II Mystery: The Angel's annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’

Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.’ Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her. Luke 1:26-38

This second mystery is known as the first Joyful Mystery. However, we are in the context of the prehistory of Jesus of Nazareth, so it is a mystery that is profoundly Marian. The angel Gabriel is the herald of the New Age that is about to begin. God will visit his people again as he did in Egypt, but this time the deliverance is more spiritual than physical and more encompassing, that is, not only for his people, but for all peoples. The dream and prophecy of Isaiah (25:6) of a banquet for all peoples in Jerusalem is coming true.

Gabriel and the nature of angels
In the beginning, Hashem made three types of creatures, the angels, the beasts, and the human beings. The angels, He made from His pure word. The angels have no will to do evil. They cannot deviate for one moment from His purpose. The beasts have only their instincts to guide them. They, too, follow the commands of their maker. The Torah states that Hashem spent almost six whole days of creation fashioning these creatures.

Then, just before sunset, He took a small quantity of earth and from it He fashioned man and woman. An afterthought? Or His crowning achievement? So, what is this thing? Man? Woman? It is a being with the power to disobey. Alone among all the creatures we have free will. We hang suspended between the clarity of the angels and the desires of the beasts. Hashem gave us choice, which is both a privilege and a burden. We must then accept the tangled life we live.  Anton Lesser: Rav Krushka in the movie: Disobedience (2017)

The words cited above are put in the mouth of an old rabbi. Hebrew theology does not grant angels freedom, or freewill, they are not free to choose good or evil. They live like animals, beyond good and evil. The difference is that unlike animals, angels have no desires because they do not have a physical body like the animals. Being purely spiritual beings, they only possess a form of thought from which freewill has been removed, that is, the difference between good and evil. They are a pure extension of God's thought, and cannot deviate from these thoughts.

They have some of God’s attributes, they are God’s companions in Heaven, they relate to God and God to them as a master to his beloved dog or cat, or any other pet, not like, as we have said, beings with a physical body, but beings with a spiritual body.

Angels by not having freewill, then the extra-biblical story of the genesis of the devil or demon makes no sense. There has never been an angel who disobeyed God's plans, because angels, an extension of God's thought, live happily subjugated to their creator, like a pet to its owner, without the ability to diverge, discern, choose or say no. Therefore, Gabriel, God’s messenger, presents himself with a message addressed to Mary, that he cannot change, a human being, who has power to say yes or no to God's plans.

A virgin will give birth...
Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven. But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test. Then Isaiah said: ‘Hear then, O house of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.  Isaiah 7:11-14

Context of the original prophecy
In the 8th century B.C., the kingdom of Judah was about to be invaded by the northern kingdom (Israel) and Syria in order to force King Ahaz of Judah into an alliance with these two kingdoms against the powerful Assyria.  

In Isaiah 7:10-12, God, through the prophet, exhorts King Ahaz to ask Him for a sign. King Ahaz, fearing that God's will was different from his own, since he had already thought of forging an alliance with the mighty Assyria, refuses to ask God for a sign, citing Deuteronomy 6:16 as an excuse.

God, on his own initiative, gives the sign anyway, but the recipient is no longer the individual person of King Ahaz, but the dynasty to which he belongs, the house of David. Proof of this is that this dynasty is mentioned in verse 13, which means that the "you" in the following verse 14 does not refer to the king as a person, but to the dynasty to which he belongs, the house of David. The Hebrew term, "lakem", translated as "to you" is in the plural form and it means that the sign is "given to you, but not you as a singular person, that is, it will not be fulfilled during your reign, but much later".

Trying to interpret "you" as referring to the person of King Ahaz, some rabbis stated that this character, Immanuel, was Hezekiah, the son of King Ahaz himself. However, done properly using the reigns of the contemporary neighboring kingdoms, when the prophecy was announced Hezekiah was already between 12 to 14 years old so the “you” cannot be him.

Prophecies have no date of fulfillment, nor do they have a label where the expiration date is stipulated. They are the Word of God which is eternal and they can be announced long before they are fulfilled. This is implied in the enigmatic and unusual characteristic of this prophecy, as well as in the ambiguity of the term "virgin".

The term "Virgin"
The Greek language translated "almah" which in Hebrew means maiden (a young girl) as "párthenos" which means "Virgin". In Hebrew culture, virginity is not generally a value, and if it is, it is at the service of motherhood. However, it is correct to use the term "virgin" as best fitting this message the prophet wants to convey.

That is, if it is a divine sign, it must necessarily be extraordinary; in the case of a maiden giving birth, there is nothing extraordinary about it; it has always been and always will be normal and routine. On the other hand, the one to be born is not just any human person, but Emmanuel, that is, a person through whom God is with us. Finally, the text speaks and only mentions Emmanuel’s mother, not the father, so it is assumed to be God himself.

Conclusion: The angel of the Lord announced to Mary that she was the custodian and the fulfillment of the promise that God made to King Ahaz eight centuries earlier, through the mouth of the prophet Isaiah (7:14). A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, whose name shall be Emmanuel, God with us.

                                            Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

I Mystery: The Immaculate Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary - Part 2

In the eleventh century in England and Normandy, a feast day was set aside to laud the conception of Mary, for on this day the miraculous fact that Anne who was barren conceived. It has been said by Saint Anselm that Mary was preserved from sin. In 1439, at the Council of Basel, this mystery was considered a truth of the faith and Pope Pius IX proclaimed it a dogma in 1854.

Origin of sin and the original sin
God created man in his own image and likeness; with sin we lost our likeness to God, while still maintaining his image. We are no longer as God created us; the sin of our parents spread through space and time, profoundly altering human nature. Man has built his own hell, typified by the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. The flood – destroying everything and starting over – with Noah's family, was the first plan to save the human species. But Noah’s descendants soon went back to the sin of their ancestors.

The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge, (Jeremiah 31: 29). Without knowing Mendel's laws of inheritance, the Hebrews were already aware that certain evils are passed down from parents to offspring. In fact, the sin of Adam and Eve corrupted them, not only at an existential level as individuals, but also at a genetic level, so the consequences would be suffered by the entire human species.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man (Adam), and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned…  Romans 5:12

The original sin caused a genetic mutation in our genes and turned into a cancer, a dominant hereditary disease, that is, it is impossible that anyone born of a man and a woman not to have it. Evil has thus become a second nature that is already present from the moment of our conception.

Most parents do not teach children to lie or steal, and yet even with some years of good and superb education, both in example and in word, parents catch their dear children stealing a few coins from their wallets or lying blatantly. Evil does not need to be learned; we are naturally inclined towards it. Christ himself recognized this fallen nature of the human being when he said:

There is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile. (…) And he said, ‘It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. Mark 7:15, 20-23

Usurpation of the criterion of good and evil
The pseudo-emancipation of man, in wanting to be like God and having usurped from God the prerogative of good and evil, was the origin of sin or the original sin that has been passing down from generation to generation, because it had altered the DNA of the human species. Evil has established its roots within the human species in such a way that, as Jesus said in Matthew 15:11, "It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles." It is not, therefore, bad education that leads man to do evil; the evil is already inside of him.

While the criterion of good and evil remained at the center of the Garden of Eden, and belonged exclusively to God, the earth was the Kingdom of God; there was peace, unity, consensus, because everyone submitted to a single criterion. When man, in wanting to be like God, put himself at the center by stealing the prerogative of good and evil, then division, war, subjectivity, arbitrariness, relativism, discord came into the world. Every individual wants to be the center. Since there can't be two centers, so if I have the criteria of good and evil, you don't have it or I don't acknowledge that you have it.

No one does evil thinking they are doing evil; by killing 5 million Jews, Hitler thought he was doing humanity a favor; suicide bombers who carry out massive murder of innocent people say that they are sacrificing themselves for the greater good; Muslim extremists kill in the name of God....

We are apples with bugs
Parents who take great care in their children's education are caught off guard when they start lying, stealing, and doing other mischiefs they were never taught. Evil is within us and does not need to be learned. As the psychologist Jung would say, evil belongs to the collective unconscious of humanity. Every evil act that an individual carries out, settles in this collective coefficient in such a way that individuals born afterwards, are born with the ability to perform it again without needing any learning.

Many people seeing an apple with a small hole think that the hole was made by a bug that went into the apple, but what actually happens is the opposite: it was made by a bug coming out of the apple. The bug was born from an egg that an insect deposited inside the apple during flowering. We are all apples with bugs: evil is inside all of us and it only needs a certain circumstance to reveal itself.

It is not, therefore, as the proverb says "The situation makes the thief". Everyone, sooner or later, is faced with situations in which he or she can steal; from the outset, we are all capable of stealing. To steal or not to steal will depend on the degree of education, on human values, that we have at the moment of temptation. Only this degree of education on human values can counteract the innate tendency in all of us.

