowing through us. It is, then, when we are most like children cluster- - • * ing around a Maiden and her Baby in a hidden cave among the animals, that we perhaps come closest to knowing God in this life. At Christmas time, on the feast of the Nativity, we feel something of the joy that is to be ours, and something of the eternal secur- ity and at-homeness for which we wait. For God is Good, families are good, a home is good, and humility and love and laughter are good. Christmas is the festival of the Holy Family, and, of that family, all are members who know God, love God, and serve - 2 2 MEDITATIONS FOR THE FAMILY ROSARY God. Heaven is where God is, angels are, and good people are; and a stable could serve for heaven, as it did the night the Eternal was born into our f a m i l y in order that we might be reborn into His. T H E P R E S E N T A T I O N seems to me to be especially a "St. Joseph mystery"; that is, a mystery especially pointing to the mysterious holiness and the immense importance of fatherhopd. In my meditations on the Presentation I always feel a hope that this occasion, if no other, brought Joseph forward for a little while out of the obscurity which he invariably chose for himself. I like to thinlc that he may have carried the Christ Child to the Temple. I see him heading a little procession of rela- tives and friends. I imagine them taking his hand and congratulating him Possibly, this once, he stood in the forefront, rather than in the background, as the Little One was offered 4 THE PRESENTATION OF OCR LORD IN THE TEMPLE 2 3 for the first time, formally and publicly, as the one Sacrifice worthy of God. That would be fitting. We do not sufficiently realize that St. Joseph stood in the place of God with respect to God's incarnate Son. This is a dignity overwhelming to contemplate. It is an overwhelming thought, but it is a plain fact. God Incarnate bound himself to obey St. Joseph. He bound Himself to honor Joseph as His father. The authority of God over the human Christ was exercised through St. Joseph, just as God's authority over other children is exercised through their fathers. To put it quite simply, Joseph was the head of the Holy Family. He was the perfect father. Through him, God's providence operated with respect to Jesus and Mary. It was through Joseph, then, that God presented His only begotten Son in the Temple, to be offered by the high priest for the service of God and the service of mankind. The Presentation was a Holy Sacrifice before the Mass. It was a pledge of the Sacri- fice of Calvary and a pledge of the Sacrifice of the Mass. The decision for that sacrifice came through St. Joseph. Not until we have understood St. Joseph's great fatherhood can we have a proper philosophy of fa- therhood and familyhood—of ourselves as fathers or mothers or sons or daughters. 2 4 MEDITATIONS FOR T H E F A M I L Y ROSARY St. Joseph's fatherhood was spiritual, not physical. Yet, precisely because of that, it was the truest father- hood on earth. Exactly because of his virginity and chastity, Joseph was father of the Christ Child in the noblest, highest, and most real sense. For fatherhood—true fatherhood—is enormously more spiritual than it is physical. Mere physical fatherhood is relatively as unimportant as mere physical sonship. What would we think of a son who said that his duty toward his father was done the moment he was born? What kind of father would hold that he owed nothing to his children beyond their conception? No; it is in loving his children, caring for them, educating them, rearing them for eternal life, that the father earns title to his fatherhood—to his associa- tion with God, not only in creating, but also in all that the fatherhood of God implies, including re- demption and salvation. That is what makes a father truly a father; and in that St. Joseph was pre-emi- nent. In that, he was more truly and more perfectly the father of the Christ Child than we are fathers of our children. That is why, more than any other man who ever lived or will live, he owns the title of father. Where we are imperfect fathers, he was the perfect father. His was, in the highest degree, the father- hood of the will, the fatherhood of self-sacrifice, the THE FINDING OF OUR LORD IN THE TEMPLE 27 fatherhood of purest and most unselfish love. If we are proud of our children on their baptismal day, was he not vastly prouder of the Christ Child on the day of the Presentation? If we are happy when there is placed in our arms a new Christian, was he not in- comparably happier to receive from the high priest the Christian of Christians, the Child who at that moment had pledged Himself to the Supreme Sacri- fice for the redemption and salvation of souls? The Presentation, to me, is a "St. Joseph mystery." I see it as moving us, who likewise are fathers, to consecrate our children, in union with him, to the