“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…” As a seminarian in Rome and later as a priest, one of the most beautiful encounters that I experienced was praying the Rosary with Pope St. John Paul II during the months of May and October. In May a large group of people gathered with the Holy Father before the Lourdes grotto in the Vatican gardens. In October an even larger group would come to the Paul VI Audience Hall and pray the Rosary led by St. John Paul II. In the hall there was a beautiful Renaissance painting of Our Lady of the Rosary with the Infant Jesus on her lap. This image of Mother and Child was a tender and luminous reminder of what the Rosary is all about.
The Infant is laying His head on His Mother’s neck and breast, giving the impression of listening to her Heart. The Holy Mother is holding Him close to her with a beautiful Rosary in her hand. She is seated on a crescent moon and surrounded by angels. The scene appeals to bodily eyes in its exquisite beauty. The scene also calls out to the eyes of faith and proclaims that when we take the Rosary in our hands we encounter the Mother and Child. Then we are embraced in the powerful love of life, the first and fundamental gift given by the Creator to each one of us. The image of the Mother and Child speaks about the reality of the Virgin Mother, by whose “Fiat,” her “Yes,” Life enters into the world. It manifests the reality of the Infant Christ, who truly took on our human flesh and became one of us. They are not just ideas. They are living persons.
October is the Month of the Rosary. On October 7, the Church celebrates the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, holding up for us the power that the praying of the Rosary brings into our lives. Its power is love. When we meditate on the mysteries of the lives of Jesus and Mary, the power of God’s love fills our minds and our hearts. The power of God’s love brings Christ to us and this power enables God’s Mother to unceasingly pray for us and protect us. This feast reminds us to pray the Rosary with renewed hope for the healing of families, of the Church, and of the world.
October is celebrated also by the Church as Respect Life Month. In our country today human life itself is often seen in terms of political ideology, biological debates and ultimately as a person’s power to choose to eliminate another person. Often what is missing is the ability to see that life is not about a choice to dispose of another human being. Yes, life is about power, but it is the power of love, the power to accept, nurture and embrace life and not to destroy it.
Just as the image of the Blessed Mother embracing the Infant Jesus allows us to see in faith that the prayer of the Rosary helps us to encounter Jesus and Mary united in love, so, too, we need those images in our lives that help us to see that respecting life is not about ideologies but it is about human beings. It is about our brothers and sisters, every one of them a precious gift from God Himself.
We need the beautiful image of the mothers in our world holding close their children in love, often in difficult circumstances. We need the image of adult children holding close their aged parents when they are close to death. We need the images of doctors, nurses and health care providers holding close and protecting their brothers and sisters from their time in their mothers’ wombs to their life’s end, and protecting them from violence and death. We need those images of sisters and brothers embracing, helping and nurturing others at every stage of life. Those images all mirror the image of the Virgin Mother of Nazareth protecting and holding with a self-sacrificing love that Infant Savior, who would then offer Himself selflessly on the Cross for us all. Mary chose life – we are called to do the same.
This month of October, let us take up Our Mother’s Rosary again. Let us gaze upon the image of life-giving mutual love that pours forth from Mary’s eyes and the eyes of her Son Jesus. Let our eyes be opened and see that life is not a theoretical question or an ideological exercise. It is about the living persons who are sent to us by God whom we are called to love, embrace, and protect but never to destroy. Let us dedicate ourselves by prayer, witness and sacrifice to defend life from the first moment of the conception of the unborn child in the womb to the close of life when they are called home to God!
Our Lady of the Rosary, O Mother of Life Himself, pray for us!
Most Reverend William J. Waltersheid
Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh