Having known the importance and the effectiveness of the Rosary through this reflection as expressed from the words of our brothers and sisters who have gone home to God before us, and believing that we are all Saints in the making, it will be a failure on our own part if we do not take their messages seriously. Their central message is that we should promote the praying of the Rosary in our nation, in our various communities and families if we want God’s intervention in our lives. Their testimonies have shown that the Rosary is a prayer that carries special significance for our times. Pope Pius XII said, “There is no surer means of calling down God’s blessings upon the family…than the daily recitation of the Rosary.” Sr. Lucy on this point had this to say: “The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has a new efficacy to the recitation of the Holy Rosary. She has given this efficacy to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all, spiritual, in the personal life of each of us, our families, of the families of the world, or of the religious communities, or even of the life of peoples and nations that cannot be resolved by the Rosary. There is no problem I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.”

My dear brothers and sisters, if we have been given this assurance from heaven, what are we waiting for? Every time you put on your television, you will be hearing of the national security. The amount of money nations spend on national security is unimaginable. With great faith and one national day of praying the Rosary for our national security and heeding to the message Our Lady gave to Sister Mildred on October 7, 1957 on the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, billions of dollars budgeted for national security and natural disasters can be saved in this great nation. In that message Our Lady spoke to sister Mildred saying: “ My beloved daughter, what I am about to tell you concerns in a particular way my children in America. Unless they do penance by mortification and self-denial and thus reform their lives, God will visit with punishments hitherto unknown to them. My child, there will be peace, as has been promised, but not until my children are purified and cleansed from defilement, and clothed thus with the white garment of grace, are made ready to receive this peace, so long promised and so long held back because of the sins of men. My dear children, either you will do as I desire and reform your lives, or God himself will need to cleanse you in the fires of untold punishments. You must be prepared to receive His great gift of peace. If you will not prepare yourselves, God will be forced to do so in His justice and mercy” (Diary of Sister Mildred, Page. 20-21). On account of the multicultural, social and religious structure of this great nation, not many must have believed in this Divine Mandate that people should be led back to Faith and Purity. Others may reject this message, but we Catholics should embrace it and save our nation through the Rosary. I hope that the message of this article calls for an urgent need to revive the daily family Rosary since it has the power to bring us close to God. Every day each person is given 24 hours, which has a total of 144 minutes. Spending 10 to 15 minutes praying the praying the Rosary everyday cannot be too much. For time spent with God, is not a time wasted.

Conclusion: The Rosary according to our findings here is acknowledged to be the third most powerful prayer of the Church. It is a gift from heaven to us as a weapon against evils in society. It puts the demons to flight and keep us from sin. To have perfect peace in our hearts, homes and country, praying the Rosary together every evening in our families attracts God’s blessings. God’s blessings cannot last where Truth, Peace and Love are lacking. To realize this objective and therefore unite ourselves with God, I conclude this talk with these words from Promoting Catholic Devotion, in rosaries .com which suggest what is expected of us: “Mend a disagreement. Seek out a forgotten friend… Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Keep a promise. Find the time. Be a good steward. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Think first of someone else. Be kind and gentle. Laugh a little. Laugh a little more. Express gratitude. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Speak it still once again. There is that place in life where you feel like you have everything that you have ever wanted and that everything is just the way you always thought that it would be. That is the kind of peace, happiness, and fulfillment that God wants for all of us. That is the kind of fulfillment that comes through love, prayer and unity with God. We are truly blessed if we can know and understand all the wonders of Love; what it can overcome, and what it can become.

God made us and our hearts are made for God. God has instilled in each of us a desire for truth, for peace, and for love. These longings are completely fulfilled only when we are united with God. Living the fullness of our Catholic faith will bring us to that unity. Praying the Holy Rosary of the Roman Catholic Church is one of the best ways to achieve that unity.” Thus In praying the family Rosary, three families are united: the Divine Family of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit; the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, and finally the human household of your family. This is what takes place any time you gather in your family to say the Rosary. With this, you invite God to your family and you will always be united with Him.

