The Rosary Is A Pilgrimage: Proximity To Mary, Proximity To God

Large Round Pietà, Jean Malouel (c. 1370-1415)

I

would like to share a threefold reflection on the significance of the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. When I pray the rosary, it is like I am going on a journey or a pilgrimage. Holding in your hands the rosary is like making your first step. Every bead takes you to the here-and-now of our Lord. Every decade is a destination. This journey stops at certain crossroads, but it never ends. When you reach the final decade it begins again and again, albeit interiorly. Praying the rosary is a person’s living out of the interior life journey even if the person is confined to just one place. Do not just pray the rosary, be the rosary. Mary herself recommends that we pray the rosary, and she is credible because she became the rosary that we pray day in and day out. And the more we contemplate the mysteries, we become those mysteries that we contemplate for we always become what we contemplate.

Secondly, it has been our seminary tradition, in Sacred Heart Novitiate, to have ambulatio—Latin for walking—while praying the rosary. Pope Francis' favorite image ever since whenever he would talk about the Christian and the Church is that of walking. The image of walking is a pregnant one especially its Greek counterpart, i.e., the word synod.  It is an ancient term used by our Mother Church since the first centuries. The Greek word σῠ́νοδος (súnodos) comes from two Greek words: σῠν (sun), “with” and ὁδός (hodós) “way, path.” It connotes "walking together" on the same path. In Latin synod is translated as “ambulans cum.” Pope Francis stressed that synodality "is an essential dimension of the Church" in a sense that "what the Lord is asking of us, [or where Jesus is missioning us,] is already in some sense present in the very word 'synod'." In his address at the MEETING WITH THE CLERGY, CONSECRATED PEOPLE AND MEMBERS OF DIOCESAN PASTORAL COUNCILS in Assisi on October 4, 2013, he said, "What could be more beautiful for us than walking with our people? It is beautiful!" He talked about a parish priest who knew not only the names of his parishioners but also the name of each family's dog. During this pandemic social distancing does not mean no more walking. It is more apt to call it as physical distancing because we are still social. I admire our brothers and sisters around the world who are walking from a distance, in front, in order to guide people, or in the middle, through online means, in order to encourage and support, and some others walk towards the end of the path to accompany people straying from the path, to keep everyone united as a flock. Even as we do all these, let us never forget to walk with Jesus. It must be Jesus, our Good Shepherd, who will lead the way.

Now let us ask, Did Jesus walk alone? And the resounding answer is No! Jesus practiced what he preached. He walked his talk by surrounding himself with companions along the journey. He was not a lone ranger even as God in himself. And the most important companion that Jesus had was, not the Twelve apostles, it was his mother. In fact even if Jesus would decide to spare his own mother to walk with him to the foot of the cross, Mary would still choose to walk with her Son like she did. All because she is a mother. Only a mother would know when she is needed the most by her own child. And when Jesus needed a mother the most as he was hanging on the cross abandoned by his closest friends, Mary was there. And it pierced and broke to pieces her own heart. No wonder among all of us, the strongest is always a mother’s heart.

The path of Jesus is inseparable from the path of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM). Jesus Christ walked with the greatest disciple on earth, his mother. We offer a series called Ignatian Year Recollections every third Saturday of the month to online participants. On October 16, 2021 Fr Sivino Borres Jr SJ will share about the role of the BVM in the conversion of St Ignatius of Loyola. He talks about his own experience when he was chaplain at the New Bilibid Prison—Metro Manila's main insular penitentiary. He says that the prisoners would be visited by their wives, and children, but after sometime they stop coming, but the mothers, No! They never fail to visit every week. If mothers of inmates could do this to their rebellious children, how much more for the BVM towards Jesus.

My third and last image is that of a very old and worn out rosary that I am keeping in my room. Its cross has been detached. It dawned on me that when the rosary does not have the cross anymore, it is no longer a rosary. It is like the Christian life which must be lived always with the cross. During Pope Francis' very first mass with his fellow Cardinals on the day of his election on March 14, 2013, he said in his homily, "We can walk as much as we want, we can build many things, but if we do not confess Jesus Christ, things go wrong. We may become a charitable NGO, but not the Church, the Bride of the Lord... the Church herself could be washed away... if she is not based on Christ, if she seeks any other basis, even the basis of good works. Only when based on Christ can she stand secure. Otherwise she crumbles away under the pressures of the world.” Let me end with some fruits of my contemplation—an ode to the BVM with the title "Proximity to Mary, Proximity to God."

T

he proximity to the unreachable depth—

How to capture this paradox in a breath.

The unconceivable in thought, impregnable;

Yet conceivable in body, pregnable.

Who alone could give birth to another?

The One who authored life yonder;

To human intellect, unfathomable

To womb humble stable, oh so viable.

Strip a hapless babe of its dear mother

You cut off the web-of-life’s sustainer.

Robbed, bled dry, dethroned as mother,

Child stripped, ripped, depth of its fiber.

Never could anyone strip Jesus of Mary

Lest we emasculate God of humanity.

So cultivate proximity to the Mother;

First and last rungs on Jacob’s ladder.

The One Being reveals through human womb

And unveils through life's hallowed tomb.

Blessed the womb that revealed and carried you;

The breasts that nursed and cuddled you.

Fr JM Manzano SJ