From Eva to Ave
There are two reasons why God came to us in human form: the first is to tell us, in a definitive way, what God is like, and the second is to tell us what human beings are like and how they should be like. Christ is in fact the measure of the human being, the benchmark of humanity, the one to whom all individuals must measure themselves, for He is the norm, He is the model, the paradigm. Christ is the man God created in Adam before the latter disobeyed. In fact, Jesus shows, by word and deed, that he remains, all his life, obedient to God.

As Christ is the second Adam, so Mary is the second Eve. Ave is, in fact, Eve in reverse. Christ, the son of the Most High God, could not have Eve after sin as his mother; therefore, at the moment of her conception, the moment when Joachim’s half-cell of united with Anne’s half-cell, God acted, preventing the genes that, from the sin of Adam and Eve had passed down from generation to generation, from also passing down to Mary. Mary was conceived without original sin because she was destined to be the mother of the Son of God. It makes no sense that God would incarnate with the human nature that Adam and Eve had stained with sin. Therefore, Mary who was going to be the mother of the Lord was preserved from this negative inherited trait, common to all mortals.

In Ethiopia, there is no negative connotation attached to the figure of stepmother. Often, one is the biological mother and the other is the mother who raises and educates the child. She is called the “Ingera enat", or the bread mother. When I was studying theology, I had a classmate who called his biological aunt mother and his biological mother aunt. My classmate had been rejected by his biological mother and was taken in by her sister who raised him. Their love for each other was so great that when she was already sick, terminally ill with cancer, she did not die until she saw her son (biologically her nephew) ordained a priest.

Eve is the biological mother of all human beings; Mary is our bread mother, of this Eucharistic bread that is her son born in a town called Bethlehem, which literally means house of bread and whom she laid in a manger, a container where one eats, so that we could feed on him.

Eve is our progenitor, but she has abandoned us to our fate; Mary is the one who provides for our needs, just as in Cana when she said, "They have no wine" (John 2:2).

Eve is the one who taught us to do evil; Ave or Mary is the one who educates and teaches us to do good by pointing us to her son and saying, "Do whatever he tells you" (John 2:5).

Nativity of Mary
We cannot recognize the blessings that Jesus brought us, without recognizing at the same time how immensely God honored and enriched Mary by choosing her for the Mother of God.  (John Calvin," Comm. Sur l'Harm. Evang.",20)

Nine months after the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the Church celebrates the nativity of Our Lady on 8 September. In a biblical context of so many births of same circumstances, from Isaac, Samuel, Samson, etc., according to tradition, Mary was born to elderly and barren parents, named Joachim and Anne. In response to their perseverance and constancy in prayer, these parents were blessed by God with the gift of a baby girl.

Some people place them as residents of Nazareth, but the most reliable tradition places them in Jerusalem, living next to the pool of Bethesda, where pilgrims purified themselves before entering the temple and where today stands the Basilica of St. Anne, very close to one of the main entrances to the Temple and the present-day Lions’ Gate in the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem, leading into the Muslim Quarter.

The girl was given the name Miriam which means seer, sovereign lady. It was most likely an Egyptian name because, as we know, Miriam was the name of Moses' sister. There are those who think that it derives from the Sanskrit name Maryá which literally means purity, virtue, virginity; the Latin translation is Mary. Like Samuel, she was also offered to the Temple of Jerusalem at the age of three, and remained there until she was twelve years old, when she was given in marriage to Joseph.

As we know, the canonical gospels tell us nothing about Mary's birth. The basis of tradition, however, is quite ancient, as it comes from an apocryphal writing of the second century, the Protoevangelium of James, written around the year 150.

Conclusion
Eve is our progenitor, because she is the one who gave birth to us; Mary is our mother, because she is the one who provides for our needs as at the wedding feast of Cana, and she educates us when at the same wedding she tells us, "Do whatever He tells you". Finally, it is she who prays for us at every moment of our life and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

I Mystery: The Immaculate Conception and Birth of the Virgin Mary - Part 1

Mary is the new Eve, as Christ is the new Adam, that is, man and woman as God conceived them before the Fall. Sin is not part of the original nature of the human being. Therefore, when God the Father thought of sending His Son into the world, He could not be born from man's sinfully modified nature, but from the original nature in which He created it. The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is also the beginning of Mary's redemption, as it is of ours.

"Solus Christus Sola Fide Sola Scriptura"
This is one of Luther's lapidary phrases, whose intention was to deny the value of tradition, valuing only the faith of the individual without the community, and the Bible as the word of God. This statement is a misconception and is totally false: first, it is hypocritical, because Luther himself, in his writings, accepted all the dogmas that tradition had defined, the identity of Christ as true man and true God, the Trinity in which God is one and triune, as well as all the Marian dogmas. The dogmas or definitions of faith are the result of centuries of reflection by the Church, that is, they have their origin in tradition.
 
But even the Bible is a child of tradition. First there was the Church, and only later the Bible, as far as the New Testament is concerned. Christ wrote nothing apart from what he wrote in the sand when a woman caught in the act of adultery was brought to him; about him during his lifetime, only Pilate wrote the cause of his condemnation on the sign placed on top of his cross. The 12 apostles, none of them wrote anything, they dedicated themselves solely to preaching after Christ’s Resurrection. It was the Church, when it was already well established, in the second generation after the apostolic one, that gave birth to the scriptures.

First, there were Paul’s letters, which were truly letters because on the envelope, so to speak, they had Paul as the sender and, in fact, he began each letter by introducing himself. In the place of the address was the Christian community of a particular city, the one of Rome in the letter to the Romans, the one of Philippi in the letter to the Philippians, the one of Thessalonica in the letter to the Thessalonians, the one of Ephesus in the letters to the Ephesians, or specific individuals like Titus and Timothy, or even other communities, like the anonymous letter to the Hebrews, etc.

The Gospels appeared later, each written by a different author in order to present the facts about Jesus of Nazareth to a different group of people. Mark, the first author, wrote his Gospel in Rome for the Romans; to this end, he was inspired by Peter's preaching. Matthew, a Jew who used the name of the apostle Matthew, perhaps because he was inspired by his preaching, wrote for the Jews. Luke, a Greek medical doctor and a disciple of Paul, was inspired by his preaching to write for the Greeks. John’s Gospel is more of a historical reflection than a narration of facts, and he had no particular group of people in mind.

Even the expression "Solus Christus" is a fallacy because we do not have a pure Christ without tradition. We have a Christ of John, another of Mark, another of Luke and still another of Matthew. The true Christ is the sum of all of them, but even on the figure of Christ we cannot set aside the tradition of the Church. Tradition and Bible in the Catholic Church intertwine like the two spirals of DNA. Tradition gives birth to the Bible, but the Bible then inspires the subsequent tradition throughout history, because tradition is modifiable, the Bible is not.

The Bible, once the canon was closed, is the essence; the tradition is the accidents. The Bible is fixed, the tradition is changeable. Tradition is an updating of the Bible over time.

Similarity to the amendments of US Constitution – Many countries, in finding that their Constitution has become outdated, revise it or write a new one. This does not happen in the United States, a country with an unchanging Constitution, as if it were a Gospel, which cannot be rewritten or modified, causing serious problems, such as the authorization to carry firearms.

But even in the United States the reality is changing, there are amendments to the Constitution that, in order to be valid, must be drafted in light of the Constitution, but are an interpretation or update of it, or an adaptation of the Constitution to modern times.

Similarity to the dinosaur – No one has ever seen a live dinosaur, for while they walked on earth, the human race did not yet exist. However, we know of their existence because here and there bones of these huge reptiles have been found. We started putting these bones together to tentatively reconstruct these extinct animals and, like a puzzle, we arrived at the final result; then it was a matter of covering the bones with flesh and skin to obtain an almost exact image of how they looked alive.

Never have all the bones that make up the body of one of these animals been found in one place. In the spaces that were left empty in the puzzle, artificial bones were fabricated to complete the puzzle. Granted that the added bones are not real, just as tradition is not scripture, but tradition follows in the sequence of the scriptures, and it agrees and harmonizes with it. The dogmas of the identity of Christ, of Mary, of the one and triune God are like the missing bones in the skeleton of the dinosaur, but which can be logically deduced from the real bones present.

Immaculate Conception of Mary
“It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus, from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin.”  (Martin Luther, Sermon on the Day of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God, 1527)

All the great Protestant reformers like Luther, Calvin and Zwingli, accepted all of the Marian dogmas. The indifference, contempt and almost hatred of Mary that certain Protestants manifest today do not come from these reformers but from fanatics after them.

The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, a solemnity that the Church celebrates on December 8th, close to the Lord's Christmas, is another way of beginning anew. It is the replacement of the flood that destroyed the sins of the old to begin anew. In Mary, God relinquishes the destruction of the world. That is why Mary is a "non-destructive flood" because, little by little, with the Kingdom of her son, she will flood the world with the divine Grace that kills sin. Mary is, therefore, the new ark of Noah that saves humanity from sin because she contains the Saviour who is Christ, her son.

