From Archbishop Donoghue

Rosary Rally
October 3, 1999
Our Lady of the Assumption Church
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Dear Friends in Christ,

When we are young, we learn about our Lady and usually, hopefully, we become acquainted with the Rosary at the same time. The Rosary is such a prevalent sign in our world, not only of the Catholic Church’s devotion to Mary, but a sign of the Church herself, that I doubt any of us who are Catholic, ever let the thought of Mary, or of the prayer discipline attached to her name, stray very far from our spiritual life, and our spiritual exercise.

But I also remember, and many of you will join me in this recollection – I also remember as a youngster thinking, “Why do we say these prayers over and over,” and I remember the impatience that would discomfort me greatly, as I sat in church or in the classroom, plodding through the Hail Mary’s, while through the window, I could see the outside, and hear the beguiling sounds of other children at play – and that’s where I would really want to be, and my impatience would grow even keener, as the decades moved slowly by, and my fingers creeped so deliberately down the chaplet, towards that final, and liberating, Hail Holy Queen.

Thank goodness, I – we – grew up, and learned the depth and breadth of what it is to be devoted to our Lady, and what it is to come to her on a regular basis through the marvelous practice of the Rosary. When intellectual maturity, and the spiritual needs which it prompts overtook me, then I learned of the restorative power of the Rosary - restorative, because it held the story and the meaning of Christ, and of all the events in Christ’s life which mean so much to us, when we apply them to our own lives. The thrill of expectation in the Joyful Mysteries – the heartbreak of confronting failure and mortality in the Sorrowful Mysteries – and the glorious expectations that well from our hearts, as we gain hope and strengthen our Faith through the Glorious Mysteries. These fifteen events – fifteen stations in the saga of our Lord’s life, and the beautiful entwining of our Lord’s life with that of His Mother, as I grew older, came to be the most excellent symbol of our understanding of human life, of Redemption, and of the nature of reality as propounded, and as preserved by our Holy Catholic Faith.

But now, as I – as we - grow even older, things are tending towards simplification, and my soul, although calmed by the ongoing recitation of the Hail Mary’s, and enriched by the contemplation of the divine mysteries of our Lord’s life, my soul seeks now an even simpler utterance, and a less mind-occupying weariness. For we draw nearer to our Queen as we approach the hour of our own deaths, and as we now say the Rosary, our thoughts also draw nearer to the thoughts of that beautiful final prayer – the Salve Regina – the Hail Holy Queen – which has been uttered countless millions of times, from open Catholic mouths and upturned Catholic hearts – and we hear with new, and perhaps final comprehension, those words, “… to thee do we send up our sighs”… to thee do we send up our sighs.

And this is it, dear friends – this is what happens when we say the Rosary – we send up, to heaven, to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and to the mother of our Lord, the very sighs of our hearts:

• the sighs we send up from gratitude, over the many joys that are ours to share during human life - our families, our friends, the loves of our life, and the goodness of all creation which is ours to enjoy and to grow upon;
• the sighs we send up from our sorrows, “mourning and weeping in this valley of tears,” as we see what is going on around us – the murder of infants, the terror of children wreaking violence upon children, the impersonal ruthlessness of biological engineering and genetic manipulation, the adoration of youthfulness, of pleasure, of money, of extremes in taste and of the most loathsome deprivations that can be conceived and acted out – many indeed are the sighs of our sorrows over this earth, over this once-to-be Eden, and these too-often-lost, “poor children of Eve”;
• and the sighs which rescue us – the sighs of our hope in glory – the sighs begun by that new daughter of Eve, our Blessed Lady Mary, who for all mankind, turned the prayer of those on earth to a new hope, a new light, a new dawn on the horizon of the East, the glory of Christ Risen, and the relief, the blessed relief of His promise, “I am going to prepare a place for you, so that where I am, you also may be.”

Dear friends, the Rosary has many meanings – it is the door which leads into a thousand worlds, worlds created by the needs of each day, the needs of every individual, and the overwhelming need of all mankind to be saved. And so we pray to Mary, the Lady of the Rosary, as she opens the door, beckoning us into a light we have never seen, but for which we have longed all the length of our days, saying… “after this our exile, dearest Mother, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” And dear friends, Mary keeps her word – for she is kind, loving, and sweet to her children – as Christ Himself learned first, and as we learn now. What more could we want? She is the Queen of our hearts.

In the name of the Father…

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