The Mystical Rose

Br Ursus, inspired by the Rosary Rose he received on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary has been reading Blessed John Henry's book, 'The Mystical Rose'

Mary is the most beautiful flower that ever was seen in the spiritual world. It is by the power of God's grace that from this barren and desolate earth there have ever sprung up at all flowers of holiness and glory. And Mary is the Queen of them. She is the Queen of spiritual flowers; and therefore she is called the Rose, for the rose is fitly called of all flowers the most beautiful.

Irish Dominicans on the way to Knock ...

The Irish Dominican students on their way to Knock, County Mayo, for the Irish Province's annual pilgrimage, made a great impression on one journalist. You can listen here to what she had to say about meeting them.

The apparition at Knock in 1879 was a most unusual one, not a simple Marian apparition, more an apocalyptic vision of the Sacrificed Lamb surrounded by angels with Mary, St Joseph and St John the Evangelist standing at one side.

A reflection for October, Month of the Rosary

Recently I was having a conversation with someone about prayer and she mentioned that she rarely prayed the Rosary because she found it so hard to concentrate whenever she did. The Rosary is a beautiful prayer, but due to one reason or another many people never get to discover this beauty. It can feel like we're supposed to be doing so many things simultaneously – saying each Our Father and Hail Mary with due reverence, praying for our particular intentions, all the while trying to create vivid mental images of Christ and Our Lady in our mind's eye. If we fail in this endeavour, it's tempting to feel dejected and as though we've been through some pointless mechanical exercise. We might tell ourselves it's better not to pray the Rosary at all rather than to pray it badly.

Well the month of October is a good time to re-evaluate the place the Rosary has in our lives. Going back to the conversation I had with this person on prayer, I mentioned that I also found it hard to concentrate during the Rosary, but that it didn't really matter. As soon as I'd said this, I realized it could be taken the wrong way. Contemplation is a fundamental part of the Rosary. The French priest and Dominican tertiary St Louis De Montfort said:

The Rosary without meditation on the sacred mysteries of our salvation would almost be like a body without a soul; excellent matter, but without form which sets it apart from other devotions.


It is because of its meditative nature that many popes and saints have been so keen to promote the Rosary. In 1982, when John Paul II visited Fatima he told the people:

Do you want me to teach you a 'secret'? It is simple, and it is no longer a secret; pray, pray very much; recite the Rosary every day.

The Rosary is not an optional extra. It has the potential to transform our lives if we are willing. So where does that leave those of us who genuinely find it difficult to concentrate whilst praying the Rosary? Despite feeling I don't pray the Rosary particularly well, over the last few years in which I've been praying it on a daily basis, there are several things I've come to realize. Whilst we can pray the Rosary to varying degrees of perfection, it is not really possible to pray the Rosary badly. Although we should always hope that we might learn to pray the Rosary better, we are never worse off for praying it. We might have various bad attitudes that we become aware of when we pray the Rosary, but this is surely a good thing. It makes us realize how much we need God's mercy.

Another thing that I've noticed is how my attitude to Our Lady has changed over the last few years. Before I started praying the Rosary on a regular basis, I didn't feel I had any strong Marian devotion – I felt I hardly knew Our Lady. It is only through praying the Rosary that I've really started to appreciate who Mary is. She is our Mother, she loves us, she constantly prays for us, gently guiding us towards her Son. So we should feel entirely comfortable and at ease in her company. As a nun, St Bernadette used to encourage the sisters to pray the Rosary whilst going to sleep and would say “you will be like a little child who falls asleep saying 'Mama, Mama!'”


John Paul II said that as a young man, praying the Living Rosary helped him realize that not only does Our Mother Mary direct us towards Christ, but Christ also directs us towards His mother. Christ is saying 'look what marvels I have worked for my mother.' Devotion to the saints and especially to Our Lady, is so important because it marks out why our faith is so special. God's grace is not something superficial, but penetrates the core of our being. God has promised to make us like Himself. Our Lady is the first in whom this promise has been fulfilled, and so she is worthy of the highest of praise.

Ordination in Freiburg

Last Saturday, 2nd October, a former member of the Godzdogz team, fr Martin Grandinger, was ordained to the diaconate in Freiburg-im-Breisgau.

The photograph shows fr Martin (on the left) with Most Rev Dr Paul Wehrle, auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese of Freiburg, and two other Dominicans who were also ordained deacons, fr Markus Fischer OP and fr Jörg Wegscheider OP. Please remember them in your prayers. They will work as deacons in various parishes during the coming months before proceeding, God willing, to their ordination as priests.

Our Lady of the Rosary

Due to the recent Battle of Britain commemorations the speeches of Winston Churchill have entered the album charts. One speech given by Churchill in the Commons, on June 18 1940, and recorded later that day for broadcast, stated that "upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation". This sentiment was echoed by Pope Benedict on his state visit to Britain, when he praised Britain's stand "against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society". Of course Hitler's war machine was not the first, nor sadly the last, threat to Christian society.

