Joyful Mysteries

Owning Lent

I’m always telling my kids that they need to show responsibility and ownership or someone else will. For example, owning their toys and games means not breaking them, putting them away, and not losing pieces. If they don’t take responsibility for keeping them functional, they will get lost or break. Or I may accidentally throw out a random, loose piece or someone will step on and break something carelessly left on the floor. The lesson being taught is that one way or another, something is going to happen to those toys and games. It’s better to be the one in control rather than leave it up to others.

Similarly to responsible ownership of things, we also have to own our faith. What I mean by that is that we need to actively manage or participate in it. But it’s something we often fail at. We sort of float through life, going to Mass on Sundays and saying a few prayers but not much else. When we go to Mass, we go into autopilot with the responses and listen to the priest the same way we listen to someone giving a lecture or presentation. We’re there physically but absent spiritually. And many times, we don’t go out of our way to attend Adoration or the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Basically, we don’t give our faith a lot of thought.

Don’t be a Simon

We are often like Simon of Cyrene. He was forced into helping Jesus carry the cross. I like to think of him as someone who was there because he was curious about what was going on. He wanted to see who Jesus was and what was this big deal about him. I think he had no other plan than to passively watch the day’s events unfold. And the next thing he knew, the soldiers picked him out of the crowd and made him shoulder the weight of the cross. That was probably something unexpected and unwelcome.

Jesus said that we all must carry our crosses. But we have a choice. We can either choose our crosses or someone else will thrust one on us. In this season of Lent, we have many “crosses” to choose from. We can fast, abstain, and increase our prayers and charity. But the key is to actively invest in these practices to more fully embrace our faith and increase our love for Jesus. Otherwise, we become like Simon where hardships are thrust upon us.

In not embracing the faith, we may avoid the relatively minor crosses of Mass, prayer, fasting, etc. But we give up so much more. We lose the joy that comes from celebrations like Easter and Christmas and even Sunday Mass. Without the lows of fasting and the highs of celebration, we live in a flat desert of spirituality. We don’t feel connected to God or protected by Him. We are left to our own devices to face our often harsh world and the snares of the devil.

Active Faith in the Rosary

Compare Simon to Mary in the Second Joyful Mystery. She made a conscious decision to travel while pregnant and help her cousin Elizabeth. She wasn’t passive after the Annunciation but actively decided to serve others. It was probably an uncomfortable journey and a lot of hard work. But it was an active choice. It was a “cross” Mary wanted to carry.

Don’t let this Lent pass by. Own it. There’s still time to make a plan on how you want to make this time different and special. If you don’t already pray the Rosary daily, resolve to do it for the remainder of Lent. Make a plan to read Scripture daily, or fast, or visit a church and sit silently in prayer. Don’t be a Simon and think you can just observe Jesus at a distance. Be like Mary and the saints and actively embrace him.

Honor God by Resting on Sundays

My wife was reading a book with one of my sons called The Secret of the Hidden Scrolls. It’s a kids’ book of Bible stories. I listened to them read the first book which deals with the creation of the universe in the book of Genesis. I enjoyed a passage talking about why Sundays are a day of rest and we should treat them as such. The character asked why God rested if He’s all-powerful. Certainly, God couldn’t have been tired since He doesn’t have a physical body that needs rest. But God declared rest a good thing. Just as He created the world and animals for us, God created a day of rest, not for Him, but for us.

We live in a world where we try to cram so much into our days. In fact, there’s a new term that I think best exemplifies this tendency — rage browsing. Rage browsing is where we stay up browsing the internet late into the evening because we want to prolong the time we are awake doing something leisurely. It’s about us wanting to carve out time for ourselves in a world where it seems like someone else controls our schedules throughout the day. We want to put everything else aside to just relax.

Our faith tells us that we need to also carve out Sunday as a time to relax. This isn’t just good advice or some pandemic trend, it’s the Fourth Commandment.

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.“

This Commandment not only covers our Sunday Mass obligation but commands us to rest as God did after creating the universe. This should be the easiest Commandment to follow. God is telling us to just stop working and relax.

