Daily Rosary Meditations | Catholic Prayers

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Thank you for joining us for the daily Rosary. Today, we're continuing our meditation on beauty. Want to receive this meditation in a PDF form? Subscribe by email at DailyRosary.net. Be apostles of the Rosary - share this with others!

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Thank you for joining us for today's Rosary! Today we're meditating on what struck Mike during his recent visit to the Sea of Galilee. Would you like to read through today's meditation? Make sure to subscribe to receive the show notes via email at DailyRosary.net.  Be an apostle of the Rosary and share this with others!

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Thank you for joining us for today's Rosary! Today we're meditating on the betrayal of Christ, and returning to the Lord with hope. Would you like to read through today's meditation? Make sure to subscribe to receive the show notes via email at DailyRosary.net. Be an apostle of the Rosary and share this with others!

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On this day, Oct 13, 1917 Mary worked a public miracle for more than 70,000 to see at Fatima called the miracle of the Sun. Earlier that year, in July Mary took the three children to hell and then she said to them…“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace." Mary showed the children a vision of the future, what would happen if humanity did not turn away from sin and turn to God. Mary also prophesied, "In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world." Ratzinger explained the vision: "The angel with the flaming sword on the left of the Mother of God recalls similar images in the Book of Revelation. This represents the threat of judgment that looms over the world. Today the prospect that the world might be reduced to ashes by a sea of fire no longer seems pure fantasy: man himself, with his inventions, has forged the flaming sword. The vision then shows the power that stands opposed to the force of destruction – the splendor of the Mother of God and, stemming from this in a certain way, the summons to penance. In this way, the importance of human freedom is underlined: the future is not in fact unchangeably set, and the image that the children saw is in no way a film preview of a future in which nothing can be changed. Indeed, the whole point of the vision is to bring freedom onto the scene and to steer freedom in a positive direction. The purpose of the vision is not to show a film of an irrevocably fixed future. Its meaning is exactly the opposite: it is meant to mobilize the forces of change in the right direction. Therefore we must totally discount fatalistic explanations of the secret…Rather, the vision speaks of dangers and how we might be saved from them.” We can prevent the prophetic vision Mary gave in 1917 and help bring about the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary by two means: The Rosary and our own personal cross  Prayer: “Pray, pray very much!” and “Pray the Rosary every day.” Penance: “Make of everything you can a sacrifice and offer it to God as an act of Reparation for the sins by which God is offended and for the conversion of sinners.”  5 First Saturdays of Reparation Accept and Offer to God what you don’t like, what you cannot change. Offer these for the Love of God, the Conversion of sinners, and in Reparation for sin. There is a cosmic Struggle Between: The Devil, his demons and his servants of darkness and God, Mary, his Angels and His servants of Light. God is asking us to play our part for the good of the world and the good of souls.

