I have written a longer piece in this issue about the importance of recognizing the voice of the Good Shepherd among all the noise of the world, so that we might more closely follow him. This, of course, is a concern of our Blessed Mother, who was Jesus’ first disciple, and who always points us to the following of her son. “Do whatever he tells you,” the Blessed Mother says to the servers at the wedding at Cana _{(John 2:5)}. These are the instructions of the Mother of the Church for all her children. And she herself desires to help us do whatever he tells us. In the Rosary, our Mother has given us an excellent tool to help us grow in our desire and ability to hear the voice of her son, the Good Shepherd. Is there any more perfect “school of spirituality” than the Rosary? It is a perfect confluence of scripture, prayer, and meditation. To plumb the depths of any one of the Sacred Mysteries is to draw closer to the Lord and to be formed more perfectly into his disciple. To be lost in the repetition of the verbal prayers and the tactile experience of the beads is to exercise trust that the Good Shepherd himself is guiding us on a path of deeper knowledge and a deeper love represented in the mysteries themselves.

The habitual meditation on the mysteries of the Rosary will lead us to a more profound familiarity with the events they signify, and with the life of the Good Shepherd himself. The more we visit those mysteries, the more we will come to experience them as though we are present with Jesus and Mary in their actual occurrence. Our Lord and Our Lady lead us, through the Rosary, to participate in and to experience the Joy, the Light, the Sorrow and the Glory that make up the life of the Incarnate Son of God. The more we pray the Rosary, meditating on the events taken from the Scriptures and life of Jesus and Mary, the more we grow in our understanding of the saving mysteries of Jesus Christ. The more we tie those Mysteries to the historical events and the Sacred Texts which tell their story, the more our Blessed Mother leads us to the Good Shepherd. As his followers, we come to experience his Joy, Light, Sorrow and Glory of the Lord as our own. Let us ask our Blessed Mother to help us, through the Rosary, to grow in the grace of her Divine Son, the Good Shepherd, that we might have life and have it more abundantly. (John 10:10)

Listening for the Voice of the Good Shepherd

Novena: Our Lady of the Rosary

The Transfiguration