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son.  Hebrews 1:1-2

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman...  Galatians 4:4

Mary is not the beginning of the salvation history: this began with Abraham and was continued from generation to generation by the prophets, judges, kings, and other leaders of the chosen people. Mary is the culmination of this history, she is, as the author of the letter to the Hebrews points out above, the last days or, as St. Paul says, the fullness of time.

The history of salvation deals with people who pass from generation to generation the germ of Good, in the midst of a world that lives the history of Evil. However, this germ of Good coexists in the same person with Evil. Those who carried the germ of Good or the testimony of Good in this relay race, were not perfect people, as we know from the Bible, where their flaws and sins are well documented, from Abraham, Moses, David to so many others who were, as St. Augustine would later say in defining man, "simul justus et peccator”, at the same time righteous and sinful.

Mary is the last link in this chain of Good. Through Mary, God put the final touches to eliminate every trace of evil in preparation for the Incarnation of His Son. It stands to reason that if God was going to take on human nature to speak to men, he was not going to take on a fallen human nature, he was not going to take on the decaying sinful human nature of our fathers, but rather the human nature that He had created in the beginning. That is, he was going to take on the nature of Adam and Eve before the Fall. This is why it is said that Mary is the new Eve and Christ the new Adam.

The moment the genetic material from the half-cell of Joaquim joined the genetic material from the half-cell of Anne to form a new genetic code, Mary's DNA, God intervened in genetic engineering and replaced the genes spoiled or corrupted by sin that had been passed down from generation to generation since Adam and Eve, with the new genes, the ones that Adam and Eve themselves possessed before they ruined human nature by sinning. In other words, He replaced the damaged pieces with the original pieces.

When the Angel Gabriel visited Mary, he recognized in her the new Eve by pronouncing this very name backwards as a greeting (Eva/Ave), Mary is the work of God's genetic engineering; Mary is God’s re-creation by virtue of his direct and intentional intervention in human history. Because Mary, in communion with the same God, will generate, produce the vaccine against sin, that is Christ His Son. Mary is not only the beginning of salvation for the world but in her Immaculate Conception, as a preparation for the coming of Jesus, she is also the first to be saved.

Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. John 3:14-15

The son of Mary is the one who will replace the serpent raised up in the desert by Moses, the saviour of the Jewish people, to heal everyone from the bite of the ancient serpent that poisoned Eve, Adam, and their descendants from generation to generation.

Conclusion
If Christ is like us in everything except sin, he must be the son of a woman who, by special privilege,  was also like us in everything except sin, that is, she must be created in the image and likeness of God. Mary is the second Eve, the Eve who did not sin and who never lost her resemblance to God.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Marian mysteries of the Rosary

Why Marian mysteries? Because the Marian mysteries are as much a part of Jesus' life as the Joyful, the Luminous, the Sorrowful and the Glorious. Mary's life is intimately linked to the life of Jesus, one cannot explain or write a biographical history of Jesus without mentioning Mary, as the Protestants would have it. She was at the origin of Jesus, during his public life, at his death and resurrection, and at the coming of the Holy Spirit and the beginning of the Church. She existed before and after the incarnate Word.

The Marian mysteries are about Mary in her relationship with Jesus. They follow Jesus closely; they are about Mary's role in the salvation history of her Son. They are about Jesus from Mary's point of view or perspective. I have a sister who kept a diary for years of her experiences with her son, from conception to adulthood. The Marian mysteries are Mary's diary, they are what Mary silently and secretly kept in her heart.  (Luke 2:16-21)

I do not pretend to say indirectly that Mary is a co-redeemer, a dogma that the Pope John Paul II thought of instituting.  Mary is at the service of salvation history although her role is more important than any of the 12 apostles, for she was and is a mediator of all graces and therefore of the main grace which is the coming of Christ into the world. This, however, does not make her a co-redeemer next to her son. She herself was redeemed, only that her redemption began earlier at her Immaculate Conception. If she was redeemed, then she cannot be a redeemer.  

Despite her very important role in the salvation history, Mary was not indispensable, not then and not now. If she had answered ‘no’ to the angel, God would have thought of another person or another way of incarnating into humanity, for nothing is impossible for Him, as the same angel said to Mary. Only one person was and is indispensable in the history of humanity: Jesus of Nazareth.

To those who laugh at me or question who am I to create these mysteries, "you are not the pope or even a bishop", I answer that the Holy Spirit is democratic, He does not respect ecclesiastical hierarchies, He blows where and on whom He wants (John 3:8). The copyright of the Holy Spirit belongs to no one. After all, there has been times when He has come very well into the Church through lay people, and not so well through popes and clerics.

The 12 Marian Mysteries
A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth. Then another portent appeared in heaven: a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads.

His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was snatched away and taken to God and to his throne…  Revelation 12:1-5

We already have mysteries in the holy Rosary that are purely and technically Marian, the first three Joyful and the last two Glorious. In fact, the first time the Marian mysteries came to my mind, it was precisely these five, recited on Saturdays, the day especially consecrated to our heavenly Mother. Later, seven others came to my mind, seven being a perfect number in the Bible and then finally 12 in total, inspired by the woman in the book of Revelation.

The twelve stars on Mary’ crown represent the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 apostles, the new Israel, the Church, the 12 contributions to the history of redemption of Jesus Christ, her son according to the flesh. Mary is crowned with these twelve stars, twelve attributes, twelve jewels of the redemption of mankind.

What are these twelve mysteries?

1. We contemplate the Immaculate Conception and the Birth of the Virgin Mary.
Mary is the new Eve, as Christ is the new Adam, that is, man and woman as God conceived them before sin. Sin is not part of the original nature of the human being. Therefore, when God the Father thought of sending his Son into the world, He could not be born from man’s altered sinful nature, but from the original nature in which He created him. The Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary is also the beginning of Mary's redemption, as it is for us at our baptism.

2. We contemplate the Angel's Annunciation to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary.
Common with the first Joyful mystery, but which, as we said, is purely Marian. The Angel Gabriel is the herald of the New Age that is about to begin. God is going to visit his people again, as he did in Egypt, but this time the deliverance is more spiritual than physical and more encompassing, that is, not only for his people, but for all peoples. The dream and prophecy of Isaiah become a reality.

3. We contemplate the Visitation of the Virgin Mary.
From being with God and with oneself, to being with one’s neighbour, this is the life of the Christian that Mary exemplifies very well throughout her life. As soon as she heard that her cousin needed her help, she got up and left her pleasant contemplation of the divine, her peace and quietude, to go and take care of the needs of others. From the time Mary visited her cousin, she has not stopped visiting us whenever we are in need: Guadalupe, Lourdes, Fatima and so many others, are all proofs that Mary knows about our lives and what we need in due time.

4. We contemplate Mary giving birth to Jesus.
The Joyful Mystery speaks of the birth of Jesus, forgetting who gave birth to him. Contemplating the birth of Jesus without contemplating the one who gave birth to him is, to me, a somewhat Protestant formulation of this mystery. Not least because the protagonist of Christmas is Mary, not Jesus, from a grammatical point of view: Jesus is given birth to, Mary gives birth.

5. We contemplate Simeon's Prophecy about Mary.
Except for "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son" (Isaiah 7:14), all the prophecies are about Jesus. The prophet Simeon prophesies about Jesus, but also about his mother. Jesus' coming into the world came at a price and part of that price was paid by his mother who suffered for Him, from the conception of her son until his death.

6.  We consider the life of the Holy Family.
The second person of the Most Holy Trinity was already part of a family in Heaven; on earth he is also part of a family: Mary, Jesus himself and his adoptive father Joseph. The human being is a social being because he is a familiar being; outside the family, there is no human life. The divine family of the Holy Trinity is certainly a model for humanity, but it is far from us. In Jesus, the Most Holy Trinity establishes in the world a family to be a model of love and harmony for our families.

7. We contemplate Mary’s Mediation at the wedding in Cana of Galilee.
Mary launches her son into life, not holding him back for herself, as many mothers selfishly do. She initiates him into his public life when Jesus was thinking of starting later. Jesus gives in to his mother's request as he always gives in to any of her requests. In this mystery, Mary becomes the mediator of all the graces given by her son, she who was already the mediator of salvation, because the saviour of the world came to us through her.

8. We contemplate the Motherhood and Discipleship of Mary.
Mary is a mother because she is a disciple, she heard the word and put it into practice. According to the gospel, we too can be part of Jesus’ intimate family, his brothers and sisters, if like her when we hear the word and put it into practice.