In the Gospel of the Mass today, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, neither the younger nor the older son accepted what they were, sons of the Father. The younger rejected his sonship, wishing his Father dead to receive his inheritance and go and do as he pleased; the older son, by his own words, revealed his true conviction when he said to his father, “all these years I have slaved for you.” For some reason, neither could accept they were sons of the father. Maybe it was the deadly sin of acedia, otherwise known as sloth that prevented them. Sloth is that sin in which we wish to escape the effort, self-control and sacrifice it takes to be an adopted son or daughter of God. In our fallen human nature, it is hard, I mean there is stuff that will have to change in our lives, we will need to detach from disordered desires and addictions that keep us from living according to our true identity and dignity. As I stated yesterday Acedia is an aversion to the invitation from God to become godlike, a saint. What follows is the effort to escape our noble calling through busyness, workaholism, entertainment, news, sports, drunkenness, drug use, pornography, or sex In the last analysis, acedia is this that man will not be what God wants him to be, His son Magnanimity conquers sloth or acedia - Magnanimity is this: I want to be what you O God want me to be – your son and a saint! I don’t want to escape this call to greatness. I accept it, with all its responsibilities, knowing that I cannot do this on my own, but I am confident you can do it in me! I stand ready – Father, go to work on me! I will not run away. This is why magnanimity is so closely related to Hope – the confident expectation that God can and will do in me what He wants if I stand still and don’t run away. Why is it necessary to stand still, to sit in quiet and stillness? First, Because in pride we think everything depends upon us and so we have to be diligent responsible and keep busy. This pride and self-reliance blocks the action of God because only God can make us holy. Second we are afraid of what needs to be done in us to reach our potential and we think if we keep moving, God wont notice us and He will leave us alone and we can prevent God from doing what needs to be done in the us Third we just don’t want to become what God wants us to become so we avoid him through those things I mentioned above: we avoid God by being responsible in the sense of being so damn busy that we are really just running away, or in distraction with news, entertainment, social media, kids sports, on and on and on…However when we sit in quiet, solitude and stillness we have to say to God: Not my will but Your will be done! God I am going to sit here in silence and stillness because I want you to do in me whatever you want to do in me Its really very simple, stop trying to escape. Make some small break in the routine and rut of your life. Give God 5, 10, 20, 30 minutes of undivided attention with no distractions, be still and let Him do in you what He wants. Then make a habit of this every day. You have settled for far too little and its time to demand more for yourself which is exactly what God has always wanted – but you wouldn’t let him.

As we saw in defining hope, for this virtue to be present the person must perceive heavenly happiness as a) something desirable and possible, and b) something not yet secure. If either of these two truths are lacking from a person’s outlook, hope will die. Hence there are two vices which are directly opposed to the second theological virtue: Despair and Presumption. The primary threat to hope is despair. Despair isn’t just a feeling of gloominess, or depression. It’s the refusal to strive after God, the refusal to make Holiness and Heaven our primary goal and to work for it. People succumb to despair for a variety of reasons, but ultimately, the causes of despair can be narrowed down to two categories. The first is excessive self-focus. If you just look at yourself you’re going to be struck with how disproportionate your strengths are relative to the goal. In other words, if you just look at yourself you’ll only see that there’s not enough there to do what needs to be done, and you’ll end up giving up on holiness and happiness. And it’s certainly the case that what we have on our own isn’t enough, which is why we’re supposed to keep our eyes on Christ, beg for God’s mercy and strength, and realize that “With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). An excellent illustration of the danger of self-focus is the story of Peter, who, as long as he kept his attention on Our Lord, was able to walk on water. When his focus switched to his own personal ability and the surrounding circumstances, he began to sink. That’s how the interplay between hope and despair works: look at Him, not at yourself. The second reason we despair is attachment to sin. We end up not really wanting to pursue God, because we know it’s going to mean giving up certain sins to which we’ve grown accustomed. So we choose the evil habits we’re used to over the promise of eternal joy. You are designed to be a saint. But you don’t want to be a saint because you don’t want to give up things you think you cant live without which aren’t really making you happy anyway, still you are addicted to them. What are they? Ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the addictions that keep you from perfect joy! A major symptom of despair is an inordinate need for distraction. When you make the decision to settle for mediocre pleasures, mediocre achievements, mediocre loves, you still know deep down you ought to be pursuing higher things. So you try to find some distraction to help you drown out the divine call. Do you remember what it was like to put off studying for a big test, and then tried to make up for it by spending a night in the library? When you get to the library you’re terrified about how much work you have to do, and how little time you have to do it in. You know you need to buckle down and get to the books, but instead you go into denial, trying not to think about it. You wander aimlessly around the library in desperate search of anything that’ll help you procrastinate. You read a magazine article that isn’t even interesting, you browse your social media online, you strike up a conversation with the library staff. But all the while you’re bored, and you have this sick feeling in your stomach because you know a) that the test is coming, b) you don’t know what’s going to be on it; c) you’re not ready for it. That’s our society. We know we ought to spend our time on more noble aspirations, getting ready for the final accounting of judgment, but we really don’t want to talk about it, and we don’t even want to think about it. So we look for anything that can distract us, anything that can drown out the guilt. Maybe that’s why there’s so little silence today.  Presumption is a much more infrequently discussed kind of hopelessness. It’s the vice of thinking heaven is guaranteed: “I’m as good as saved already.”  Presumption can be just as dangerous as despair.