service of God, as he consecrated the Christ Child. No LOVE is R I G H T LOVE that does not put God first. Unless God be foremost, even the love of a mother for her son has something profoundly wrong with it. Such is the lesson set forth for us in the mystery of the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple. 5 - 2 6 MEDITATIONS FOR THE FAMILY ROSARY It is a mystery with depths beyond depths. Why did this divine Boy let Mary and Joseph depart from Jerusalem without Him, each supposing that He was with the other in the caravan ? Why did He not tell them that He was staying behind ? "Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing," said Mary to Jesus when they found Him in the tem- ple amid the doctors of the Jewish law. Not lightly did this bravest and most patient of women use the term "sorrow." Why did the young Christ, when he could have prevented it with a word, allow these two whom He most loved to search for Him, sorrowing, three days in the ways and byways of the Holy City?* He did so, I think, because the salvation of souls was involved. Whatever the cost in sorrow to Him- self and the others—for we may be sure that He sor- rowed far more than they—a great example had to be set before all the Christian families of future ages. The lesson had to be driven home that we are made to know God, to love God, to serve God; that that is the reason for our existence, and that every- thing else must yield. Nothing, not even the love of mother and son, must be permitted to stand in the way. A great story is told of St. Francis Xavier. When he set forth, after a long absence from his family, to THE FINDING OF OUR LORD IN THE TEMPLE 2 7 convert the Orient, he came to a crossroad not far from where his parents lived. He reined-in his horse for a moment and sat staring along the road that led to home. Then he urged his horse the other way, to- ward the port where he would set sail His holy pru- dence told him that he loved his parents so very much that, if he paused for a visit with them, he might give up his great calling. St. Francis Xavier knew the lesson that is set forth for us in the mystery of the Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple. "Did you not know," the young Christ asked His Mother, "that I must be about My Father's business ?" Of course she knew. It was not for herself alone that she sorrowed, nor was it for himself alone that Joseph sorrowed. They sorrowed for our benefit. They sorrowed in order that we might have it impressed upon us that God comes first, that no love is a good love unless it includes God, puts God foremost, and is directed ultimately to God's service and His glory. Not many are called upon for sacrifices as heroic as that of St. Francis Xavier. But of each of us some sacrifice is asked. Of each of us it is demanded that love—even the most natural and good love—be ulti- mately unselfish and ultimately divine if it is to be true love and right love. For unless love is unselfish, it is not really love at all; or at least it is a misdirected . and a self-destroying love. - 28 MEDITATIONS FOR THE FAMILY ROSARY Every father and mother, every child, every family wishing to be true to God must learn sooner or later the lesson of this mystery of the Finding. Everyone who would save his soul must come to the decision that is expressed in the words, "Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business?" Every boy and girl called to a vocation—whether it be the religious vocation, or the vocation of marriage and thé founding of a new Christian family, or the vocation of single life in the world—every boy and girl ought to be prepared to address that question, if necessary, to his father and mother: "Must I not be about My Father's business?" But no parent should ever make it necessary for " any child to ask that question. On the contrary, every father and mother should address it, on proper occa- sions, to their children: "Do you not know, son (or daughter), that you must in due time be about your Father's business—God's business ? Do you not know what you were made for? Don't you understand that you exist to serve God? Do you not see that you can- not be false to Him without being false to your very being? It is your business to be about His business. It is not for you to decide whether you should serve Him. It is for you only to determine in what way of life you can best serve Him. Now—off with you and be at i t " THE AGONY OF OUR LORD I N THE GARDEN 2 9 That is the attitude that parents should take to- ward the futures of their children. Any other atti- tude is a fool's attitude. Love that does -not want children to serve God is false love and wicked love. And it was to teach us this that Joseph and Mary walked sorrowing about Jerusalem, and that the Boy Christ, secretly sorrowing also, allowed them to search for Him through the anxious hours. 6