THE WORD AND THE FEAST
October 7, 2020: Celebrating our Blessed Mother of the Holy Rosary
Galatians 2:1-2, 7-14; Luke 11:1-4
There is a simple and wonderful definition for prayer (most probably from Martin Luther), which says: prayer is, not saying lies to God! It is a spot-on definition, because it gives us the crux of it all. One who prays should not only feel very good and consoled about it, but above all, be challenged by it.
In the letter to the Galatians today, St. Paul narrates that incident when he had to challenge Peter on his integrity: "If you, though a Jew, are living like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?" What does it matter what name you bear or to which denomination you belong or which saint is your patron, when your life does not reflect what you believe in?
If I believe in Jesus Christ, the only Son of God and my Saviour - then every person around me is my brother or my sister! That is why Jesus teaches us to call God, OUR father (or mother), because our relationship with God, defines our relationship with all others around us. If these two do not go in agreement, then we are liars, all our so-called prayers are merely, saying lies to God, and to the world.
What has to be there between us is merely love and love alone! How can I ever think of hating, fighting, judging, competing, ruining, maligning, envying, calumniating, belittling, trampling, exploiting the other... how can I do these if I truly believe what I believe! It is the reminder today from Jesus in the Gospel: accept God your Father and Mother from on High and live in love, like Children of one family, God's one, great, big family!
And our blessed mother teaches us another prayer, always to unite us as one family, as one children of God, along with her to praise the One who had done great things in her - the Rosary. It is a powerful tool for us everyday to praise the Lord and give glory to God for the great things that God does for us everyday, just as Mary did in her life and continues to do, in and through us when we pray the Rosary. The Rosary is a string of those beads that unite the world in endless praise to God our Father and Mother.