9. We contemplate Mary who becomes our mother at the foot of the cross of her son.
Jesus always took care of his mother, and at the end of his life he made sure that she would not be like the widow of Nain, for not even the widow of Nain was left alone without her son. On the other hand, Christ who had already given us everything, also gave us his mother, so that she would also be ours forever on earth as well as in heaven.

10. We contemplate Mary who becomes the mother of the Church at Pentecost.
Already our mother, Mary as an expert in things of the Holy Spirit, for through him she conceived, she becomes the mother of the Church, mother of Jesus’ disciples, the instructor in things of the Holy Spirit, a catechist of the Holy Spirit, and prepares the Church for Pentecost and the disciples for their Confirmation.

11. We contemplate the Dormition and Assumption of Mary.
This is the second last glorious mystery that in itself is already Marian, because it is exclusively about Mary, even though it is through Jesus that she ascends to Heaven in body and soul, not by her own merits in any way.

12. We contemplate the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth.
The Queen Mother is a beloved figure in all monarchies; Saint Helena was the queen mother who greatly influenced her son, Constantine. If Jesus is King of the Universe, then Mary is the Queen of Heaven and Earth.

Conclusion
As the Mysteries -- Joyful, Luminous, Sorrowful and Glorious -- are not only about Jesus, so the Marian Mysteries are not only about Mary. The lives of Jesus and Mary are interwoven together like the two backbone strands of DNA. The Marian Mysteries tell how the life of Jesus spills into the life of Mary.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Mysteries of the Rosary

It is called the "Rosary" because the 150 (now 200) Hail Marys, intertwined in groups of 10 with the Our Father, the Glory Be and the meditations on the mysteries of the life of Jesus and our redemption, form a "crown of roses" that is offered to Mary, Mother of the Lord and our mother. The twenty mysteries of the Lord's life are divided into four series of five mysteries each. In each Rosary, we pray only the five mysteries of one of these series:

The Joyful Mysteries
In the Joyful Mysteries, we meditate on the beginning of the redemption of humanity, from the annunciation to Mary and the incarnation of the Son of God in her womb until the end of Jesus’ childhood.

FIRST – In the first Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Annunciation of the angel to the Blessed Virgin Mary – Through Archangel Gabriel, the messenger of the Good News, God decides to intervene in the history of humanity, as he has done so many times throughout the history of Israel.

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…  Hebrews 1:1-10

The communications of the prophets of ancient times were always imprecise, imperfect, and incomplete. Through His Son, God decides to come Himself, to show us step by step, as in a video, how human life should be lived.

SECOND – In the second Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Visitation of Mary Most Holy to her cousin Saint Elizabeth – If at the Annunciation Mary is in prayer, then in the Visitation Mary is in action; if at the Annunciation Mary is listening to the word of God, then in the Visitation Mary is putting that same word into practice, as her son so often exhorts; if at the Annunciation Mary is loving God above all things, then in the Visitation she is loving her neighbor as herself. If at the Annunciation Mary has an experience of God as a disciple, then at the Visitation by singing her Magnificat, bearing witness to her experience of God, Mary is being a missionary by witnessing to her cousin to that same experience and of all that God has worked in her.

In these two Joyful Mysteries, the whole Christian life unfolds; for this reason, Mary is for us a model of discipleship, of missionary and Christian life; all the virtues that a Christian must cultivate in his life are concentrated in her. Mary is therefore for us not only the mother of Jesus and Our Mother, but she is also our model for following Christ.

THIRD – In the third Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Birth of Jesus – “And the Word became flesh and lived among us…” John 1:14 – God the Creator incarnated in a creature. For many religions it seems impossible that God would incarnate in a human being, that the sea could enter into a puddle of water. If we only think of God’s transcendence then yes, it will seem impossible, illogical, improbable, even though nothing is impossible to God.

But God is not only transcendent, he is also immanent, he already exists in the here and now, in the heart of everything and every person. Deus intimior intimo meo applies to all things; God is the heart of matter of material entities and of spiritual beings. Therefore, God is already here, and thinking of his immanence, it becomes easier to understand the fact that He acquired a human form.

God encamped among us, set up his tent among us as he once did when he journeyed for 40 years in the desert with the people he delivered from slavery. This tent, where Moses, representing God's people, met God in dialogue, was called the tent of meeting. Jesus of Nazareth, the Emmanuel, God with us, is the new Tent of Meeting, for in Him God meets Man and Man meets God. Through Jesus, God comes to man, and also through Jesus, man goes to God.

As they were leaving Jericho, a large crowd followed him (Jesus).  Matthew 20:29
God became man so that man might become God. Saint Irenaeus

Jericho is both the oldest city, with 8,000 years of existence, and the lowest city on our planet, at about 500 meters below sea level. Jericho in the Bible signifies sin; in the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jerusalem represents grace while Jericho represents sin.

The man who fell into the hands of robbers fell into disgrace because he was going down from Jerusalem, 800 meters above sea level, to Jericho. He journeyed from grace to sin; as the people say, he who does not remember God lacks all good. To save Man from sin, Jesus also goes down to Jericho, but he does not stay there; he leaves Jericho and a great crowd follows him, going up from the sin of Jericho to the grace of Jerusalem.

FOURTH – In the fourth Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Presentation of the child Jesus in the temple and the ritual purification of Our Lady – Jesus does not break with the traditions of the past but submits himself to the laws of the land where he lived and of the people where he incarnated as man.  However, in obeying or satisfying these laws, he makes them pass through his moral conscience, because the law was made for man and not man for the law.

Mary, being after Jesus the purest among all living beings, also submits herself to the tradition, of the ritual purification. Those who refer to this second part of the mystery must include the word "ritual", because Mary was always pure: before, during and after childbirth.

FIFTH – In the fifth Joyful Mystery we contemplate the loss and the encounter of the child Jesus in the temple among the doctors of the law – Many exegetes consider it an exaggeration that Jesus was in dialogue with the doctors of the law, as an equal. I don't understand why this couldn’t have happened; Jesus was probably a child prodigy like so many that have existed and exist in all times and places. If Mozart, Beethoven and others were child prodigies, why couldn't Jesus have been one?

The Luminous Mysteries
In the Luminous Mysteries, we meditate on the most important moments of Jesus' public life, from his baptismal investiture to the institution of the Eucharist as a memorial of his passion. It is in the years of his public life that Jesus truly reveals himself as the Light of the World (Jn 8:12), by his attitudes in the most diverse life situations in which he found himself, by the doctrine he taught and by his actions.

FIRST – In the first Luminous Mystery we contemplate the Baptism of Jesus – “Libris ex libris fiunt" or books come from books. Jesus consecrated himself to a movement that probably began with the monks of Qumran, located very close to the place where Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, a monk who offered forgiveness of sins, as was done in Qumran through an ablution of water. Jesus continues this movement and takes the forgiveness of sins beyond the Jordan River and beyond the symbol of water.

SECOND – In the second Luminous Mystery we contemplate the Wedding at Cana – In Cana of Galilee, Mary sees a need and tries to solve the problem by pushing Jesus into his public life, when He had not yet planned to begin. Jesus, obedient to the Father in Heaven, also obeys his Mother, even as an adult. This obedience is important to us because it institutionalizes Mary, his mother, as the intercessor of all graces.

THIRD – In the third Luminous Mystery we contemplate the miracles worked by Jesus as proof of the presence of the Kingdom of God among us – This is how I write this mystery dedicated to the thaumaturgical activity of Jesus, as proof that the Kingdom is already among us, although not yet in its fullness.

FOURTH – In the fourth Luminous Mystery we contemplate the Sermon on the Mount as the magna carta of the Kingdom of God – If in the previous mystery I mentioned the works of the Kingdom, in this one I mention the doctrine that inspires them, the Sermon on the Mount, as the fine print of all that Jesus told us and taught us. I think this is more important than the Transfiguration.

FIFTH – In the fifth Luminous Mystery we contemplate the Institution of the Eucharist – Without the Eucharist there is no Church, without the Church there is no Eucharist. The Eucharist is first and foremost the gathering of Christians or this association founded by Jesus and called the Church, as members of the Body of Christ to celebrate the life, death and resurrection of Christ, just as he has commanded us.

The Sorrowful Mysteries
In the Sorrowful Mysteries, we meditate on the process, the passion and the death of Jesus, from his agony in the Garden of Olives to his last breath on top of the cross. When we say that Jesus died for our sins, it means that he paid in full the debt we were unable to pay; but it also means that the sins of those who intervened in his death are still being committed today, so we can conclude that it was the sin of all humanity that killed Jesus.

FIRST – In the first Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Agony of Jesus in the Garden of Olives – Jesus was tempted all his life, not only at the beginning; one of the last temptations took place here, when he considered the possibility of not drinking from the chalice that was in front of him, his passion and death. All he had to do was to climb a short way up the hill and go down into the Judean desert, hide in one of the deep valleys and no one would ever find him again. But Jesus chose to pay the price for his ideals against a corrupt and degenerate world. If he had saved his own skin, he would have been lost as the savior of the whole world.