The Rosary and Rest

Meditate on the Third Joyful Mystery, the Nativity. In the Nativity story, angels appeared to shepherds and told them of Jesus’ birth. They dropped what they were doing to go and honor Jesus. We should be like the shepherds and pause our busy lives for one day to honor God. If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, then let’s imitate God by resting as He did.

Exactly what it means to rest is subject to debate. An orthodox Jew doesn’t cook or operate any machinery on the Sabbath. I don’t think we need to take it that far. The general guidance is that you should make it a day of increased meditation and focus on God. I know for a lot of us, it’s difficult to cut the weekend in half when there is so much to do. You may have to rearrange and reprioritize work and tasks. Consider it a sacrifice that further honors God. Here are some ways to spend your Sunday that captures the spirit of taking a day to rest:

Abstain from large amounts of housework, but go ahead and tidy up things if it makes you more relaxed.
Throw some laundry in the washing machine if you must, but save the sorting and ironing for later.
Spend some time as a family. Go for a hike or play a game together.
Do some cooking or baking as a family and enjoy a brunch or dinner together.
Put away your electronic devices for a certain period of time.
Pray, read, or watch religious-themed media like Formed.
Discuss the day’s scripture readings and the Mass homily.
Just sit quietly, outside if the weather is nice. Silence is golden.
Call or visit with friends and family members, especially your parents.
Try to schedule classes and events on a day other than Sunday. Sometimes, this is unavoidable but try to keep Sunday as open as possible.

How to Listen to God in a Noisy World

All that noise, noise, noise! Who remembers that phrase from “How the Grinch Stole Christmas“? Now that I’m older, I can sympathize with the Grinch and his desire for some peace and quiet. I wonder if sometimes God thinks something similar… “how can they hear Me over all that noise, noise, noise”? We can learn about the gift of listening to God from the story of Zechariah.

Then Zechariah said to the angel,
“How shall I know this?
For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”
And the angel said to him in reply,
“I am Gabriel, who stand before God.
I was sent to speak to you and to announce to you this good news.
But now you will be speechless and unable to talk
until the day these things take place,
because you did not believe my words,
which will be fulfilled at their proper time.”
Meanwhile the people were waiting for Zechariah
and were amazed that he stayed so long in the sanctuary.
But when he came out, he was unable to speak to them,
and they realized that he had seen a vision in the sanctuary.
He was gesturing to them but remained mute.
Saturday of the Third Week of Advent | USCCB

I always viewed Zechariah’s silence as a punishment for his disbelief in the power of God. However, in one meditation book I read, the author wants us to look at his silence not as a punishment but as an opportunity. It was an opportunity for Zechariah to listen to what God was telling him. God freed Zechariah from all the noise, both external and internal, so that he could finally listen.

Notice how Zechariah was stricken mute when he was praying in the Holies of Holies. God was basically telling him to be quiet and listen when he prayed. I think often we are like Zechariah in our prayers. We ask God for this and that, expecting Him to answer. But we don’t give Him a chance to answer, we just keep talking and talking. Our prayers are all output. But do we take the time to accept input from God? Maybe God tries to answer but is drowned out because we won’t stop to listen.

Any parent of small children can sympathize. My kids have a tendency to talk in long, run-on sentences. Even if I want to comment or answer a question, I can’t because there’s no opportunity. Of course, I could always interrupt, but that would be impolite. God, the ultimate gentleman, probably acts the same way. Instead of interrupting us, he waits patiently for the right opportunity. And that means we need to stop the talking and be still enough to hear Him.

Quietness and stillness are at a premium this year. With many of us working from home and our kids remote schooling, finding a quiet time and place during the day is challenging. It may require more of an effort. Perhaps we need to wake up earlier before the daily chaos kicks in to pray the Rosary and just sit silently to listen to God (a good cup of coffee helps). Maybe it means turning off the TV, computer, and phones earlier in the evening and just meditate in a dark, quiet house. These are sacrifices, but isn’t it worth it for a chance to listen to God’s personal advice to you? Or would you rather He strike you mute for nine months?

