Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
I might not have thought so as a teen, but I am thankful my parents chose for me the middle name of Mary. Mary, as in “Our Lady” the Mother of God. I now see it as an honor, one that perhaps forged a special connection that never completely went away (although it lay dormant for a period of time before having children of my own.) Mary, who is liturgically remembered on this date as “Our Lady of the Rosary.” I confess I do not regularly pray the rosary, but I appreciate what Pope John Paul II wrote about it in his apostolic letter on the Rosary, twenty years ago this month.
“To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ.” (Pope John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae)
The gospel reading from Luke for today’s memorial mass takes us to the Annunciation, which John Paul II references in his letter about Mary’s contemplation of Christ, “The eyes of her heart already turned to him at the Annunciation, when she conceived him by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the months that followed she began to sense his presence and to picture his features. When at last she gave birth to him in Bethlehem, her eyes were able to gaze tenderly on the face of her Son….Thereafter Mary’s gaze…would never leave him.”
In reflecting on this, it occurred to me that Mary provided for Jesus the maternal gaze that is such an important part of a child’s development, healthy sense of identity and worthiness of love. I’m not a theologian, but would venture to say that Mary had a profound impact on Jesus’ development even beyond the womb. And we can only imagine how this transformed Mary in the process.
So, who better than Mary to turn to as a model of contemplation of Christ’s face? Will you join me in contemplating with Her? “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you….”
~Eileen Miller