SECOND – In the second Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Scourging of Jesus tied to a pillar – If Pilate had condemned Jesus to death directly, Jesus would not have been scourged. Flogging was the punishment given to those whose lives were spared. Pilate thought that after seeing Jesus badly scourged, the people would pity him and let him go, but this did not happen; the hatred of the scribes, the elders, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees for Jesus was so great that they were not stricken with compassion even after seeing Him so terribly scourged.

THIRD – In the third Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Coronation of Jesus with a crown of thorns – It was when he was already in a very difficult situation that Jesus recognized and accepted the title of King, though not of this world, for the kings of this world do not ride on donkeys as he did nor are crucified as he was, and wear a crown of gold and not one of thorns as he did.

FOURTH – In the fourth Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Condemnation of Jesus to death and the walk to Calvary with the cross on his back – By consenting to put Jesus to death, Pilate also cancelled his previous transgressions. There already had been so many in the past that now, despite being convinced that Jesus was innocent and seeking a ploy to save Him, Pilate failed to save him: the charges against him were already many in Rome, that he could not afford one more added to the list.

FIFTH – In the fifth Sorrowful Mystery we contemplate the Crucifixion and Death of Jesus – Abandoned by his people in general, by his fellow disciples and apostles, crucified in the midst of two criminals, he felt in the end that even God had abandoned him, perhaps because the sin of humanity weighed so heavily on his shoulders. Even so, he hoped in God and did not despair, since to the same God who had abandoned him, he surrendered his spirit.

The Glorious Mysteries
In the Glorious Mysteries, we meditate on Jesus' triumph over death with his Resurrection. Death has been conquered, as has the sin that caused it. After Jesus’ Resurrection, death is no longer the final destiny of mankind, but a passage to eternal life. The life of Jesus, which begins with Mary's "Yes" to God's plan, now ends with the glorification of the One who is, for us all, a model of Christian life.

FIRST – In the first Glorious Mystery we contemplate the Resurrection of Jesus – The Resurrection of Jesus is God having the last laugh, the Resurrection of Jesus proves that evil does not have the last word, as seen in almost every movie in which good ultimately wins over evil. Not even death has eternal power over life. After the Resurrection of Jesus, death is no longer the end of life, but a passage to a life in God for those who lived with God and for God.

SECOND – In the second Glorious Mystery we contemplate Jesus’ Ascension into Heaven – Jesus in his glorious body did not ascend immediately to his Father, as he himself told Mary Magdalene, but stayed for some time with his disciples, appearing to comfort them from the scandal of the cross and to give them the final instructions before ascending definitively to the Father.

THIRD – In the third Glorious Mystery we contemplate the Coming of the Holy Spirit – As he had promised, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit soon after he went to heaven, so that we would not be left orphans, to be the Soul of the Church and the center of our being, to be with us, to be God within us who inspires, comforts, guides and gives us strength and courage to face an adverse world.

FOURTH - In the fourth Glorious Mystery we contemplate the Assumption of Mary, body and soul, into Heaven – In the Dormition or Assumption, Mary goes to heaven to be by her son’s side just as she has always been by his side on earth. We too like her will be received into heaven, where Jesus, her son, has gone to prepare a place for us.

FIFTH – In the fifth Glorious Mystery we contemplate the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven and Earth – Mary's earthly life as Mother of the Saviour began before Jesus and ended after Jesus. After becoming the mother of the Church because she was the mother of the Church’s founder, she now reigns in heaven and on earth as the Queen Mother alongside her son who is the King of the Universe.

Conclusion:
The mysteries of the Rosary are about the salvific acts of Christ on earth, the path he walked with us, as he did with the disciples at Emmaus, to explain the scriptures to us, and to plant in the world the seeds of the Kingdom of God.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Rosary, a Contemplative prayer

The Rosary is at the same time a Marian prayer and a prayer centered on Christ – Christ-Centric – because we repeatedly invoke Mary as Mother of God and our mother and ask her to join us in our prayer to the Father as we recite the Our Father, and to the Most Holy Trinity as we recite the Glory Be. We ask her to help us to meditate and contemplate the mysteries of the life of her Son, our older brother and Savior, of which she is also a part.

In Fatima, as in the other Marian apparitions, Mary does not draw attention to herself, but exclusively to her Son. Her contentment comes not from us praising her, but from us praising her Son. As the proverb says, "Whoever my son kisses, my mouth sweetens."

While he was saying this, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’  Luke 11:27

You can’t love the son without loving the mother, so all the love directed to the child is indirectly directed to the mother. Just as all the praises given to the mother is directed to the son, as happened to that woman who, among the crowd, raised her voice to say to Jesus, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!"

The Rosary is not a prayer of thanksgiving, nor a prayer of petition, it is not even a prayer of lamentation like some psalms in the Bible. The Rosary is basically a prayer of meditation and contemplation. In fact, we proclaim and enunciate each Mystery by saying "in this Mystery, we contemplate..."

The story goes that one day someone confessed to Pope John XXIII his difficulty in praying the Rosary because he often gets distracted by the mechanical and repetitive recitation of the Hail Marys, to which the Pope replied, "What good is the Rosary if it is not to distract us?" (Distraction in neo-Latin languages has also the meaning as amusement).

Being a contemplative prayer, the repetitive recitation of the Hail Marys in the Rosary has the same purpose as the mantras in Buddhist spirituality: they occupy the mind, preventing it from jumping from one thought to another, thus allowing and facilitating contemplation of the Mysteries of the Lord's life. 

Hail Mary as a mantra
Contemplative prayers were fashionable in the sixties, just as Lectio Divina is today. Well-known figures of monastic life, such as Thomas Merton, traveled to the Far East, while others, like the Indian Jesuit priest Anthony de Mello, tried to bridge the gap between Eastern religions, such as Buddhism, and Christianity.

To attain contemplation at the technical level, we can certainly learn from Buddhism. However, contemplation has always existed in the Church from the desert fathers, the Benedictine monks, the Carmelites, Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, and even at the level of diocesan clergy at all times, like the Holy Curé of Ars exemplifies so well.

After exchanging beautiful words and poetry with each other, the lovers remain silent for hours on end, holding each other, saying nothing, doing nothing. In silence, contemplating a beautiful ecstatic landscape, both are examples of contemplation.

In a contemplative prayer there are no words and no thoughts. There is a feeling of emptiness of mind, a realization of self, a heightened sense of being present in oneself, centered in one's own body, without ramblings of the mind. This mind, which St. Teresa of Avila calls the madwoman of the house, is like a monkey that jumps from branch to branch.

To prayer through silence, to silence through prayer. It takes time and a lot of practice to be able to silence the mind. It is achieved by not consenting to thoughts the moment we are aware of them; in this way, little by little, we reach the emptiness of mind that reaches a high degree of self-awareness. It is at this moment that we open ourselves to the divine and experience His presence. Deus intimior intimo meo. God is nearer to me than my innermost being. In fact, in contemplation we seek union with God, the beatific vision, Heaven on Earth.

In the initial states of contemplation, to silence the discursive, imaginative and fanciful mind, the mantras are used, which are short phrases that are repeated continuously to entertain the mind with something and prevent it from wandering from thought to thought. The Russian pilgrim even repeated his mantra hundreds of times a day to achieve continuous prayer, the dream of all hermits.

In the Most Holy Rosary, the Hail Mary prayer repeated 50 times, 10 times for each mystery, is intended to keep the mind from being distracted from contemplation of the mystery. The purpose, therefore, is not to put our attention on each Hail Mary and Our Father that we pray, but to occupy the mind with these prayers as if they were mantras and thus jump into the contemplation of the divine.

How to pray the Rosary
Because it is a contemplative prayer, we must enunciate each mystery by inviting the faithful who pray it with us to contemplate that Mystery; for example, in the first Joyful Mystery we contemplate the Annunciation of the angel to the Blessed Virgin. The phrase "we contemplate" in the proclamation of each Mystery is important and should always be said, never omitted or implied precisely because the Rosary is a contemplative prayer; it is the contemplation on the mysteries of our salvation from the hands of Mary, praying with Mary as her son's disciples prayed with her on the night before Pentecost. (Acts 1:12-14)

For each day of the week, we meditate on different mysteries. Thus, on Mondays and Saturdays we meditate on the Joyful Mysteries, on Tuesdays and Fridays the Sorrowful Mysteries, on Wednesdays and Sundays the Glorious Mysteries, reserving the Luminous Mysteries for Thursdays.

There are several ways of praying the Rosary, but most people begin with the sign of the cross, followed by the Creed, one Our Father, three Hail Marys and one Glory Be. After these introductory prayers, the first mystery is announced accompanied or not with a short meditation, and followed by one Our Father and one decade of Hail Marys.