Just One More Day: The Fifth Joyful Mystery

I coach youth soccer. I often see my players give up easily when something doesn’t come naturally to them. Someone may have a hard time passing the ball across the field. Or maybe they don’t dribble as well as some of the other players. So after having the ball stolen from them a few times, they want to stop playing because they’ve decided soccer isn’t their sport. They don’t understand that anything new will be difficult but they will get better if they stick with it. But it’s not just children that have a hard time staying with something that is difficult. Adults fall victim to this urge to give up when times are tough too.

I think many of us give up way too easily in the face of hardship. When facing a challenge, we may pray a Rosary or go to Mass and ask God for help. For many of us, the only time we pray earnestly is when we are facing something difficult. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But often we tend to think we’re holding up our end of the bargain with God and He better answer quickly. If God doesn’t deliver, we get upset believing that the whole prayer endeavor was pointless and give it up.

Let’s look at the Fifth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Mary and Joseph searched for Jesus for three days in sorrow. What if they had given up after one day of searching? Now I’m sure Jesus would have grown up just fine since he is the Son of God. But Mary and Joseph would have regretted not looking a little harder for their lost son. But as any parent knows, finding a lost child is too important to just give hope after a short period of time. They kept searching and hoping despite the fruitlessness of the first days of searching. And they finally found Jesus.

What makes praying to God frustrating in times of difficultly is that we don’t know when or how God answers. Unfortunately, there isn’t a chart we can look at to know when God answers our prayers. It would be convenient if we could look up the Catechism and see that one Rosary novena will yield a small request being granted within two weeks. But that’s not how God works. For some, it’s three days in sorrow, for others it’s three decades.

As much as we don’t enjoy hardship and sorrow, they are powerful tools that draw us closer to God. In realizing our sorrow and asking God for help, we also acknowledge our dependence on God. We realize that true happiness is something that comes through Him, not in our worldly institutions or through our own actions. Furthermore, in prayer, we may receive comfort, strength, and grace in ways we don’t even realize. We may be so focused on God wanting to address a particular sorrow, we overlook the other ways He may be answering us. At the very least, God may be giving us increased strength to endure our hardship for another day.

We have to realize that God’s timeframe and overall goal is much different than ours. We may hope or expect an answer in a matter of days. But it may be months, years, or an entire lifetime before we get an answer. But what’s a single lifetime in God’s grand plan? Even the most terrible human suffering will be looked at as a trivial inconvenience compared to the eternal happiness of Heaven. God often answers our prayers by putting us on a track towards Heaven. That may not require eliminating our worldly problems. The saints understood this and endured many challenges and sorrows because they knew that God was helping them and others achieve lasting comfort in Heaven.

When you feel impatient or hopeless over life’s challenges, meditate on the Fifth Joyful Mystery. Think about how Mary and Joseph didn’t give up finding Jesus and neither should we. And often, like Mary and Joseph, we’ll find Jesus and relief from our suffering in the most obvious of places — our Father’s house, the Church.

New Joyful Mysteries Page

Good news everyone! I redesigned the layout of the Joyful Mysteries resource page. It’s much more app-like and acts better on smaller screens like phones and tablets. I’ll be working on the other mysteries this month and roll them out as they become available.

Thanks to some great WordPress plugins (a big shout out to Slide Anything and Tabs Responsive!), there are now tabs for each mystery and for each section within the mystery for intentions, meditations, videos, and scripture passages (related links tab coming soon). Within the meditations, you can scroll/swipe left and right to read a random meditation from other websites. If you like what you read, be sure to follow the links and visit those sites. This new layout should reduce the number of pages you have to navigate to pray the mysteries.

https://www.rosarymeds.com/the-joyful-mysteries/

I hope you enjoy this new layout and it helps make your Rosary prayer more fruitful. Maybe one day I can transform this into a real app. Baby steps…

Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Piety

One aspect of parenting I find incredibly difficult is trying to teach my kids to do the right things on their own. I don’t want to have to continually nag them to clean their room, not to interrupt when someone is talking, say “please” and “thank you,” and all those other little things that create peace and pleasantness. It’s an ongoing challenge to instill in them a sense of wanting to do the right thing and to see that it makes life so much better for everyone.

