Page 60     

                                                                                                                                                                    `                                                                                   

The Secret of the Rosary

After Our Lord's ascension Our Blessed Lady spent the rest of her life in visiting the places that
bad been hallowed by His presence and sufferings. When she was in those places she used to meditate
upon His boundless love and upon His terrible passion.
Saint Mary Magdalene did nothing other than religious exercises of this kind during the last thirty
years of her life
when she lived in the prayerful seclusion of Sainte Baume.1 Saint Jerome says that devotion to the
Holy Places was
widespread among the faithful in the early centuries of the
Church. They came to the Holy Land from all corners of Christendom so as to impress a great love
and remembrance of their Savior more deeply upon their hearts by seeing the places and things He
bad made holy by His birth, by His work. by His sufferings and by His death.
All Christians have but one Faith and adore one and the same God, all hoping for the same happiness
in heaven. They
have one Mediator Who is Jesus Christ and therefore they must all imitate their divine Model and in
order to do this they must meditate on the mysteries of His life, His virtues and of His glory.
It is a great mistake to think that only priests and religious
and those who have withdrawn from the turmoil of the world are supposed to meditate upon tb truths
of our Faith and the mysteries of the life of Jesus Christ. If priests and religious have an
obligation to meditate on the great truths of our holy religion in order to live up to their
vocation worthily, the same obligation, then, is just as much incumbent upon the laity because
of the fact that every day they meet with spiritual
dangers which might make them lose their souls. Therefore they should arm themselves with the
frequent meditation on the life, virtues and sufferings of Our Blessed Lord-which are so
beautifully contained in the fifteen mysteries of the Holy Rosary. ·

1Saint Mary Magdalene, according to a tradition, spent the last thirty years of her life in
Provence, at a place subsequently called Sainte Baume (" the Holy Ointment") Pilgrims go to the
Dominican Church of Sainte Baume to venerate the relic of her head which is preserved there.
(Catholic Encyclopedia.) M.B.

                                                                                                                                                                    `