After the tenth Hail Mary of each decade, the Glory Be is prayed, followed by several interjectory prayers, depending on the place and the people praying, ending with the prayer that Our Lady of Fatima recommended to the little shepherds to pray after each mystery: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those in most need (of Thy mercy).”

In the original Fatima prayer, this final statement (of Thy mercy) is missing, therefore grammatically it is understood that all souls need heaven. All countries have added this final expression in the sense that those who are furthest from God are the ones who are in most need of his mercy.

Hell is eternal death not eternal fire, which means eternal torture. God created us out of nothing so that we could do something with the life He gave us; those who do nothing with it, those who do not use the talents received from God for the benefit of their brothers and sisters for the greater glory of God, return to nothingness from which they were taken, for their lives were nothing and many, in fact, do actually believe that they came from nothing and will return to nothing.

Why does hell appear in the Bible as eternal torture? Because we are naturally more afraid of suffering than of death itself. The one who dies no longer suffers, we say, and the one who is being tortured begs for death as mercy. So often the badly injured friend asks the other friend for death as mercy. The fear of God does not mean to be afraid of God, and we should not choose God for fear of hell. This was a childish pedagogy in which children were educated. But today not even children should be educated in this way; reason should be the basis of all education, not irrational fear.

It is for the simple reason that the little shepherds could not imagine hell in any other way that this prayer of Fatima and the vision of hell did indeed involve fire. Our Lady showed them see hell as they understood it, as they conceived it, not least because nothingness has no graphic representation.

Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur – This maxim from scholastic philosophy can explain this point: whatever is received, is received in the manner of the receiver. The sea has plenty of water to give, but my bucket is limited in its capacity to receive; the same goes for our mind. The little shepherds saw hell as the Bible represents it and according to their capacity to understand it.

Finally, three Hail Marys are prayed for the intentions of the Holy Father, so that we may be united to all Christendom represented by him, and it ends with the Salve Regina preceded or not, according to the time available, by the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Our Father — The Our Father, which intersperses each Mystery, is much more than a simple prayer the Lord has taught us to recite occasionally. It contains what is the most important of the Gospel in a summarized form; it is, in this sense, a complete pocket Gospel because it contains what we should know and practice.

Since it is made up of several statements, unrelated to each other, it can be viewed as a list, like the shopping lists we make so not to forget the most important things. This list concerns the protocol of our relationship with God, that is, how our prayer should be structured; how we should address God, how to praise Him, what we should ask for, in what order, when and how. Therefore, more than a prayer, it is fundamentally a practical guide to prayer and life.

The Hail Mary – It is divided into two parts: the first is biblical and is composed of the greetings from the Angel Gabriel and Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, and the second originates from the faith of the Church, it is not known how or when or where it began to be used. Consequently, the Hail Mary prayer represents the perfect union between the Bible as the Word of God and the Church as a community of believers.

In an ascending movement, the first part, taken from the Bible, consists of 5 stairs that go up to Jesus. In a descending movement, the second part also consists of 5 stairs but this time going down to human reality, our death.

It cannot be understood by the advocates of the "sola fide sola scriptura solus christus", because there is a harmonious union between the Scripture, the Word of God, described in the first part, and the Tradition, that is, the history of the faith of the Christian community down through the ages, shaped in the second part. Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end and the center of history, is the core that unites the two parts.

The Glory Be – This is the invocation of God as One and Triune. One divinity in three different persons united in a triangle of love. It is the solution in the light of the dialectic of Greek philosophy between the one and the multiple. This prayer also reminds us that, made in the image and likeness of God, the human person is also one and triune: he does not exist or subsist outside the family.

Conclusion: As the apostles prayed with Mary before Pentecost, the Rosary today, reunites us with Her in prayer and contemplation of the Mysteries of her Son's life.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

Rosary, the Prayer of the People

Rosary or “terço”?
What is called Rosary in other countries, in Portugal it is called “terço”, or third. What we are used to praying is in fact a third of the Rosary, which when complete is made up of three thirds, totaling 150 Hail Marys.  The number 150 is also the number of psalms in the book of the same name that is part of the wisdom literature in the Old Testament.

Hence it has been said that a complete Rosary was the breviary of the people or the laity who could not, like clerics and religious, pray the psalmody or read the bible because they did not have the time and often did not know how to read.

The complete Rosary was therefore made up of three thirds which were prayed by meditating: in the first third, the Joyful Mysteries, which corresponded to the Birth and Childhood of Jesus, in the second third, the Sorrowful Mysteries, which corresponded to His Passion and Death, and in the last third, the Glorious Mysteries, which corresponded to his Resurrection and Ascension into heaven. The term "Terço" or third means, in Portuguese, at the same time the prayer and the object with its 50 beads with which to pray. There are even rosaries made up of 150 beads, that is, a complete rosary.

The Church was slow in discovering that the Rosary was incomplete with only the meditation on the mysteries of the incarnation, birth, passion and death, and resurrection of the Lord. It lacked the public life in which Jesus of Nazareth by his preaching, attitude and way of living and acting, models for us the new man, the one who is, in himself, the way, the truth and the life to which every human being is called to emulate.

With the creation and integration of the Luminous Mysteries by Pope John Paul II in an apostolic letter titled Rosarium Virginis Mariae, written in 2002, the logic behind the three thirds being a complete Rosary fell apart. The complete Rosary is now four "thirds" of 50 Hail Marys each, totaling 200 and not 150 as before.

Origin and history of the rosary
As instruments of prayer, the rosary beads have their origin in India, in the third century before Christ. In Christianity, it was the desert fathers of the third and fourth centuries who began to use an instrument for counting prayers, especially the Our Father.

On the other hand, in ancient times the Greeks and the Romans used to crown statues of their gods with a crown of roses as a token of their love and gratitude. Perhaps it is based on this tradition that the Christian women led to martyrdom marched to their death dressed in their best clothes, wearing a crown of roses on their head, as a symbol of joy and surrender, to meet their spouse, Christ Our Lord. After their martyrdom, the Christians gathered these crowns and said a prayer for each rose for the souls of the martyrs.

 Lucia and Jacinta of Fatima liked to wear flowers in their hair. On the days of the apparitions, the three little shepherds dressed in their Sunday best, as if they were going to the Sunday Mass; the two girls put flowers in their hair, especially Jacinta, who was photographed wearing a crown of roses on her head on the occasion of the apparitions.

The praying of the Rosary appeared in the year 800 within the shadows of the monasteries, as a psaltery of the laity. It was not until the year 1214, however, that the Church received the Rosary in its present form. Tradition has it that it was given to the Church by St. Dominic of Guzmán who, in turn, received it from the Virgin Mary as a powerful weapon against the enemies of the faith.

The Rosary gained great momentum after the naval battle of Lepanto, in which Christians defeated the Turks, eliminating forever the danger of the Muslims subjugating Christian Europe. Just before the battle, Pope Pius V asked Christians to pray the Rosary to support the Christian fleet, so after the victory, the feast of Our Lady of Victory was instituted on the day of the battle, October 7, 1571, later changed to Our Lady of the Rosary. Today, the entire month of October is called the month of the Rosary.

The rosary as a religious object
The rosary beads were made purely as a counting object because it is difficult to mentally keep track of 50 Hail Marys or even 10 Hail Marys of each mystery. Over time, what was purely an object for counting became a religious object and many Christians, as they do with other religious objects, have it blessed by a priest.  

Religious objects must be icons, that is, they must transport our hearts and minds beyond the objects themselves; that is, it is more important what a religious object means or represents than what it truly is, in itself, and what material it is made of.

In practical life, however, many Christians do not distinguish between an icon and an idol, which is an object that has value in itself, such as a horn, a key, a horseshoe or other amulets, objects to which the superstitious confer a certain power.

This superstition is reminiscent of animism, the first stage in the evolution of religious sentiments and thoughts, during which primitive human beings believed that all realities and objects had a soul. Today we know that a material object cannot have psychic or spiritual power because it is material, it is dead and has no life in it. Thus, there are no objects that can bring good luck or bad luck, a black cat is simply a black cat and there are no haunted houses, but only haunted people.  

It has been said that the rosary is a weapon. Yes, the praying of the Rosary is a weapon and the object of counting is thus considered only as long as it represents this prayer; but it is not a weapon in itself. It could probably be considered idolatrous those who hang their rosary on the rear view mirror of their cars without ever praying the Rosary.

Personally, the vast majority of the time when I pray the Rosary, I do so without the counting object because I do it while walking through the park or even running or just wandering around. On these occasions, my counting object is the 10 natural ‘beads’ that God gave us on the fingers of our hands.

Visits of Our Lady and the exhortation to recite the Rosary
The Marian apparitions, especially those in Fatima, in their insistent call to pray the Rosary every day, have made this practice distinctive of Catholics as opposed to the rest of Christendom, such as the Orthodox and the Protestants.