This brings me to the final gift of the Holy Spirit — piety. This is the wanting or longing to do God’s Will. It’s not living the faith out of fear or responsibility, it’s wanting to do God’s Will because we desire to live in God’s grace. It’s wanting to go to Mass, pray, and receive the sacraments, not out of a sense of obligation or under penalty of sin, but because we want a close relationship with God. Piety builds on those other gifts of the Holy Spirit, understanding and wisdom, to know that there is nothing better than living in God’s grace. Piety instills that longing to live in that grace and ultimately, in joy.

I think there’s a reason why we are called God’s children and we call him “Father.” When it comes to our interaction with God, we can act childish at times. We do things because we are told to. We often go to Mass or pray before meals because we feel the Church nagging us into it. Like a child reluctantly cleaning his room, we do these things without joy. We do them begrudgingly because we don’t understand the bigger picture. If we did see it, we would gladly go to Mass, pray, and sacrifice like the saints because we would understand that not living in God’s grace is not living at all. We need this gift of piety to see through the drudgery of spirituality and see it as the path to true joy and happiness.

Piety in the Rosary

Let’s look at St. Simeon in the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary. Like many people, I picture St. Simeon as a fragile old man who lived a difficult life. He spent all his time in the temple praying only to finally see the baby Jesus before dying. Many of us might see that as a pointless life. But God is challenging us to see our faith differently in this mystery. We should see Simeon as leading an exceptional life — one that is centered around forming a relationship with God. We should see the joy that comes through piety because it’s a life filled with God’s grace instead of fickle worldly desires. For all we know, Simeon may have come to the temple every day joyful in his encounters with God through prayer. And we too can find joy being with God through prayer.

We should also remember that Mary guides us towards a life of piety. As Queen of Heaven (Fifth Glorious Mystery), she desires everyone to enter into God’s kingdom. That means living in a way that is centered around God. How do we expect to live with God in Heaven if we never make an effort to live in His grace on earth? Fortunately, Mary is constantly guiding us toward God. She bridges the gap between us and God through her messages and apparitions throughout history and her mediation between humanity or Her son, Jesus. When we pray the Fifth Glorious Mystery, let’s remember to lay our struggles living a pious life at Mary’s feet and earnestly seek her help.

Piety is all about saying “yes” to God. This is no better represented in the Rosary than in the First Joyful Mystery. Mary whole-heartedly said yes to God. It wasn’t a “yes” born out of fear. After all, God isn’t some tyrant demanding strict obedience. He gives us the freedom to say “no” but provides us an overly abundant number of reasons to say “yes.” Piety is about having the wisdom and right judgment to weigh a pious life against impiety and see that the pious life wins out in every way.

Piety: The Easier Path

Going back to getting children to do the right thing. Often, I try to show my kids that doing the right thing is easier than doing the wrong or lazy thing. Keeping a clean room means that toys and books don’t get broken or lost. Sharing means that everyone gets more toys and games to play with. Going to bed on time means more rest and more energy.

The same is true with leading a pious life; it can lead to more joy. When we want to follow God, we choose not to follow Satan and fall for his lies. We then avoid a life of sin and avoid vices like greed, gluttony, envy, and anger. All of those choices, while maybe providing short term pleasure, lead to long term unhappiness. In short, it’s a bad investment of our time and energy. Piety is such a small investment but leads to the biggest payoff — a life in God’s grace and an eternity in Heaven.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Counsel

Spiderman has a superpower called “spidey sense.” He can sense danger before any of his physical senses detect anything. This allows him to quickly move out of harm’s way and he looks like he can move at supernatural speeds. This power is akin to a Star Wars Jedi having lightning-quick reflexes because they can use the Force to see things moments before they happen.

The Holy Spirit gives us a spiritual superpower through the gift of Counsel. Counsel allows us to judge rightly what to do in a particular circumstance. It’s our spiritual “spidey sense” that tells us if something seems right or wrong morally. Counsel truly is a supernatural gift because we can sense right and wrong at a young age before we can explain them. For example, most of us haven’t read or memorized every law in the Catechism. And yet, we know what is good and what is evil without this academic knowledge. That’s the gift of counsel working in our lives.