Father Desmond Chilagorom  

Tension is very much a part of our lives and happens when things are not the way we think they should be or are not the way we want them to be. When we have a disagreement with someone and do not seek to find peace with that person we feel tense whenever we see them or think about them. When we take time at work to conduct personal business by surfing the internet, making personal calls, texting, or sending e-mail we experience tension. We might take small items home from work. In these incidents related to our employment we might seek to justify personal business or taking home small items by trying to convince ourselves that we are not paid enough or we are not appreciated the way we should be. But when we are honest with ourselves we feel tension inside. We are not being true to ourselves or our employer. In the seemingly endless activities we fill our weekends with we can find ourselves not making the time we need to spend with God at Mass and seek to justify our absence. That too in the end causes tension.

Tension can be destructive and painful or it can be creative. In today’s Gospel, Jesus is approached by religious leaders who don’t like the way he is preaching about God and the good he is doing. Their goal is to put him in a situation where he cannot win. The question is simple: Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?” Jesus is not trapped but is very creative in a situation that could bring him great tension. His answer is simple: “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.” Jesus does not lash out verbally at those whose motive is to discredit him and to divide the people against him. He simply speaks the truth with love.

Jesus experienced tension in his dealings with the religious leaders of his time. His ability to rise above anger, hatred and injustice opens our minds and hearts to see the power of creative tension. On the night before he died, Jesus prayed in the garden that the cup of suffering might pass him by, but in the end in his love for the Father and us he prayed, “Not my will, but yours be done. In the face of pure evil Jesus loved. There was no compromise or responding to evil with destructive power. Creative tension led him to speak words of love during his three hours on the cross. “Son there is your mother, mother there is your Son.” “This day you will be with me in paradise.” “Father forgive them, they know not what they do.” Pure, unconditional love enabled him to be creative with his love and truth in a truly tense situation. He knew he was innocent and that the cross was unjust. To the very end he was creative and life- giving with his love even in the most tense and trying of situations.

We experience tension in our moral lives when what we believe in our hearts does not match what we say or do. There is tension at times between the society we live in and the values we cherish and seek to live by as Catholic Christians. Yes we do have separation of Church and State, but that does not mean we stand idly by respecting the freedom of others when they support and do things that are destructive of the moral fiber of our nation. One of the greatest tools evil has is the unwillingness or fear of good people to step forward and by words and actions confront evil with love. How difficult it is to try and be a good American patriot at times and know that there are laws, policies and programs that undermine not only who we are as Americans, but even more, who we are as the children of God. When there is a clear distinction between right and wrong and we get drawn in, we feel tense. Destructive tension says, “why me” or “this doesn’t really affect me anyway.” Creative tension says, “What can I do to bring about goodness, truth and love in this situation?” When Jesus asked that question and knew the answer he wound up on the cross.

Tension exists because what should be is at odds with what is. How grateful we are to our parents for all the ways they guided and taught us with love, especially when we got involved in doing what was not good for ourselves, them or others. Their correction was not to punish us, but to teach us for our own good what should be done or said. Parents are good examples of using creative tension. They confront us with the truth encased in love. One of the clearer examples of creative tension in the 1950s and 1960s was the work and preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr. He was up against the evil of bigotry and prejudice. His goal was not to defeat those who were persecuting him and his black brothers and sisters, but to open their minds and hearts to see the dignity of all people and to come to the point where persecutors and the persecuted would live in peace as brothers and sisters. That is creative tension. He attacked the evil with truth, justice and love. In the end he was assassinated. His death is another example of how evil tries to kill the message by killing the messenger. But evil did not prevail. His creative tension brought forth much good for all the people of our nation.

St. Paul encouraged us to pray for the leaders of government so we can live in peace. It is not easy to pray for those we don’t like or those who support and promote what is not good. Jesus’ creative tension was founded on love and prayer. Our love for one another and our love for our nation coupled with prayer can enable us to be creative in situations that foster tension. Peace will only come when we see what God sees, know what God knows and do what God does for us in Jesus. At the last Supper before he went into the garden to pray he assured us: “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

Father Walden