The Rosary and Fatima
In the apparitions of Fatima, Our Lady asked the little shepherds to pray the Rosary daily, not just in one or two apparitions, but in all those that took place in 1917, and also in the ones that occurred in Tuy and Pontevedra to Sister Lucia. When Sister Lucia was asked why Our Lady insistently requested that the Rosary be prayed every day and not any other prayer, Lucia replied, "To pray the Rosary is something everybody can do, rich and poor, wise and ignorant, great and small."

In that region, and to some degree a bit throughout Portugal, the recitation of the Rosary was an integral part of the evening routine of families, before or after supper, basking in the warmth of the fireplace, the father or mother would lead the recitation and no children would ask for their parents’ blessings and go to bed before it was finished, even if they were already starting to nod off to sleep.

A family that prays together stays together. The television, like a Trojan horse, has disrupted the candour and the harmony of the home, and the Rosary has been displaced by the soap operas. Families no longer pray together as a family; prayer now belongs only to the individual and private sphere, just like any other religious practice that has left the social sphere to be relegated to the private and individual. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Portugal is one of the countries with one of the highest divorce rates at 70%. Television catches people at night tired, without energy not even to think, and in this time sitting on the couch is when they are most vulnerable and easily manipulated.

With a newspaper, on the other hand, we have the option of choosing the news that catches our attention; with news on the television, we don’t have this choice, we receive whatever they give us and what they give us is not the news of the facts, but an interpretation of the facts to fit the current political narrative. The mass media create a single narrative, making everyone think the same way about the same thing.

Before the apparitions of Our Lady, the little shepherds already prayed the Rosary, but soon after they began to pray it as Our Lady wanted. Especially Francisco, to whom the Lady said that he needed to pray many Rosaries to go to Heaven.

Indeed, the Rosary identified Francisco in his life, for there were days when he prayed ten Rosaries, and the rosary also identified him in death when his body was exhumed. Among so many bones buried in a common grave, Ti Marto, Francisco’s father, was able to identify his son's bones, because clinging to them was the still intact rosary that Francisco used in life.

Mary asked in Fatima for penance and prayer, both for ourselves and for others. The Rosary catapults us into contemplation on the Mystery of God, especially the Word incarnate. Therefore, meditating or not meditating, distracted or not, those who deeply love the Rosary and never let a day go by without reciting it, are, "ipso facto", truly people of prayer.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC

The Hidden Face of Christmas

Every reality has a reverse side just like a coin. The moon always presents us with the same face, but there is another face that is veiled to us. In Christmas time, there are nativity scenes of all kinds: big ones, tiny ones, but they all have a part that cannot be seen. Underneath the green moss is the whole structure, stones, wood, water pipes, electric wires, small mechanisms, etc.

The first Christmas, the real Christmas, also had a hidden face that not many people are aware of. We read the Christmas story in the light of the many Christmases we have already lived through, as well as the concept that today’s Western society has of Christmas. We therefore neglect details that we even know are there, at least theoretically, but we hide them so as not to ruin the spirit of Christmas and the Christmas joy that we are supposed to feel at this time.  In the north central mountains of Portugal, called “Serra da Estrela”, where I was born, they like to say, “Well milked sorrow is the cream of joy". Underneath the Christmas joy there is a well milked sorrow; that is, a sorrow that was so well processed and managed that it turned into joy.

Maria appeared pregnant
On her return from a visit to her cousin Elizabeth that lasted several months, Mary appeared pregnant. What could she say? How could she explain what has happened? Becoming pregnant by the work and grace of the Holy Spirit was unprecedented, it was a unique event in human history; it had never happened before and was never going to happen again. It was expected that the Messiah, whom the people of Israel awaited and still awaits, would appear in a natural way from the house of David.

Jesus’ Christmas was Mary’s Easter or passion. The Lord’s Passion was also Mary's passion. Still today, even in a society that is neither puritanical nor sexist, a sex scandal delights the mouths of many people. It seems that our own self-esteem grows when we see others’ sinking. There is nothing more degrading and stigmatizing than a sex scandal: everyone points the finger at you, you live without honour and with a name that is forever ruined, it is like dying while still alive.

"Calumnia, que algo queda" says a Spanish proverb, that is, “Slander that something will remain forever” or “Throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick”; in other words, cast doubt on someone in areas of sexual behaviour and that person's bad reputation will follow him to the grave. It may even turn out to be a lie, no matter, people will always remain in doubt, they will cling to the first report as being true and the denial as being a lie. These scandals open the television news and make the front page of the newspapers while the denials appear in a lost column inside the newspaper that no one reads.

Physical death by stoning was also very close... Mary was considered an adulteress because she was betrothed to Joseph, and although they were not yet living together, for the purposes of the law she was already married to him. Such a relationship can no longer be broken, unless there was a divorce. We well know what was the punishment for adulterous women ... (John 8:1-11) they were stoned to death.

What used to happen in Israel on a regular basis is still happening today in some Muslim countries where Sharia law applies; there are videos on certain websites that document these sad facts in the 21st century.

Already many, thirsting for blood, had stones ready in their hands, waiting for Joseph, the injured party, to cast the first stone. Casting the first stone was a right that belonged to the one offended. Casting the first stone was, at the same time, a declaration of the verdict by the offended and the first act of execution of the sentence, which the bloodthirsty hypocrites were gladly waiting to carry out.

For Jesus, in the episode of the adulterous woman (John 8: 1-11), the right to cast the first stone, that is, to judge and pass a death sentence, is not the right of the injured party, nor of the one who has authority by delegation or election, but of the one who has the moral authority, that is, the one who is without sin.

Jesus does not believe in retributive justice because it is nothing more than legalized revenge, it is the old decree of “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”. On the contrary, Jesus believes in restorative justice, the one that God practices, because he does not want the death of the sinner, but that he repents, converts and lives (Ezekiel 18:23-32).

Joseph's dream
Joseph was a righteous man and he was certainly not going to stone Mary; but the reason he was not going to stone her was not so much that he was indeed righteous and good, but because he loved Mary unconditionally; love goes beyond what is purely and coldly legal, unconditional love forgives. There are no crimes of passion in unconditional love.

One day, a married man with five children said to me, "If I knew my wife was unfaithful to me, I would divorce her right away.” “Great is the love you have for your wife,” I said in a sarcastic way, “you don't love your wife, you love yourself. Her infidelity does nothing to an unconditional love, it only disturbs a self-love.” He who truly loves is sad, but does no harm to the object of his love; because love, as St. Thomas Aquinas says, is to will the good of the other.

The second Joseph in the Bible, the spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary, after his ancestor Joseph of Egypt, was also a dreamer who let himself be guided by his dreams. Dreams are in fact a star in our lives; they are messages from the subconscious to the conscious or even from God Himself. They are phantasmagoric and highly exaggerated so to make them more difficult to forget during the day; if they were not, they would be easily forgotten and upon waking, we would remember nothing.

Dreams are always subjective; they are ours, even when we dream about other people or places. We are always the subject of our dream, never a place or another person; what appears in our dreams are not objectively the places or the people, but its deep psychological significance to us; that is, what these places and people mean to us.

After his dream, Joseph had the same knowledge as Mary; and so, he was going to share with her the same pain and undergo the same passion, suffering all this with resilience and in silence as Mary was proficient in doing (Luke 2:19) because there was no reasonable way, they could explain the situation to anyone and excuse Mary... Mary was destined to bear the stain and the shame for the rest of her life.

As for Joseph, our patriarchal society considered a man that accepts such a woman as being dispossessed of his manhood. And since I want to depict the pain of Mary and Joseph in a very graphic and real way, I dare to write here the slang used for such men, that is, a “sweet cuckold”.

Jesus, the son of Mary
Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart (Luke 2:19), and suffered in silence, not being able to defend herself against the slanders... The suffering lasted her whole life, as is natural in cases like this.

Here and elsewhere in the gospel, this stigma resurfaces, for example in one of the confrontations that Jesus had with the Pharisees, in John’s Gospel at one point they said, “We are not illegitimate children” (John 8:41), so as to say… “as you are…”

“Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” Mark 6:3

In a patriarchal society, no one is known as the son of his mother, that is, no one is known by reference to his mother, but by reference to his father. Let us remember that Jesus when addressing Peter in a personal way, to ask him if he loves Him, calls him by his family name in reference to Peter's father and not his mother: "Simon, son of John...” (John 21:15-19).

The evangelist Mark, despite being a Hebrew from Jerusalem, writes his Gospel in Rome for the Romans and not in half measures: he relates the truth as it is. Jesus is called by reference to his mother and not by  his father. Even if the father had died, a Hebrew would never be called by reference to his mother; if they did, it was because Jesus was, to the people of his time, the son of an unknown father; to the shame of his mother and Himself.

