Posted on 10/16/2002 6:55:59 AM PDT by ELS
Rosary Ping!
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Amen! to that.
The implications of this are far greater than anyone in the secular media could possibly imagine. If the Rosary is everything that Catholics think it is, then this is a major event in the history of the world.
Besides the intensification of the Rosary's power to convert its practitioner, consider further that the word "luminous" is now going to be a regular part of the vocabulary of hundreds of millions of people? That is no small thing. For which words compose one's daily vocabulary makes a great deal of difference as to how one conceives of reality. One conceives of reality and expresses one's conception of reality with words, and the words that the mind is accustomed or habituated to using reflects the mind's customary ways of thinking about the way the world really is. The P.C. police certainly know this, and so does JPII.
The P.C. police are constantly inserting new words and forbidding current words, and such insertions and restrictions on which words can be used change conceptual patterns in numerous and subtle ways. JPII has just made the term "light" a regular part Catholic vocabulary. Light is a major theme of the Gospel of John, and that Gospel describes light, its presence or absence in the soul, as a primary factor differentiating believers from unbelievers. (See St. Thomas Aquinas' "Commentary on the Gospel of John", comments on ch. 1 of the Gospel, for a lengthy study of the nature of spiritual light). To insert the term "light" into the ordinary Catholic's vocabulary is to prepare the ordinary Catholic to be light, to see light, to share the light, to walk in the light, to live in the light, and to be hated by those who "prefer the darkness to the light". It is to prepare them to self-consciously THINK OF THEMSELVES AS LIGHT, and to prepare them for the consequences of being such. Thus, the contemplation of the Sorrowful Mysteries will follow upon the contemplation of the Luminous Mysteries.
Perhaps the most profound meditations upon spiritual light are found in St. Catherine of Sienna's Dialogue--especially in the latter half of the book. The word light occurs hundreds of times in the book, and there are lengthy passages in which God the Father talks about "the light of faith (lumen fidei)" as a real source of intellectual understanding -- a power of seeing with the eye of the mind-- imparted to the soul in Baptism, a spiritual light in which the believer sees truth in a way that the unbeliever cannot. The believer, according to a long tradition from the Fathers through Sts. Thomas and Catherine of Sienna up until today, has supernaturally elevated cognitive capacities, thanks to infused light, in which the believer can see what the unbeliever remains blind to.
I have been studying this very thing-- infused light-- for months now, and then I hear that JPII inserts the Luminous Mysteries into the Rosary! Odd.
In this modern age when time seems short and our lives seem so busy, it is that much more important to find the time to pray. In the car, walking to lunch, attending Mass once or twice a week OTHER than Sunday, or just in the shower ... prayer brings us closer to God, and contemplative prayer brings us closer to Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.
God bless Pope John Paul II. He has truly been led by the Holy Spirit to bring faith and unity and growth to Christians of the world.
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