God imprints a natural law onto everyone’s heart. Natural law is our ability to intrinsically deduce morally correct behavior. And while we all may have the natural law imprinted on us, the gift of counsel amplifies it. It takes a sense that we all have and makes some of us more aware of the moral dangers around us. And when we are more aware of them, we can use the gift of wisdom to act correctly.

Counsel in the Rosary

When you pray the First Luminous Mystery, Jesus’ Baptism, remember to pray for all of those who are born again in Christ but maybe need to be reminded of what it means to be Christian. Their awareness of natural law may be diminished. We need to pray that they receive the gift of counsel. Or maybe, God is calling us to evangelize more to our brothers and sisters that may have fallen away from their faith.

Likewise, praying the First Luminous Mystery is a good time to also pray for all our brothers and sisters who have not been baptized. God has imprinted His natural law in their hearts as well. They too could use the help of the Holy Spirit in the gift of counsel. After all, when more people, regardless of religion, have a better sense of right and wrong, we all benefit. We can all live in a world that is more peaceful with people who are more pleasant to be around.

Remember the gift of counsel when you meditate on the Second Joyful Mystery, the Visitation. Remember how counsel is an almost supernatural ability? Think about how Elizabeth, without being told, knew that Mary carried Jesus, the Savior, in her womb. All she did was hear Mary’s voice and she “was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:42). Counsel not only gives us the ability to sense what is wrong but also heightens our ability to feel God’s presence in our lives and respond joyfully.

Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the gift of counsel. It will help you move to follow God’s Will on a more instinctual level; almost automatically. We already have so much to remember and worry about in our lives regarding work, family, health, finances, etc. Wouldn’t it be nice if following God was something we did more naturally? Wouldn’t it be great if instead of wondering, “Is this the right thing to do?”, we knew it is the right thing to do. That’s what the Holy Spirit gives us through counsel.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Understanding

I’m going to explore the next gift of the Holy Spirit — understanding. Understanding is closely related to wisdom as well as knowledge. It shares many of the same attributes as wisdom such as engaging one’s mind. If wisdom is the desire to seek the truth, understanding helps explain the “why” behind those truths.

When I think about understanding, I think about my kids. I find it easy to resort to an authoritarian mode where I expect them to blindly follow my instructions. But it is far more effective to have kids understand the reason behind my requests rather than resorting to “because I said so.” Without understanding, we are in a mode of “because I said so” with God. Our Catholic Faith is reduced to a set of rules we follow merely to stay out of Hell. It’s the gift of understanding that elevates us to follow God because we can see the sound reasoning behind the rules.

Understanding allows us to see the world as God does in a limited way. We cannot comprehend all that God does, but the gift of understanding allows us to partially know and better appreciate God’s plan. The gift of understanding provides us that insight into God’s plan, and hence, passionately follow it as the saints do. Understanding is what moves us beyond obeying God because He’s the ultimate authority figure into wanting to follow Him because we know it’s ultimately beneficial to us.

Understanding in the Rosary

Let’s look at the Fifth Joyful Mystery, Finding Jesus in the Temple. A young Jesus is asking and answering questions amongst the learned scribes and scholars. God doesn’t impart the gift of understanding solely through learned scholars. In this mystery, it came through a child. God has a tendency to pick unlikely messengers whether it be Moses in the Old Testament, Jesus, Saint Peter and Paul, and numerous other saints. God often imparts understanding through unusual means. When you pray this mystery, ask yourself, are you open to all the ways God is speaking to you? Maybe He wants you to better understand Him and you’re not open to the way He delivers His messages.

Another great Rosary mystery that focuses on understanding is the First Sorrowful Mystery — The Agony in the Garden. Jesus begged God to find a different way to redeem the world but ultimately said He would do God’s Will. Jesus understood that God has a reason behind everything He does and allows to happen. Logically, we may not comprehend it or even agree with it, but it’s that gift of understanding that allows us to joyfully obey. It’s not blind obedience rooted in fear, but one where we know that what God asks of us is to our benefit.

