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Dear Friends,
October 7th is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, aka Our Lady of Victory. This commemorates the stunning victory of the Holy League at Lepanto in 1571 over the Ottoman fleet. St. Pius V implored all Europe to pray the Rosary for victory. The battle included a miraculous 180-degree wind-change in favor of the Christian fleet.
Metaphorically, this wind could represent our fallen human nature that works against us - until we surrender to God! Then to paraphrase St. Paul, my weakness becomes my strength. In other words, fallen human nature, weak and frail, demands immediate sensual and emotional satisfaction. Yes, but then how does that weakness become strength? The key is meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, especially the Sorrowful Mysteries. We see Christ in Gethsemane, at the pillar being scourged, crowned with thorns, carrying His cross, and crucified. Not just the wind was against him, but the whole world! Hence the irony, what changes defeat into victory is the understanding of suffering in union with the Cross. The Cross defied all sense of immediate sensual and emotional satisfaction, and yet was the greatest victory in the history of the world.
This does not mean that emotional satisfaction is bad, because the joy of the Resurrection is an emotional as well as spiritual joy beyond all measure! The point is that our emotions can be tyrants demanding immediate yet superficial satisfaction: i.e., revenge, sensuality, slothfulness, pride, etc. But these always leave us empty because they are not victories except in ego and self-love. If we surrender to them, it is akin to surrendering to the wind that powers against us, blowing us into self-destruction.
This is the world’s idea of satisfaction, like eating two pounds of potato chips and expecting our nourishment needs fulfilled. Instead, when emotions are subordinated to love of Christ and the desire to save souls, satisfaction is at first elusive because our egotistical desires are frustrated. But when united to the Cross, our craving for satisfaction is transformed by a suffering that frees our emotions from tyranny to a more profound satisfaction and crescendo of joy in serving God. Such is the joy of the saints amidst lives of mortification, sacrifice and even martyrdom.
Hence the power of the Rosary to propel us into a meditative school that liberates emotional desires from ego to serving God instead. By truly praying and meditating on the Rosary every day, we grasp a weapon of great power that through God’s grace frees us from frailty and initiates us into great fortitude for God. When one enters the battle against sensuality, revenge and an ego driven life, one realizes, like St. Ignatius of Loyola, that the greatest pleasures and emotional joys are those of the grace-filled soul in conquering self. Let every Courage member echo St. Padre Pio every day: “Give me my weapon (the Rosary)!”
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