UNION WITH GOD

            If God wants man to be united with him in the perfect love that the Blessed Trinity always had, has, and will have, then man must do whatever it takes to achieve and maintain that loving union with God.

            To help us attain to that everlasting union, God has given us three gifts.  By these gifts, we may come to know, love and serve God in this life, so that we may be happy with him forever in the next.  These three distinct gifts together form a pathway that will lead us to our final end if we continue to walk along it.

The first of these gifts is Holy Scripture.  Here is the Word of God, presented to mankind as God’s revelation of his love for them.  By it we may come to know God.  In its most basic analysis it contains the three fundamental elements of the Story of Redemption—man’s creation, his fall from grace, and his restoration to the life of grace.

            The Holy Rosary is God’s second gift to man.  This time he gave it through the hands of his Blessed and Immaculate Mother, reminding us of her essential role in our Creation and Redemption.  Her Rosary encapsulates the scriptural Story of Redemption, highlighting its essential events so that we may see the big picture without distraction.  When we encounter these events in the context of the joys, sorrows and glories of Our Divine Saviour and his Blessed Mother, we naturally apply them to our own life experience with all its own joys and sorrows.  The Rosary is our instruction manual on how to correspond to God’s love for us by means of the daily joys and sorrows we face in our lives, and the glories that are promised to us hereafter.  The Rosary shows us how to love God.

            At the Last Supper, God gave us his third gift of Divine Worship—the means by which man is enabled to adore God perfectly.  This supremely acceptable form of worship would be by sacrifice.  In the Old Testament, man had struggled and failed to offer to God something worthy to atone for his sins.  But now, after Christ’s Passion and Death, there would be finally be a sacrifice that would be sufficiently pleasing to God.  It would be the sacrifice of the Blood of a New and Everlasting Covenant between God and man, the Blood of God’s only-begotten Son shed in the Sacrifice of Calvary, the same Blood of Christ offered to his Father in the Sacrifice of the Mass.  The perpetuation of the graces of Calvary through the Sacrifice of the Mass enables his faithful followers to serve God worthily.

            But this third gift did not end there.  The Mass would contain an extra element, a sacramental element that would allow us to know, love and serve God in this life, and be happy with him forever in the next.  It would be the miraculous transformation of bread and wine into Christ’s Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, but still under the form of bread and wine that could then be received sacramentally in Holy Communion.  Finally, man could achieve union with God, the union that would be his final destiny and which God desires for himself and for us.

Is it any wonder, then, that there are so many connections between the Rosary and the Mass?  They both have their source in God and his revelation to us of the path of salvation.  They both answer our inmost yearnings for union with God, the Rosary by describing that union, and the Mass by actualizing it.  As Catholics, we must cling to both Rosary and Mass in order to make sure we never deviate from the path they lay out before us.

As with all prayer, the purpose of the Mass is to unite us with God.  While we do this in a spiritual sense whenever we pray, the Mass allows us to experience a more intensely intimate union with God, which we would not dare attempt if we had not been commanded to do so by our Lord himself.  We feel ourselves unworthy.  We know we are unworthy, and yet God commands it.  

God's delight is to dwell among the children of men.[1]  He was made flesh and dwelt amongst us for this reason.  He wants us to save our souls for this same reason, so that we might dwell with him forever. This is the reason we were created.  Each Mystery of the Rosary carries us in spirit a step further towards that ultimate union with God in heaven.  Meanwhile, in this life, God wants us to be as close to him as we can, not only spiritually but physically.  He has provided us with the means of achieving true spiritual and physical union with him through the reception of his Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion.

While our Lord gave us the Mass, his Blessed Mother gave us the Rosary.  This should not come as a surprise to us.  After all, she is our Mother too.  She wants us to save our souls so that God’s will may be fulfilled, her Son may be glorified in our salvation and we, her children, may be happy.  She wants to lead us to her Son.  For this reason she gave us her Rosary, with each of its beads a signpost on the road to salvation.  These signposts all point us towards the Mass.  She knows that our salvation can be achieved only through the graces that flow from the Holy Apostolic Mass and the union with God that is its fruit.  And so she points the way.  To the Mass through the Rosary.  To Jesus through Mary.

---

[1] cf. Proverbs 8 : 31

IN THE BEGINNING

The first words of Holy Scripture introduce us to a new world, created by God.  It is a world in which Time begins to exist.  The words “In the beginning” convey a concept wholly dependent on the existence of time.  Indeed, before this “beginning” referred to in the first verse of Genesis there was no time.  But that is not to say that before time began there was nothing.  There was, and had always been, an eternity in which God had existed. In that eternal existence God had enjoyed the perfection of his own loving and triune Being, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, supremely complete in his divine essence.

God never “needed” to create the world.  He never “needed” man.  So why did he create us?  Let’s think for a moment of God’s eternal and perfect fullness without man.  Now let’s jump from that thought to the image of the hands and feet of the divine Son of God being nailed to a cross in order to save this mankind he could so happily never have created.  Here is the true mystery of God’s love, one that we can only marvel at and accept with true humility.

