[Pearls Ep 152: Bringing Sunday into the week.]
We’re looking at New Year’s resolutions and our Blessed Mother – that the New Year is an ideal time to consider deepening our devotion to Mary, and thus our relationship with her Son.
Along those lines, I recall moving to a new state, to start up a regional office for my company, and with a wife and two young daughters (and a big new mortgage to boot).
A benefit of the move was a blessedly short commute (the commute when we were in Chicago could stretch to 2 hours…). While making the short drive home, and my mind racing on this concern and that concern, it occurred to me that I was trying to figure everything out on my own – and that I would be better served seeking inspiration in the rosary. The only hitch was that I didn’t know how to pray the Rosary. But I did know how to pray the Our Father and Hail Mary – and so I prayed a stripped-down version of a decade of the rosary.
Each time I prayed a Hail Mary, I had an overwhelming feeling of warmth and peace.
Turning to the scientific method, I tested it out. I tried just thinking “positive thoughts” – but nothing happened. And then I’d pray a Hail Mary, and feeling of peace returned. I tested it in a number of ways, and always the same result – it was only the Hail Mary’s that brought the peace.
At that time I was unaware of the concept of spiritual consolation – I would soon learn all about it.
Here’s the thing – in retrospect that was an ideal time for the Lord to make His move. Karen and I had already been having a “reversion” to the faith and genuinely investing ourselves in our relationship with God. And, with the change in situation and newfound responsibilities, I had a renewed urgency in seeking God’s guidance and protection. The ground was fertile for the Blessed Mother to step in.
This is what we saw with Mary’s appearance at Guadalupe – she arrived at the exact right time.
And it is the testimony of countless Saints that this is exactly how our Lord works through His mother. She enters our life at the moment when we’re most ready for her to get to work and introduce us to her Son.
As Venerable Fulton Sheen put it, “Let a soul but love that Mother, and he will love her Divine Son, Jesus, who, in order to make satisfaction for the unlawful pleasure of the flesh, surrendered to us His last lawful attachment – His Mother.
New Year’s blessings –
Steve
Steve and Karen Smith
Interior Life
Postscript: Deepening relationship with Mary in 2023.
- Pray more rosaries. Do you pray one a week? Commit to praying two. Do you pray one a day? Add a second on Sunday. Not praying the rosary regularly? Set a goal of a rosary each Sunday. And then build from there.
- Go through one of the Marian Consecrations (more details in follow-up messages).
- Pray the Angelus at noon and 6pm each day.
- Once a week reflect on Mary’s seven sorrows. https://www.immaculee.com/pages/7-sorrows-rosary-prayer
- During Lent (not far off…) pray the Mary’s Way of the Cross (the Stations of the Cross from Mary’s perspective). https://littlesistersofthepoor.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Mary_Way_of_the_Cross_e.pdf
- Pick one of Mary’s major apparitions, learn about it, and pray for Mary’s intercession under that title (more details in the follow-up messages).
- Pray the Lectio Rosary in the Interior Life app.