Holy Rosary, Holy Mass

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Holy Rosary, Holy Mass, by Rev. Fr. Bernard G. Hall, Guild of St. Peter ad Vincula

Holy Rosary, Holy Mass is a series of meditations that attempt to identify God’s plan of salvation for us, as contained in both the Rosary and the Mass.  Many are the distractions the devil sends our way when we try to pray our beads properly and keep our minds focused on the Holy Sacrifice.  Nevertheless, we struggle on in the knowledge that it is God’s will that we do so.  The meditations contained in this book are a humble attempt to provide us with more “food for thought” when we approach the mysteries contained in both Rosary and Mass, that we may better understand them, and thus come to love God more fervently and unite with him more completely.

Both the Rosary and Mass play a key role in God’s eternal plan for our salvation.  To grasp just how important they are, our approach must be to invoke the help of our Blessed Mother and her Son, who gave us these tools.  After all, who better than they can fill our minds with the knowledge of the depths of God’s love contained in the fifteen mysteries and in the words and actions of the Mass?  It is my hope that the following meditations will allow the reader to peer into those depths and find for himself a little of the truth and love of God that the sacred mysteries contain.  Any words that attempt to describe such divine love must necessarily be flawed and inadequate, but, with your good will and indulgence, I hope we can all find in these pages a useful outline from which to approach both Rosary and Mass afresh, refocusing our thoughts and rekindling in us the fire of God’s love.

In these meditations we will learn how the Rosary leads us inevitably to the Mass.  This progression is natural and logical—the Rosary tells the story of our Redemption, while the Mass applies the graces of that Redemption to us today.  Rosary and Mass represent our Faith and our Worship, the very essence of our religion.  Just as our faith leads us to worship God, so the mysteries of the Rosary lead us to the fulfillment of those mysteries in the Mass.

When we meditate on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary and immerse ourselves in the story of Redemption they portray, we are gathering together into one unified narrative the very basic truths of our Faith.  When we get over the fact that this Redemption story isn’t just a legend, but actual reality, we very quickly realize that we have to participate actively in that reality ourselves.  We do so by trying to return to God some of the love he showed for us throughout the joyful and sorrowful events contained in our meditations.  When he gave us the Mass he showed us exactly how he wanted us to return that love as fully as we poor humans are capable.  No finite sacrifice devised by mortal man could ever be sufficient to repay God for the love he showed by creating us and then restoring us to the grace we lost.  But God himself has provided us with a sacrifice of infinite love.  Only the sacrifice of his only-begotten Son is sufficient to please God, and he allows that extraordinary and eternal act of love offered on Calvary to be continued by his Church in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.  We adore God in the way he instructed us to do so, through that traditional Holy Sacrifice, and most especially, by uniting with him in the reception of his most sacred Body and Blood in Holy Communion.