Finally, contemplate the Fifth Sorrowful Mystery, Jesus’ Crucifixion. On the cross, one criminal challenged Jesus to save them all from death. The other criminal humbly understood who Jesus was and didn’t dare question why Jesus didn’t save Himself or them. He simply asked Jesus to remember him. That’s the root of understanding — not treating God like some sort of genie who gives us what we ask for. Instead, it’s understanding why God does what He does and seeing the greater good that comes from it.

Understanding is penetrating insight into the very heart of things, especially those higher truths that are necessary for our eternal salvation—in effect, the ability to “see” God.
Summa Theologiae (I/I.12.5; I/II.69.2; II/II.8.1–3)

Understanding is not easy. Like children, we often want to do things our way and resist any authority that tells us otherwise. This is why understanding is a gift since it’s not something easily obtained by ourselves. But it’s important to understand the “why” behind our faith. Everything we believe and do as Christians has a reason. The more we understand those reasons, the happier we will be doing God’s Will.

Gifts of the Holy Spirit: Wisdom

With the conclusion of the Easter season and now well into the Octave of Pentecost, I want to explore the gifts of the Holy Spirit and how they relate to various Rosary mysteries. As you know, I love making connections between various pillars of the Catholic Faith and the Rosary. The Rosary, after all, embodies all aspects of our faith which is why it’s such an important prayer and tool to embrace. Let’s dive into the first gift of the Holy Spirit — wisdom.

I’ll start with a scene from Star Wars, Episode II that explains the difference between knowledge and wisdom.

Wisdom is more than the acquisition and recitation of facts. You could memorize and quote every verse from the Bible. While that certainly makes you smart, it doesn’t make you wise. It won’t necessarily deepen your relationship with God. Knowledge is a matter of brain chemistry, focus, and perseverance. Given enough time and attention, many people could memorize pages in a textbook. But wisdom goes beyond the ability to store data in our brains.

According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, wisdom is both the knowledge of and judgment about “divine things” and the ability to judge and direct human affairs according to divine truth (I/I.1.6; I/II.69.3; II/II.8.6; II/II.45.1–5). I think the keyword is truth. Wisdom is about applying your knowledge to discover truth. Specifically, it’s about understanding the source of truth — God. Furthermore, wisdom forms the foundation of these gifts of the Holy Spirit. Because it’s through wisdom we learn about divine truths, our faith, and eventually God. Without wisdom, there can be no understanding of God’s Will and all the gifts and virtues He gives us.

Wisdom in the Rosary

We’ll first take a look at the Fourth Joyful Mystery, the Presentation. In the Gospel, we are introduced to Simeon and Anna, both prophets. They tell Mary and Joseph about Jesus’ destiny. They are speakers of truth because they have devoted themselves to following God’s Will. They sought out God in their lives through prayer and obtained the gift of wisdom that they could impart to others.

How about you? How devoted are you to follow God’s Will like Simeon and Anna? How much time and energy do you dedicate to learning about God? Are you devoted to prayer and forming a deep relationship with God like Simeon and Anna? Or is your focus solely on acquiring earthly knowledge without the desire to use it to discover God’s truth?

I also like what the Fourth Glorious Mystery has to teach us about wisdom. God assumed Mary into Heaven because He had a special role for her to play in our lives. She’s our guide who desires us to be in communion with God. To be in communion with God, we need wisdom to exercise correct judgment in learning God’s Will. That is no easy task. But God gives us Mary and the saints to help guide us. We aren’t left alone to our feeble minds and will to discover God’s truth like some sort of million-piece jigsaw puzzle. Mary offers us her assistance to acquire this wisdom of divine truth.

Finally, we look at the Third Glorious Mystery which is Pentecost. The fruit of this mystery is wisdom. When the Holy Spirit came to the apostles, he endowed them with wisdom. That wisdom transformed them from scared, confused individuals to brave, determined leaders of the early Church. They received a huge helping of truth at Pentecost which changed the course of human history. We too can tap into the wisdom the Holy Spirit gives as a gift to us to go out and bravely live according to God’s Will.

Wisdom Makes Saints

What makes a saint a saint is that wisdom or understanding of God’s truth. Because when you understand the truth about God, why would you have the desire to do anything the runs against it? We fall into sin because we do not fully possess this wisdom. If we truly understood God’s divine truth as the saints do, we wouldn’t refuse to live according to God’s Will. When we pray the Rosary, let’s ask the Holy Spirit that we open our hearts and minds to the gift of wisdom. This way, we remain in God’s grace which is a powerful defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.