            Having done so, we must then proceed to practical thoughts.  What is required of us by God in return for the gift of our existence?  What must we do to make reparation for hammering those nails through the mortal Body of an immortal God?  What does God ask of us if we are to be the creatures he wants us to be? 

            The answer is clear, certain, and supremely sufficient.  In return for God’s love in creating us, we must love him in return with all our heart and mind and soul.  God wants our love.  Why?  Because it is only through love that we truly reflect the divine essence of God.  We were made in his image and likeness, and so if “God is love” then it follows that our own love can be nothing other than a reflection, no matter how pale and imperfect, of that divine love.

            Any real love that we as humans have cannot have as its chief object anyone or anything other than God.  To entertain such love, to place such an object or person above God would be a perversion of what love truly is.  Indeed, this is the first of the commandments given to Moses, that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”[1]  If we do love our neighbor, we do so because God loves our neighbor.  We love our neighbor for God’s sake, whether that neighbor be our spouse, parent, child, or enemy.  And the same goes for our love of, or attachment to, any material creature—we should love them only insofar as they draw us nearer to God.

            Here then is the essence of love, that it reflects the Divine Essence of God.  As the triune Godhead is an eternal love that unites the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, so our own virtue of love unites us with that same Divine Being.  And if we love well, that union of God and man shall be our ultimate destiny.  It is the reason God made us, to be happy in union with him in his eternal presence.

---

[1] Exodus 20 : 3

THE ROSARY AND THE MASS

As Catholics, we know the Rosary well enough.  And certainly, we know the Mass.  But do we know how many connections there are between them?  

This series of meditations is taken from my book Holy Rosary, Holy Mass.  I am hoping you will find it useful when you pray the Rosary.  How often do we find ourselves distracted when we pray our beads!   The devil is desperate to fill our minds with idle thoughts—anything to prevent us from realizing the depths of God's love contained in the fifteen mysteries.  Our meditations include a new approach to each of those mysteries which I hope will help us refocus our thoughts and rekindle in us the fire of God's love.  

The prism through which we are going to examine each mystery of the Rosary is that of the traditional Roman Catholic Mass.  Many of us still attend this Mass in spite of the devil's attempts to rob us of its graces.  Others no longer have access to the traditional Mass but remember that it was unlike anything they see today.  Others are too young to know anything at all about the traditional Mass.  No matter who you are, if you say the Rosary, you are being drawn, whether you realize it or not, to the wealth of graces contained only in the traditional Holy Apostolic Mass, the last and most essential gift our divine Savior left us before he died for our sins:  "Who on the night he was betrayed, took bread into his sacred hands..."

This Mass is our inheritance and our birthright.  Our Lord's parting gift was passed down intact by the  apostles and their successors, until in 1969 it was suddenly abolished by Paul VI.  And yet it continues through the perseverance of those Catholics who are dubbed "traditionalists."  Who are these traditionalists?  Just a group of reactionaries on the right-wing fringe of the Church, clinging to the old ways out of nostalgia?  Or is there more to it than that?  In truth, the Church is not divided into right- and left-wing factions.  The Church has no divisions, she is One, united in her beliefs and worship of God.  She is also holy, catholic and (let's not forget) apostolic.   We inherit our beliefs and our form of worship from the apostles.  To be a traditionalist means simply to accept the FAITH God revealed to those apostles and the form of WORSHIP he commanded them to use, and to continue passing them on from one generation to the next.  This is the essence of what Catholic tradition is.  Without tradition, we are no longer Catholic.

In these meditations we will learn just how intimately connected the Rosary and the traditional Mass are.  This shouldn't be surprising—the Rosary contains the essential elements of the traditional FAITH in the story of our Redemption, while the Mass is the form of WORSHIP Christ gave us at the Last Supper and fulfilled on the Cross of Calvary.  Together, Faith and Worship form the essence of our religion.  What we believe, and how we worship God must always be the dual focus of our lives as Catholics.  When we meditate on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary and immerse ourselves in the story of Redemption they portray, we are bringing together the very basic truths of our Faith.  When we get over the fact that this Redemption story isn't just a story, but reality, we very quickly realize that we have to participate actively in that reality ourselves.  We do so by returning to God some of the love he showed for us in the Redemption story.  We are drawn to obey his commandments and adore God in the way he instructed us, through the traditional Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and in particular by uniting with him in the reception of his most sacred Body and Blood in Holy Communion.

All our prayers are intended to unite us with God.  Not because we feel ourselves worthy to do so, but because God has commanded it.  God's greatest joy is to dwell among the children of men.  He was made flesh and dwelt amongst us for this reason.  He wants us to save our souls for this same reason so that we might dwell with him forever. This is the reason we were created.  Every Mystery of the Rosary points to our ultimate union with God in some way, and of course that union is truly achieved in this life only through the reception of the Divine Eucharist in Holy Communion.

The Blessed Virgin Mary is our Mother.  She wants us to save our souls so that her Son may be glorified in our salvation and so that we, her children, may be happy.  For this reason she gave us her Rosary, with each of its beads a signpost on the road of salvation, a salvation we can achieve only through the Holy Apostolic Mass and the union with God that is its fruit.

We hope to begin our series of excerpts shortly.  The complete book will be available from CONFRATERNITY BOOKS during the summer of 2016.