Matthew, the Gospel written for the Jews, corrects and says, “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?” (Matthew 13:55-56). Luke, in his Gospel, also records the episode of the Lord's visit back to his hometown; however, as a respect for Jesus he does not copy Mark, but he does not tell a lie either like Matthew, so he chooses not to reveal what his countrymen called him.

Conclusion: The birth of Jesus was experienced by Mary and Joseph as a lifelong passion and death. Unable to explain her pregnancy, she the one that for us had been conceived and conceived without sin, in her social environment, had to live the rest of her life stained with the most defamatory sin of all times.

Fr.  Jorge Amaro, IMC

 

A Reason Hijacked by Irrationality

Like sheep, they are led to the grave, where death will be their shepherd. In the morning the godly will rule over them. Their bodies will rot in the grave, far from their grand estates. Psalm 49:14

After 5 million years of evolution, since our ancestors in Africa started to shed most of their body hair and to gain intelligence, I believe that to this day, animal instinct still rules over human intelligence.

As it is with all the living beings on this planet, our behaviour and most of our actions are motivated by instinct, both at the individual as well as at the social level. The only difference compared to other living beings is that we are smarter. We would be superior if intelligence were motivated by and at the service of good. But since it is smartness motivated and put at the service of lower instincts, we end up being worse than animals. Animality directs, dictates, inspires and motivates our intelligence, and not as it should be, intelligence directing our animality.

Science tells us that human life begins the moment a male half-cell called spermatozoid unites with a female half-cell called ovum, forming a human cell with a unique genetic code. This zygote immediately subdivides and multiplies over the course of nine months to form a complete human being, it only needs to be left alone for this to happen. Despite knowing this, we are the only animals that kill our own offspring while it is still in the mother’s womb and we do it by the millions every year. The same people who claim that science is the truth and should have the last word in everything, go against science to justify this abominable act.

Animals do not kill their own kinds; they may fight among themselves to prove dominance of some sort, but they do not kill their own species for the sake of killing. We humans, since Cain and Abel, have been killing our own brothers and sisters, and even those who gave birth to us. If our behaviour were dominated by reason, conflicts like the Arab-Israeli and others that have been going on for many years would have been resolved long ago.

The Germans who regard themselves as homeland of philosophers and very rational people, have Hitler, the ultimate exponent of reason at the service of irrationality. By murdering 5 million Jews, he took human intelligence at the service of anger to uncharted territory. And the irony is that he thought he was freeing and purifying humanity from an evil race. Contrary to this antisemitic ideology, Jews have won more Nobel prizes than any other people including the Germans. Hitler is joined by Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot and all the dictators and tyrants throughout human history.

Not long ago, the self-proclaimed Islamic State raped women and children with immunity, even cutting the heads off the citizens of our countries in front of television cameras with a hair-raising coldness. They do so with complete immunity because, although they hurt our sensibility, they do not hurt our economic interests, so… why should we bother?

Individual anachronism
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.  Romans 7:15

St. Paul was already aware that we are anachronistic beings: we do what we know beforehand to be wrong. And since it is irrationality that directs our lives, to justify to ourselves and to others that we are rational beings, we use what in psychology is called rationalization mechanisms. We justify the evil that we do in order to hurt ourselves less or to silence our conscience which accuses us. We do what the fox in the fable did with the grapes: instead of accepting its inability to reach them hanging on the vines, the fox declared them unripe and thus not worth getting.

We know that certain foods are bad for our health, and yet we consume them anyway. As we see ourselves naked, like Adam and Eve after they ate the apple, we defend our gluttony by saying, "Forgive the evil it does for the good it tastes", or "Live life to the fullest, for the future is uncertain" or even "we have to die from something so why not this". If an animal had self-awareness and could speak, it would say this very thing.

Social anachronism
Somebody said once: “Stop asking “what type of world will we leave our children?” and start asking instead “what type of children will we leave this world?”

As a society, we confront our irrationalities by adding them up, instead of confronting them individually. Since it is the lower instinct that inspires our intelligence, most of the inventions that have made our lives more comfortable were not born out of peace, but out of war.

First the atomic bomb was born and only later was its peaceful application of producing electricity found. The microwave we use to heat our dinner was born of the radar system used in World War II to detect enemies; GPS was not born to guide us on the roads, but to guide missiles to their destination.

History has proven again and again that we are much more creative in doing evil than in doing good. In the budget of almost every country there is more money allocated to promote war than to promote peace.

The so bright country of the United States of America is hostage to a second amendment that gives its people the right to own any types of weapons, even those that are used by soldiers. This “bloody” second amendment has already killed thousands of students and teachers in schools, and yet it seems like the amendment cannot be changed as if it was a kind of gospel that cannot be rewritten. All other countries can change their constitutions and update them to modern times, but not so the United States.

We know that meat raised with growth hormones in half the time, and vegetables and fruits treated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides are a major cause of cancer increase in Western societies. Yet we do nothing rational to solve the problem. We create a parallel organic farming, not with the intention to watch over public health, but as another way to make money.

The funny thing is that the word “amendment” comes from the Latin word “emendation” that means a correction, an edition or something added. So, the second amendment is something that was already edited and corrected but it can’t be corrected anymore. Very strange…

Car models using alternative energy source to petroleum appeared but were immediately removed from the market, because they were hurting the interests of big oil companies. It is said that there are cures for various diseases and that they are not made public because the pharmaceutical companies are making tons of money from these diseases and, for these companies, health is of little interest.

We do not yet know the ecological and human health impact of GMOs, but we already use them on a large scale because they are so profitable. At the forefront of transgenics is the seed company Monsanto, which to create dependency in the poor of the third world, has modified the seeds so that they produce only one harvest, forcing the poor to buy seeds from them the following year. Over time, the seeds that God created disappear, that is, those that result from the previous harvest and germinate for a new harvest.

Unsustainability of our development model
Mr. Adam Smith, in his book The Wealth of Nations, said that everyone should seek their own interest since an invisible hand would seek the common good and interest. He must have been very happy with his cleverness when he discovered this theory, but if we think about it, it is nothing but the intellectual version of the law of the jungle.

Capitalism has never sought nor wanted the common good. In fact, if Mr. Smith were alive today, he would know that already in 2016, the 1% of humanity owned more wealth than the remaining 99%, that a handful of people owned exactly 54%, that is, more than half of the world's wealth, he would be ashamed of his theory. Where then is this “bloody” invisible hand that would bring equality?

From a political, economic and even ecological point of view, our development model is unsustainable and unviable. Our planet will die long before we have the ability to transport ourselves to another planet. There are those who live in denial and argue that climate change is due to normal cycles of our planet. They deny that the rampant air and sea pollution has any effect on the health of our planet.

There are precedents and these should make us think. The Mayan civilization is an example of a development model that was unsustainable and, as such, came to an end. The pyramids, palaces and monuments that the Mayans were able to build had already been swallowed up by the jungle by the time the Spaniards arrived there. The Mayans, dispersed, had returned to subsistence agriculture.

In the face of this tragedy that is about to befall us once again, we still behave like animals. Some think like the donkey that said: “No more grass should grow after I die, I won't be needing it anymore”, let those who come after take care of themselves; others prefer not to see, like the ostrich that hides its head under the sand so as not to see the danger: What the eye doesn't see the heart doesn't grieve over, and there are occasions when the truth is just too bitter to swallow. So just don’t swallow it and stupidly or irrationally trust your luck.

I didn't want this panorama to seem so bleak, there are people here and there throughout human history who have subjugated instinct to the service of intelligence and have been capable of great deeds. But these are only a few swallows, not enough to make a summer.

Only Christ can save us from ourselves
In our sheepishness, like a flock of sheep, we move inexorably towards death and death itself is our shepherd, says the psalm mentioned above. We are suicidal and we don't even realize it. Only God can save us from ourselves.

It is by obeying God's will and not our own that we can free us from ourselves. God likes us more than we like ourselves, He defends our interests better than we can; it is love for God that saves us from ourselves. The unhealthy love we have for ourselves leads us to our own annihilation just as it did for Narcissus.

In its entirety, humanity has not yet reached adulthood; it continues to behave like a frivolous, irresponsible child, doing whatever gives him the greatest pleasure, completely oblivious to the consequences in the future from the present orgies.

For Freud, human maturity is the passage from the pleasure principle to the reality principle; that is, abandoning behaviours that produce immediate pleasure (pleasure principle) for the knowledge that we have of the harmful effects that these behaviours will cause on the long term (reality principle). Fundamentally, Jesus had already said this when he stated: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me." Luke 9:23

Conclusion – If, knowing what suits us, we do whatever we feel like, reason is at the service of instinct. Only when we manage to postpone the immediate gratification of our impulses and do what suits us then we can put our instincts at the service of reason and we can be genuinely human.

Fr. Jorge Amaro, IMC