Strength Comes From Humility

Balancing humility and pride can be difficult. On the one hand, many of us desire confidence and independence. As an adult, you strive to provide for both yourself and maybe a spouse and family. In the family or at work, you need to be dependable. People need to have confidence in you. You need to project a sense of strength. But you can’t go too far down that road and fall into the sin of pride. You need to keep in mind that you can’t do everything on your own and that you’re part of a greater community made up of people who can make their own contributions.

Humility is seen almost like a negative trait because it conveys a sense of weakness. It requires you to admit that you can’t do everything. You must admit dependence on others. And yet, it’s through humility that God pours his grace on us. One of the best examples is the Holy Family. In her article, Grace is Given to the Humble, Debra Black quotes Fr. John Tauler about Mary:

She became one spirit with God, and she was taught by Him; for she resigned herself as a fitting instrument to His dear Will, in fervent love for His glory. She was poor in spirit, and always bore herself in God with deep humility and self-annihilation; for she had no desires, no will, and was as passive, as though she were uncreated. And thus an entrance was made for God into her spirit, soul, and body.
Fr. John Tauler (14th century)

Mary was an empty vessel filled only with God’s grace, both spiritually and physically through giving birth to Jesus Christ. Her humility was a complete dependence on God. But that total submission didn’t make her weak. On the contrary, God was able to work through Mary and raise her up as Queen of Heaven and our Mediatrix. Mary shows that it’s through humility, not pride, that one achieves true greatness.

Also notable for his humility is Saint Joseph. Little is said about him in the Gospels. As a husband and father, he was the traditional head of the family. And yet, he was humble enough to understand that God had made special plans for his wife and child. Saint Joseph needed to show strength to step aside and have Mary and Jesus take center stage in God’s great plan. While there’s no mention of this in the Bible, I would have to imagine this would have been hard for Joseph to give up a role society expected him to have.

The Rosary Connection

Lessons in humility abound in the Rosary. And they all have to do with people letting go of their pride and earthly desires to allow God to work through them. First, look at the Visitation. Mary could have acted like a worldly queen upon learning that God chose her to bring the Messiah into the world. I’m sure many of us would flaunt how we were God’s chosen one. But Mary goes out to help her cousin Elizabeth. Mary’s first act as the Mother of God was to be in humble service to someone else.

This role of service carries on through the Fourth and Fifth Glorious Mysteries of the Rosary. Mary is Queen of Heaven. But the focus of that exultation isn’t Mary, but Jesus. In her many apparitions, Mary’s focus isn’t on herself but on her Son. She desires all of us to form a close and loving relationship with God through Jesus Christ and is willing to help us however possible. Again, Mary’s greatness is not through what she does herself, but through which her humility allows God to work through her.

Finally, consider the Fourth Joyful Mystery of the Rosary, the Presentation in the Temple. Think about both Simeon and Saint Joseph. Simeon shows great humility and patience. He devoted his life to serving God and for that, he was able to hold the infant Jesus before his death. Also remember Joseph, the silent protector in the background of Mary and Jesus’ life. He may not have been “showy” as the head of the family but he was humble enough to accept God’s role for him.

What do We Learn?

God gives great strength to the humble. Because humility leaves room in our hearts for God’s grace. In a way, humility is us actively setting aside room for God. We make a choice to put aside pride, greed, our busy schedules, our worries, and our earthly desires for God. We admit that there are things that only God can provide. We can’t find them on Amazon.com or any store. But leaving room for God means we are leaving room for that which will ultimately make us the strongest, most confident, and happiest.

Pride and personal holiness mix about as well as oil and water. Where our ego is, little if any room is left for God. What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ but to be someone who fills himself totally with God in order to bring him within the reach of everyone. But what union, grace or friendship with God can there be in a proud soul? What fervor, what degree of holiness? There is no possible compromise between God and a proud soul – either the soul would have to let go of itself, or God would have to stop being God.
Regnum Christi