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Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, has proclaimed the year from October 2002 to October 2003 the "Year of the Rosary." In keeping with his desire to enkindle a renewed devotion to Mary through the Rosary, excerpts from his letter will be printed here throughout the year. Starting in November 2002, the Rosary will be said in the
Chapel at 8pm every Thursday. "The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium. Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a harvest of holiness... "The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer. It has all the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety. It is the echo of the prayer of Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian people sit at the school of Mary and are led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depth of His love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer..." "To the Rosary I have entrusted a number of concerns; in it I have always found comfort. Twenty-four years ago, on October 29, 1978, scarcely two years after my election to the See of Peter, I frankly admitted: 'The Rosary is my favorite prayer.' It is a marvelous prayer in its simplicity and its depth. It can be said that the Rosary is, in some sense, a prayer-commentary on the final chapter of the Vatican II Constitution Lumen Gentium, a chapter which discusses the wondrous presence of the Mother of God in the mystery of Christ and the Church. Against the background of the words Ave Maria the principal events of the life of Jesus Christ pass before the eyes of the soul. They take shape in the complete series of the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries, and they put us in living communion with Jesus through—we might say—the heart of his Mother." "The timeliness of this proposal (to declare 2002-2003 the Year of the Rosary) is evident from a number of considerations. First, the urgent need to counter a certain crisis of the Rosary, which in the present historical and theological context can risk being wrongly devalued, and therefore no longer taught to the younger generation. There are some who think that the centrality of the Liturgy, rightly stressed by the Second Vatican Council, necessarily entails giving lesser importance to the Rosary. Yet, as Pope Paul VI made clear, not only does this prayer not conflict with the Liturgy, it sustains it, since it serves as an excellent introduction and a faithful echo of the Liturgy, enabling people to participate fully and interiorly in it and to reap its fruits in their daily lives." "Mary's gaze, ever filled with adoration and wonder, would never leave Christ. At times it would be a questioning look as in the finding in the Temple; a penetrating gaze, as at Cana. At other times it would be a look of sorrow especially beneath the Cross. On Easter hers would be a gaze radiant with the joy of the Resurrection, and finally on the day of Pentecost, a gaze afire with the outpouring of the Spirit. In a way, these memories were to be 'rosary' which she recited uninterruptedly throughout her earthly life. In the recitation of the Rosary, the Christian community enters into contact with the memories and the contemplative gaze of Mary." Pope John Paul II |
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