Page 61
Twenty-Fifth Rose
Wealth of
Sanctification
NEVER WILL ANYONE really be able to understand the marvelous riches of
sanctification which are
contained in the prayers and mysteries of the Holy Rosary. This meditation on
the mysteries of the
life and death of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the source of the most
wonderful fruits for
those who use it.
Today people want things that strike and move and that
leave deep impressions on the soul. Nor has there ever been
anything in the whole history of the world more moving than
the wonderful story of the life, death and glory of Our Savior which is
contained in the Holy
Rosary. In the fifteen tableaux
the chief scenes or mysteries of His life unfold before our eyes. How could
there ever be any
prayers more wonderful and
sublime than the Lord's Prayer and the Salutation of the angel? All our desires
and all our needs
are found expressed in these two prayers.
The meditation on the mysteries and the prayers of the
Rosary is the easiest of all prayers, because the diversity of the virtues of
Our Lord Jesus Christ
and the different stages of His life which we study refresh and fortify our mind
in a wonderful
way and help us to avoid distractions.
For learned people these mysteries are the source of the most profound doctrine
but simple people
find in them a means of instruction well within their reach.
We must learn this easy form of meditation before progres
sing to the highest state of contemplation. This is the view of
Saint Thomas Aquinas and the advice that he gives when he
says that first of all one must practice on a battlefield, as it were, by
acquiring all the virtues
which the Holy Rosary gives us to imitate. The learned Cajetan says that this is
the way that we
reach a really intimate union with God-for without this union contemplation is
nothing other than
a dangerous illusion which can lead souls astray.
If only the Illuminists or the Quietists! of today had followed
1Quietism and Illuminism were heresies of Saint Louis' day. Adherents of the
former school and also
those of the latter had an exaggerated idea of divine inspiration and denied the
necessity of
individual effort in the spiritual life. Madame Guilloa was the chief exponent
of Quietism in
Franco. M.B.