From Archbishop Donoghue

Rosary Rally
October 23, 1994
St. Thomas More Church
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My brothers and sisters,

The dictionary defines the word “rally” in three ways: first, to bring back to a state of order - second, to come together for a common purpose - and third, to revive, to recover.

And I think that the event we are celebrating together today, the annual Rosary Rally, fulfills within itself all these definitions, for truly we are gathered for a common purpose, a purpose which will, if we have faith, restore to our society the order and propriety for which we all long, and in which the religious sensibilities of people might have a chance to recover and to revive.

And that purpose, in the ancient tradition of our Catholic religion, is to announce once again, the work of salvation, and the parts played in that miracle by Our Lord Jesus Christ, and by His beloved mother, Mary, and somehow - through our own enthusiasm and our own willingness to stand before the world and declare the vital message of our faith - somehow we know that God will hear our prayers, that He will be moved by the compassion of Our Lady for her servants here below, and that if we walk firmly on the path of the sacraments and of prayer, calling our brothers and sisters to join us on our pilgrimage, Jesus Christ will continue to offer us all the forgiveness and the redemption that we need, if we are to have happiness in this life, and beatitude in the next.

Today, we welcome the opportunity to enjoy the ritual and prayer of Holy Mother Church, as we present ourselves before Jesus’ Holy Presence, and as we call upon His mother to fill our lives with knowledge and with the desire to imitate her Son’s life in our own lives.

We believe that by exposing our souls to the True and Real Presence, and by studying the events of Christ’s earthly sojourn, we will gain the knowledge that we need in order to become like the Master, and to show forth His goodness not just for one another, but for the world to see, to acknowledge, and with the grace of God, to make its own.

But to achieve the sustained spiritual energy necessary for our task, it is also required that we never cease to hone our own spiritual skills, to keep alive the freshness of spirt that was given to us at Baptism, and to retain the zeal for doing the will of God, with which we were sealed at Confirmation.

To capture this zeal - the true power of the Holy Spirit - our thoughts and our actions must be infused on an ongoing and regular basis with the thoughts and actions of Christ and His mother, and to make this so, we must never cease to pray, and to recall the events of our Lord’s life, the attitudes that He exhibited in all of His earthly encounters, and the part played by our Lady, as she followed her Son throughout His life, and faithfully to the end.

The Rosary, as a spiritual discipline is a tried and true exercise for bringing to life this effect we desire as exemplars of the Gospel - the effect that makes visible to those we serve, not our own thoughts and attitudes, but the thoughts and attitudes of Jesus Christ.

In Butler’s Lives of the Saints, which is truly the family album of Catholic Christianity, we read that the Rosary “is a prayer - a prayer by which the faithful are taught to honor our divine Redeemer by meditating on the fifteen principal mysteries of His life and of His Mother. . . it is an epitome of the gospel, a history of the life, sufferings and triumphant victory of Jesus Christ, and an exposition of what He did in the flesh for our salvation. The principal object of every Christian’s devotion ought to be always to bear in mind these mysteries. .. to make them the subject of meditation, and to mould his affections, regulate his life and form his spirit by the impressions which they make on his soul.”

But even more basic than this mental recollection of the mysteries of Christ’s life, and the attitude which it might foster in us for the sake of the Church, is another truth imparted by developing a relationship with the Rosary. And this is the truth, not of whom we strive to be before others, in our quest to teach the Gospel, but rather, the truth of how we feel ourselves about the presence of Christ in our own hearts. At the risk of sounding modern, when in fact this principle is found in all ancient wisdom, feeling must precede intellectualization (knowing), and in the figure of Mary, we see this axiom perfectly revealed. The Rosary calls to our minds the many aspects of Christ’s life, death and resurrection, to be sure - but it also should awaken in our hearts a shared feeling, an empathy with the mother of Jesus Christ, and the mother of the Church. Under the spell of its spiritual hypnosis, the Rosary can uncover for us the absolute giving of Mary, as she turned over her life to the service of her Son; and by extension, how she turns over her life to the service of all those He came to save.

We remember, in this context, the words of Christ:

The man who is not with me is against me, and the man who does not gather with me scatters.

Certainly, Mary is the first child of mankind to unite with her Son, and to gather back to God that which has become scattered. She thus becomes the first model for all who would enter into and persevere in trying to understand the trials, the tribulations, the deep mystery and the ultimate victory of having faith in Jesus Christ.

In his book The Lord, the great Catholic write Romano Guardini wrote these often quoted words, but they are always worth hearing again on an occasion such as this:

Anyone who would understand the nature of a tree. should examine the earth that encloses its roots, the soil from which its sap climbs into branch, blossom, and fruit. Similarly, to understand the person of Jesus Christ, one would do well to look to the soil that brought him forth: Mary, his mother.

And I cannot resist just one more quotation - this from St. Ambrose, as he is quoted in our Holy Father John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor:

The life of [Mary] can serve as a model for everyone. . . The first stimulus to learning is the nobility of the teacher. Who can be more noble than the Mother of God? Who can be more glorious than the one chosen by Glory Itself?

My brothers and sisters, for every moment of her life Mary was completely open to the grace of God, and the best picture of her openness to faith and grace, is found in the Rosary, the wonderful chaplet of mystical union, which opens and closes with the two mysteries that exalt our Blessed Mother’s life, and which are the keys to the mystery of our own suffering and redemption. First, by her Immaculate Conception, God shows us that we share in the power to open our souls to His will at any moment - that what she enjoyed by a singular divine grace, we can share through an imitation of her virtue. And second, by her glorious Assumption, God illustrates physically, and in real time, the promise given to us all, in Jesus’ Death and Rising - the promise of eternal life.

As we continue our prayers today - as we rally our minds and hearts to the task of evangelization, of spreading the Good News far and wide - celebrating our Blessed Mother under her title “Our Lady of the Rosary”, let us also promise to walk at Mary’s side, learning from her timeless example, a pure and willing attitude, an attitude worthy of receiving the Saving Word of God, and willing to undertake any sacrifice on its behalf. Mary is indeed the good work prepared by God beforehand. Glorious indeed is Mary, the rich soil from which the tree of salvation rises, the glory of Jerusalem, the “glory chosen by Glory itself.”

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