A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. Jesus said to his disciples, if one one of you knows someone who comes to him in the middle of the night and says to him, friend, lend me three loaves. For a friend of mine has come in from a long journey, and I have nothing to offer him. Then he from inside the house should reply, leave me alone. The door is shut, and my children and I are in bed.
I can't get up to look after your needs now. I tell you, says our lord, even though that man does not get up and take care of the man because of friendship, he will find himself doing it because of the man's persistence and give him as much bread as he wants. So I say to you, ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened to you.
For whoever asks, receives. Whoever seeks, finds. And whoever knocks, is admitted. What father among you will give his son a snake if the boy asks for a fish, or hand the boy a scorpion if he asks for an egg? Now if you, with all your sins, know how to give to your children good things, how much more will your heavenly father give the holy spirit to those who ask him?
And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. Yesterday was the feast of the holy rosary. It's helpful I guess, to have that feast, but it almost is like getting a ticket to a museum. The rosary is a a devotion which is not at all currently popular.
This fact, and I referred to this, this fact was brought home to me dramatically some time ago when I went to a funeral parlor to recite the rosary. Well, there was a great crowd of people there. There was were special circumstances about this. They were overflowing the room and so we had a large number of people. Yet we didn't have a large number of rosaries.
They didn't need would say, well, I don't know the numbers, but there were plenty of people there who didn't even have a rosary. Now when we at the end when we said the prayer to our blessed lady, I was the only one saying it practically. Now, what has happened to this devotion of the rosary? Can you tell me that? Is it has all of a sudden after about Saint Dominic's the twelfth century, but his relationship to the rosary is quite questionable, but certainly from the fifteenth century which makes it four hundred years, What's happened to it?
Has somebody suddenly discovered that it's an empty form, that it has no meaning, and who are the they who have discovered this? You see, we I and I lived through all this. We got on the hobby horse of what we call the liturgy. And the and the man or the woman, it used to be, you know, when you went into church, would see plenty of people saying their beats during mass. Well, we got on a great campaign.
That was all wrong. That you ought to have a missile in your hand in Latin of course, and then you would follow the liturgy at the altar with intelligence as mature Christians. See, that's the great word, mature Christians, whatever that means. There was nothing wrong in that idea. That was that was perfectly right.
And the the congregation on the clergy in 1971, which is just a few years after the council adjourned, it it insists that the the primary worship of the church is the worship of the church, is the public worship of the church for which the word liturgy is the noun or the adjective, liturgy. And no one disputes this. There is no prayer can match the prayer of the church, the holy sacrifice of the mass. And notice I didn't say liturgy or celebration. I said the holy sacrifice of the mass.
So that's beyond dispute. But you see, what often happens in pushing a good cause, without maybe intending it, we do a lot of damage along the way. Now, I I maybe I'm exaggerating, but the the rosary seems to be a thing of the past. It I guess it was hung around the dodo bird's neck and now they both have disappeared. I don't know.
But let me tell you, that's not the mind of the holy Roman Catholic church. For example, I have here a very official document. It's it was issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. And if you if anybody represents the Catholic church in America, that's it. Now what I'm going to read to you makes reference to the general catechetical directory of 1971, which was issued by the the sacred congregation of the clergy.
And what I'm going to read to you simply reinforces what that first document of 1971 said. This document is 1973 and most of you are acquainted with it. I'm going to the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in what it was entitled the basic teachings for Catholic religious education. Now, here's what the the conference of the bishop says, the importance of prayer. Now remember, prayer is the elevation of the mind and the heart to God, and why you do it goes on and on, but that's the essence.
It's the elevation of the mind and the heart to God. And you see the one big problem is to keep prayer from getting in the way of praying. See, that's the problem. Anyway, here's what the bishop's conference says, and you certainly can't get anything more official than this whether you agree with it or disagree. The people of God have always been a praying people.
Religious educators then who are mature in the faith and faithful in in tradition will teach prayer. This teaching will take place through experience of prayer, that is in praying, through the example of prayer, and through the learning of common prayers. Now common here means that prayers we say in common. Religious education at home or in the classroom, given by a teacher who values prayer, will provide both the instruction and the experience, and indeed it sure will. People can pray together as a community.
That doesn't mean liturgical prayer remember. People can pray together as a community when they share some common prayer. Now you tell me how they can do it if they don't share a common prayer. If we don't have something we can say in that we know and can say together, how are we going to say anything together? Now that was brought out in my the last time I was in Rome and we I went to an audience and it was it was a great crowd of people there.
And as usual, there were any number of nations represented. And the holy father addressed the various ones in their own language, five or six languages. Then the text was read in Latin. And at the end of it all now how could we join together in a common prayer? What prayer?
What prayer could we join together? The the community of of God or whatever you wanna call it. You have to have a language. And so you know the language we used, Latin. And I was with an English group, English speaking group, and the silence around me was opaque.
They couldn't join in the common prayer. They didn't know the Lord's prayer in Latin. Now I'm not saying we ought to know the Lord's prayer in Latin. I'm only saying that unless we have a common prayer, we can't pray in common. Unless we go into deep meditation, and then they bring a cushion to let to lay your head on when you do that.
Now this is the last paragraph. People can pray together as a community when they share some common prayer. So it is important that some of the church's great prayers be understood, memorized, and said frequently. Among these are the sign of the cross, the our father, the hail Mary, the apostles creed, the act of contrition, and the rosary. So it's not the mind of the church whether it is the universal church or the church of the USA that we should throw out the rosary and not use it.
It's quite the reverse. Now why has it disappeared? You know you it's hard to buy one. I don't know what the religious good stories are doing now to stay open if they can't sell rosaries. You know with something, oh you could always give a rosary to a religious or somebody.
First communion, it's I guess they're hard up now, I don't know. But what's happened to it? What's wrong with the rosary? In 1976, the present holy father who was then Cardinal Votia was asked by the then holy father to give the Lenten retreat to him and to his coworkers. And what did Cardinal Votia do?
He took the rosary as the theme of his discourses, and that became the book called A Sign of Contradiction. Now I can only say this, ask you You see the rosary is an enormous it's a tremendous prayer. There's no one way of saying the rosary. You do it as you wish to do it. It's your prayer.
But of course it's it's always had a it's been used to be it's been called the soldier of the poor. Because the idea is when you're saying the rosary is to tie it in with the life of Christ and the and the mysteries. So that as you as the beads go through your hand and you're saying the individual words, you are meditating. You are thinking about these different steps and periods in our Lord's life and in our lady's life. What's wrong with that folks?
Let's get the rosary out of the museum. Let's get it off the neck of the dodo bird. Let's get a rosary and use it occasionally. It is still a very worthwhile prayer. Proved down the centuries and affirmed by the church in our own time.
In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.