TWENTY-FIFTH ROSE: THE WEALTH OF SANCTIFICATION
NEVER WILL
ANYONE really be able to understand the marvelous riches of
sanctification which are contained in the prayers and mysteries of the
Holy Rosary. This meditation on the mysteries of the life and death of
Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the source of the most wonderful
fruits for those who use it.
Today people want
things that strike and move and that leave deep impressions on the
soul. Nor has there ever been anything in the whole history of the
world more moving than the wonderful story of the life, death and glory
of Our Savior which is contained in the Holy Rosary. In the fifteen
tableaux the chief scenes or mysteries of His life unfold before our
eyes. How could there ever be any prayers more wonderful and sublime
than the Lord's Prayer and the Salutation of the Angel? All our desires
and all our needs are found expressed in these two prayers.
The meditation on
the mysteries and the prayers of the Rosary is the easiest of all
prayers, because the diversity of the virtues of Our Lord Jesus Christ
and the different stages of His life which we study refresh and fortify
our mind in a wonderful way and help us to avoid distractions.
For learned people
these mysteries are the source of the most profound doctrine but simple
people find in them a means of instruction well within their reach.
![SAINT CAJETAN](secret-rosarycajetan.jpg)
We must learn this easy form of
meditation before progressing to the highest state of contemplation.
This is the view of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the advice that he gives
when he says that first of all one must practise on a battlefield, as
it were, by acquiring all the virtues which the Holy Rosary gives us to
imitate. The learned Cajetan says that this is the way that we reach a
really intimate union with God----for without this union contemplation
is
nothing other than a dangerous illusion which can lead souls astray.
If only the
Illuminists or the Quietists [1] of today had followed
this piece of advice they would never have fallen so low nor would they
have caused such scandals and upset the devotions of good people. To
think that it is possible to say prayers that are finer and more
beautiful than the Our Father and the Hail Mary is to fall prey to a
strange illusion of the devil.
These heavenly prayers are the support, the strength and the safeguard
of our souls----but I must admit that it is not always necessary to say
them as vocal prayers. It is quite true that, in a sense, mental prayer
is more perfect than vocal prayer, but, believe me, it is really
dangerous, not to say fatal, to give up saying the Rosary of your own
accord under the excuse of seeking a more perfect union with God.
Sometimes a soul that is proud in a subtle way and who may have done
everything that he can do interiorly to rise to the sublime heights of
contemplation that the Saints have reached, may be deluded by the
noon-day devil into giving up his former devotions because he thinks
that he has found a greater good. He then looks upon his erstwhile
practices as inferior and only fit for ordinary and mediocre souls.
But this kind of soul has deliberately turned a deaf ear to the prayers
and salutation taught us by an Archangel and even to the Prayer which
God made and taught us and which He said Himself. "Thus therefore shall
you pray: Our Father . . . " [2] Having reached this
point such a soul drifts from its first illusion into still greater
ones and falls from precipice to precipice.
Believe
me,
dear brothers of the Rosary Confraternity, if you genuinely wish to
reach a high level of prayer in all honesty and without falling into
the traps that the devil sets for those who pray, say your whole Rosary
every day, or at least five decades of it.
If, by the
grace of God, you have already reached a high level of prayer, keep up
the practice of saying the Holy Rosary if you wish to remain in that
state and if you hope, through it, to grow in humility. For never will
anyone who says his Rosary every day become a formal heretic or be led
astray by the devil. This is a statement that I would gladly sign with
my blood.
On the
other
hand if Almighty God in His infinite mercy draws you to Him as forcibly
as He did some of the Saints while saying the Rosary, make yourself
passive in His hands and let yourself be drawn towards Him. Let God
work and pray in you and let Him say your Rosary in His way and this
will be enough for the day.
But
if you are still in the state of active contemplation or the usual
prayer of quietude, which is to say that of placing yourself in the
presence of God and loving Him, you have every reason in the world not
to give up saying your Rosary. Far from making you lose ground in
mental prayer or stunting your spiritual growth, it will be the most
tremendous help to you. You will find that it will be a real Jacob's
ladder with fifteen rungs and by each one of these you will go from
virtue to virtue and from light to light. Thus, without danger of being
misled, you will easily come to the fullness of the age of Jesus
Christ.
1. Quietism and
lluminism were heresies of Saint Louis' day. Adherents of the former
school and also those of the latter had an exaggerated idea of Divine
inspiration and denied the necessity of individual effort in the
spiritual life. Madame Guillon was the chief exponent of Quietism in
France. M.D.
2. Matt. 6:9.
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