1817 Hope is the theological virtue by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, But we don’t desire heaven and we fear death because we fear heaven because we think all the good stuff to be done is here on earth and heaven is just rest, you know R.I.P. What will we do in Heaven? Let me suggest three things we will do in heaven: Understand our earthly life by God’s knowledge, share in all other human lives, and endless exploration into God and the New Universe First, we will review our past life with divine understanding and appreciation of every single experience, good and evil: This corresponds to the first stages of Heaven known as Purgatory. It might consist of moral reeducation, rather than mere punishment, rehabilitation rather than retribution. Second, we do the same to other’s lives from within. We will know them more intimately and completely than we could ever know our most intimate friend on earth b/c we share God’s knowledge of one another. The Communion of Saints will be even more interesting than human love on earth. Think of the first time you fell in love. The joy of learning about another person and doing all good things with them . Yet without out all the imperfections, and not just with one person, but with all people. We will have the ability to know every human that ever lived. Even more intimately than we knew our closest friend on earth. Who would you like to become best friends with in Heaven? Your spouse, or son or daughter. Maybe a friendship cut short here on earth. I think of my two best friends killed in high school and college. My guardian angel. Who do you want to meet? We will not only explore our own lives and the lives of others - We will begin the endlessly fascinating task of exploring, learning and loving all the facets of the inexhaustible nature of God. The Contemplation of God is not boring.  Heaven will be: Dynamic rather than static. Exploring rather than staring at God. Endless beginnings rather than merely the end because the whole world will be renewed and transformed The material universe itself is destined to be transformed Heaven will be a “New Heavens and a New Earth” 2 Pet. 3:13 “New Heavens and New Earth” means that Every good thing on earth will be in heaven Philippians 3:21 For us, our homeland is in heaven and from heaven comes the savior we are waiting for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into copies of his glorious body. He will do that by the same power with which he can subdue the whole universe. From The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis chapters fifteen and sixteen Drawn into a stable Set the scene with the end of the world Closing of the stable door Their sadness at the loss of everything good in Narnia Bigger on the inside than it was on the outside This is fiction but it certainly helps us think about the Heaven and think about it we must b/c that reality charges everything here with eternal significance and that is hope.

Recently we’ve meditated on the theological virtues of charity and faith, today hope. As we have discussed, faith reveals to us God’s supernatural plan for our lives. With faith we know that the ultimate purpose of each human person lies in the transforming union with God in this life and its fulfillment in Heaven. Once we have this knowledge, it’s time to begin working towards that objective. That’s where the theological virtue of hope enters the picture. Hope is the virtue whereby the individual strives for union with God and Heaven as something which is possible, but not yet guaranteed. There are, then, three conditions needed for the virtue of hope: firstly, an active pursuit of God and Heaven; secondly, a realization that holiness, becoming a saint and the attainment of Heaven is possible, (after all, if it wasn’t possible, why would anyone even try?); thirdly, a realization that failing to attain holiness and Heaven is also possible, (after all, if getting to Heaven was guaranteed, why would you need to work at getting there?). Tragically, it’s common to hear this striving for Holiness and Heaven as something which is merely a distraction from the responsibilities of this life of making a difference on earth.  For example, Marx, the founder of atheistic Communism once famously said that “religion is the drug of the people,” and more recently, Carl Sagan stated, “Life is but a momentary glimpse of the wonder of the astonishing universe, and it is sad to see so many dreaming it away on spiritual fantasy.”  I guess people think that ideas about the next life are simple forms of escapism or wishful thinking that keeps us from doing any good in this world. Yet actually the contrary is true. Those with their eyes fixed on Heaven are the ones who do the most good for earthly society. C.S. Lewis articulates this very clearly: "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.” Mother Teresa did more for the poor than anyone and she spent at least four hours in prayer every day. The fact is that those who are only interested in conditions down here lack the power to actually affect conditions down here. Hope, the pursuit of God, Heaven, and holiness, is what charges us on towards the perfection of temporal matters. So do you really want to make a difference?  Do you really want to change the world? Then start by making sure you’re putting God and your supernatural destiny first. A critical part of hope is the desire for Heaven. The weird thing is that even though many of us know we should pursue the supernatural good, we don’t really want to. Union with God has somehow grown unattractive to a great many people. Heaven’s lost its appeal. Why is this, and what can we do to foster a longing for the happiness of the next life? Well, one of the key reasons we lack a healthy attraction to God and Heaven is that our imagination has gotten very weak when it comes to Heaven. When we think of Heaven, we think of a white room, or a big choir that sings “alleluia” all day long, or a bunch of people playing harps and sitting on clouds. Obviously those images of Heaven aren’t going to thrill us; they’re not going to make us excited about the next life. We’ve lost sight of the glory, the joy, the total and perfect happiness that awaits us when we finally come home to God. We're all becoming cynics. Spend time meditating on what God and the saints have to say about Heaven! 

