Now, I am dating myself here, on this day when we celebrate the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, remembering a time when I was a small boy, as the Church transitioned from the Latin Mass to the liturgical changes for the Catholic church from the Second Vatican Council.  As I looked around back then, I saw men and women, strangers, saying words that were strange to me, engaged in activities that were strange to me.  And while the Priest was presiding at Mass, with his back to us, the people in the pews, for this young boy, as the people of God were doing strange things, reading prayers from small books, or playing with these beads that had a cross attached to it, my curious faith began to grow.  Suddenly, the altar server rang the bell, the people in the pew looked up to see and to reverence Christ held high, and then we all went back, to what I learned later, were our ‘devotionals’. 

My Mom and my Aunt Mae prayed the Rosary every day.  I pray the Rosary.  As a boy during Lent, I served at the Stations of the Cross.  I attended Exposition, Adoration and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.  I had a couple of books, My Life with Christ, and a book filled with picture stories of Jesus from the Gospels for children.  I bring these childhood memories up, because in terms of the life of faith that was growing in me, these things, these devotionals mattered.  It wasn’t just the experience of praying the rosary, or kneeling before the Eucharist in the Monstrance, that left an impression on my heart, it was being in front of Jesus so near to me, it was the stories behind the mysteries of the Rosary that drew me in and held me captive.

St. Paul speaks in our first reading from the Letter to the Galatians for this memorial of coming to faith, of believing and preaching the good news, because there was a holiness to what he received, of a revelation in what he received that came from on high, that came from Jesus Christ.  Jesus, in our Gospel of Luke reveals that living out our faith, seeing the light of that divine love, in the Gospel stories and parables, are also about holiness and that being holy in no small way is about being merciful as God is merciful. 

So, we celebrate today as a worshiping community the devotion that is the Rosary, as we celebrate Our Lady’s Rosary for in that devotional, we meditate on, we come to know, more deeply, the great mysteries, the great stories, of our salvation. We profess and hold firm that the Eucharist is the Source and Summit of our faith, but we also give thanks that the Church is filled with a myriad of so many ways, so many devotionals, to teach us and to feed our faith as we live out our spiritual journey.  I know, at least for me, that in those devotionals, a young child, me, caught belief, catching me.