In the late sixteenth century the Ottoman Empire was on the point of breaking into Western Europe. In 1570 the island of Cyprus was occupied by Ottoman forces. The Christian Mediterranean powers formed a Holy League, to aid the Venetian defenders of Cyprus. Alas the the fleet was not assembled in time to save Cyprus. Nevertheless a naval showdown in the western Mediterranean between the forces of Christendom and the Turks was inevitable. On October 7th the battle took place. A victory for the Ottomans, who had been invincible at sea for over a century, would give them access to Western Europe and a clear road to invade Rome. The stakes were very high for the people of Europe. Pope Pius V, a Dominican and devotee of the Holy Rosary, turned to the intercession of Our Lady and arranged a rosary procession in St. Peter's Square on the day of the battle. Before the Christian forces engaged, the sailors recited the Rosary with the Papal Legate. Five hours later the Turkish fleet had been defeated and the threat of Muslim forces over-running Western Europe subsided. Pope Pius became miraculously aware of the victory and ordered a solemn Te Deum to be sung at St. Peter's. This victory changed the geopolitical balance. It stopped the Muslim advance into Western Europe and has often been seen as the beginning of the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire.

The Pope instituted "The Feast of Our Lady of Victory" to commemorate the success of the Holy League's naval victory. Over time the name of the feast has been changed to Our Lady of the Rosary. This seems rather apt. Whilst the victory is a good thing, what is more important is the faith that brought it about. The use of the rosary was not and is not a superstitious magical ritual. It is an act of faith. It is entering into the life of Mary and pondering on the Incarnate Word. The rosary is Marian prayer but only because it focuses on Christ. The mysteries of the Rosary allow us to kneel at the manger, hear the Kingdom proclaimed, stand and the foot of the Cross and see the risen Lord. Once again Christian civilization is under attack, not now from a military threat but from indifference. We have forgotten the Christian roots of our civilization and instead replaced them with idols such as liberalism, consumerism, nationalism, socialism, and gaiaism. May we pray through the intercession of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary that Europe may once again turn it eyes to Truth and to the Christian faith .

Our Lady of the Rosary,

Pray for Us

A-Z of the Mass: Conclusion

For theologians such as Pope Benedict XVI the mystery of the Eucharist is intimately bound up with the mystery of our union with Christ. Participation in the Mass, then, should have a positive impact on an individual's subjective response to grace. The whole point of worship is to be raised up in Christ and transformed toward His level. Yet somehow our everyday experiences of liturgy can seem far removed from such elevated claims. We do not often feel like we have shared in the eternal and infinite love of the Trinity. We rarely get a 'kick' out of going to Mass.

In God Still Matters, Herbert McCabe OP points out that to call a Mass dull is not necessarily a criticism. He contrasts the immediate pleasure of drinking good Irish whiskey with the more sustained satisfaction of living in a comfortable and tastefully furnished room. For McCabe, good liturgy is more like this second kind of satisfaction. Sunday Mass rarely takes one's breath away, but if one is deprived of decent liturgy for a sustained period of time one begins to notice an important gap in one's emotional and spiritual life.

This summer we have tried through our A-Z of the Mass to draw attention to some of the dimensions and symbols of the Mass that perhaps go unnoticed. We have tried to offer some fresh perspectives on our 'well furnished room' in the hope that it might aid a deeper participation in the Eucharistic mystery. This mystery is 'the source and summit of Christian life' (Lumen gentium §11). Paying close attention to what we do and say on a Sunday morning is not navel gazing. Our communion with Christ is what vivifies and sustains our mission to the world. As Presbyterorum ordinis, Vatican II's decree on the ministry and life of priests, puts it:

The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries and works of the apostolate are bound up with the Eucharist and are orientated towards it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch (PO §5).

A-Z of the Mass: Z - The Eschaton

In the Book of Revelation, the last letter of the Greek alphabet, Omega, is symbolic of the end of the universe, understood as the consummation of history and the second, definitive coming of Christ. So, as we come to the end of the (admittedly, Latin) alphabet, it can remind us to consider the ways in which the Mass relates to the end of time, the eschaton.

St Thomas Aquinas teaches us that the sacraments, as signs, have a triple function, pointing to the past, the present, and the future. Pointing back to the mysteries of Christ’s human life, and especially to his Passion, they make present the sanctifying grace, that sharing in the life of God, which Jesus won for us through those mysteries and gives to us now in the sacraments. Past and present are very closely linked, because it is through his Passion – his sharing in human realities even unto death – that Jesus won for us a share of his divine reality, something we receive through outward, physical signs appropriate to our human nature (a unity of soul and body). Present and future, though, are also very tightly bound, for the grace we receive in the sacraments is but a foretaste of that fullness of sharing in God’s life to which we are all called after this earthly life. Indeed it is the pledge of that fulness and the means Jesus freely gives to us that we might obtain it.

Since in the sacraments we are already given a share in the life of God, which is what is promised to us at the consummation of all things when God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:28), it is not untrue to say that the Eschaton, as well as the Cross, becomes present for us at Mass. The Body and Blood of Christ, which demonstrate his humanity and his suffering, and which we receive at Mass, are now glorified in heaven: indeed, the Christian tradition sees the whole celebration of the Divine Liturgy as a participation in the heavenly liturgy. In the Eucharist we 'taste on earth the gifts of the world to come'. And each of the acclamations after the Consecration includes a reference to past, present and future, for example, 'Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again'.

So at Mass time in a sense stops. We are participating in the eternal worship of God, the inner life of the Trinity in which the Son eternally offers himself in love to the Father, bringing together and going beyond every moment in the existence of the universe. Aware, as best we are able, of this quite literally awesome gift of God, as we take part in the Mass, ‘let us,’ in the words of the Byzantine liturgy, ‘who mystically represent the cherubim ... lay aside all cares of life, that we may receive the King of all, escorted invisibly by ranks of angels. Alleluia!’