(Luke 10:38-42). Jesus tells us in plain language: Only one thing is necessary, a deep friendship with Him; spending time alone with Him; talking to Him, listening to him in meditation, and just being with him in silence. If you ask anyone what the bare minimum amount of time for a good conversation with a friend over coffee or a beer unanimously they say at least 30 minutes. If we want a friendship with Jesus we should give Him no less every day. If we cannot, then we are addicts If we will not, then we really don’t want a relationship with God. I think the addictions to the routines of your life are preventing you. You can’t break these addictions in an instant. But you can make one small break in your routines which will free up the log jam and the next steps will follow. What is one small change you can make in your routine to enable you to have more time with Jesus in friendship: maybe  go to bed earlier, get up earlier, spend less time on the phone or computer or TV and then spend that time in friendship with Jesus? Prayer is friendship with God: it is talking, listening and just being together. This corresponds to the three major expressions of prayer: Vocal prayer - speaking to God; Meditation – listening to God; Contemplation – just being with the One who loves us Now, it is not difficult to speak to God – but it is more difficult to listen to him. By listening we mean first, the prayer of meditation. The Catechism suggests two forms of meditation: Lectio Divina (reading and reflecting on the Bible or some writing of a saint or spiritual author); and secondly, the Rosary This Rosary Podcast is a great way to do daily meditation Regardless of the Method all Meditation includes 3 Simple Steps Read or Listen to something from the Word of God which means something from the Bible, or a saint, or a good spiritual writer Reflect or Think about what struck you Try to understand the passage; observe what is going on or being said and ask questions. Relate or apply it to your life Draw conclusions that fit your life Talk over all of this with Jesus in your mind and heart Form a Resolution Choose something practical and concrete to remember or to do today based on your      meditation Write down your resolution and keep it with you Put it into  practice St Francis De Sales on the importance of a resolution: The most important thing of all is that you cling firmly to the resolutions you have taken in meditation so as to practice them carefully. That is the great fruit of meditation, without which it is often not only useless but harmful. Why so? Because the virtues upon which we have meditated but not practiced sometimes puff us up so much in mind and heart that we think we are already what we are resolved to be which no doubt is the case if our resolutions are solid and ardent. But when, on the contrary, they are not practiced, they are useless and dangerous. (Introduction to the Devout Life, II Chap 8) In the Reported Message of Our Lady in Medjugorje on July 25, 2019 she exhorts us to perseverance in Prayer “Dear children! My call for you is prayer. Prayer will be joy for you and a crown that binds you to God. Children, the trials will come and you will not be strong and sin will reign but if you are mine, you will win because your refuge will be the Heart of my Son Jesus. Therefore children, return to prayer so that prayer becomes life for you, day and night. Thank you for having responded to my call.”