Say a Decade 
 
 of the Beads | 
 
 by Thomas H. Moore, S J. 
 
SAY A DECADE OF 
 THE BEADS 
 
 By THOMAS H. MOORE, SJ. 
 
 APOSTLESHIP OF PRAYER 
 515 East Fordham Road 
 New York 58, N.Y. 
 
Imprimi Potest 
 
 Thomas E. Henneberry, S.J. 
 
 Provincial, New York Province, 
 Society of Jesus 
 
 Nihil Obstat 
 
 John A. Goodwixe, S.T.D. 
 Censor Librorum 
 
 Imprimatur 
 
 t Fraxcis Cardixal Spellmax, D.D. 
 Archbishop of New York 
 
 New York, March 14, I960 
 
 The Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur are official declarations that 
 a book or pamphlet is free of doctrinal or moral error. No 
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 opinions or statements expressed. 
 
 Copyright 1960 by the Apostleship of Prayer 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
THIRD PRACTICE OF 
 THE APOSTLESHIP OF PRAYER 
 
 "Well aware that the Blessed Virgin Mary acts on our 
 behalf as Mother and Advocate with God, and lends a 
 special power to our prayers by her intercession, members 
 fl\ to the Immaculate Heart, the Mother's Heart, of the 
 Blessed Virgin Mary, and through her direct their daily 
 offering to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and to God the 
 Father. Moreover, as a sign of childlike trust in this most 
 merciful heart of the Mother of Christ— our Mother also— 
 thev are invited to recite daily, privatelv or in common, 
 at least ONE DECADE OF THE ROSARY of the Blessed 
 Virgin Mary, even, if possible, the whole rosary." 
 
 Statutes of the Apostleship of Prayer 
 
The Joyful Mysteries 
 
 WHEN WE THINK OF MARY, the unique things about her come 
 to mind: her Immaculate Conception, her divine Motherhood, her 
 life with Jesus, her Assumption, her crowning in heaven as Queen 
 of men and angels, her role as Mediatrix of All Graces. Her exalted 
 position in the scheme of God seems to lift her far above the possi- 
 bility of imitation. We extol her, but we never aspire to emulate her. 
 
 Yet of all the saints she is the most imitable. She is the Spouse of 
 the Divine Word; the Church is the Bride of the Word-Made-Flesh. 
 We are the Church. The one thing she had to do was to give Christ 
 to the world. We have to do the same. As co-redemptrix of the 
 human race, her function is to co-operate with her Son in the great 
 work of applying the fruits of redemption to all men. The Apostleship 
 of Prayer tells us that all Christians have a like mission. 
 
 Our great devotion to Mary is the rosary. Catholics throughout 
 the world kneel down in little family groups to sav their beads before 
 going to bed. It is the hour when everybody is remembered. The 
 traveler, far from home, will know that because bedtime is bead-time, 
 his children and their mother will be praying for him. He will kneel 
 with them over his beads, and the family is still together round the 
 throne of God beneath the mantle of Mary. 
 
 The rosary has three parts: the Jovful, Sorrowful and Glorious 
 Mysteries. There are five decades to each part. While saying the ten 
 Hail Marys of each decade, the Church suggests we meditate on that 
 scene of Our Lord's life which each decade in turn commemorates. 
 
 The Mysteries bring life to the rosary, keeping it from the mo- 
 notony of repetition, coloring each bead, so to speak, with the par- 
 ticular tints and shades of its own story. But many find it a hard 
 thing to do— to sav the Hail Mary with attention and to think of 
 something else, as if two persons were talking at once. 
 
 Perhaps it would help if we had a little sketch of the Mystery to 
 read, fixing the scene in our mind's eye, calling attention to a single 
 point which might tie in with our Hail Marys as we say them. The 
 following is an attempt to do this. 
 
 5 
 
JOYFUL MYSTERIES 
 
 The Incarnation 
 
 "HAIL, FULL OF GRACE, the Lord 
 is with thee." These were the words 
 which greeted Mary as she let in the 
 angel of the Lord. A girl takes off her 
 apron to answer a knock at the door. 
 But instead of a bow and a "Good 
 Morning," she finds a king on his knees, 
 kissing her feet. The archangel explains: "Behold, thou shalt conceive 
 in thy womb and shalt bring forth a Son." 
 
 It was a proposal. God was asking Marv to be the human Mother of 
 his Son. He was not asking her to do something. He was asking her to 
 he something. The Father knew that she would agree to be what the 
 divine courtesy would never force upon anv creature. In the light of 
 that knowledge, God saw to it that her conception was immaculate 
 and that, from the start, her soul would drink of the life of grace 
 to the full. But the purpose of Gabriel's message was to get her con- 
 sent. He told her what God wanted of her. Mary's answer was Yes. 
 
 When the angel had gone, and she was with child, she had onlj 
 to do what any other expectant mother has to do. When her waiting 
 was over, she brought forth a Divine Son, not through any potency 
 which the Father found in the flesh and blood of the woman who 
 mothered Him— a power which the Father found and used. Her Son 
 was what He was onlv because she said Yes. When she had said 
 Yes. He who was mightv did great things to her. 
 
 This is the kev-thought of the Apostleship of Prayer. We can do 
 great things for God— help Him save souls— not because we are great, 
 in the sense that the heroes of mvthologv were great in the strength 
 thev could muster out of the warp and woof of their own being. We 
 are great because we sav Yes to God, because we are willing to let 
 God work in us no matter what the cost. When we do that, He who 
 is mightv does great things to us. Make these ten Hail Marys a Yes 
 to all that God asks. 
 
 6 
 
The Visitation 
 
 "NOW IX THOSE DAYS Man arose 
 and went with haste into the hill coun- 
 try, to a town of Juda. And she entered 
 the house of Zacharv and saluted 
 Elizabeth. " 
 
 A rugged wilderness of rockv mountains and dry gulches stretching 
 north to Jerusalem and eastward to the Dead Sea. Two women, each 
 with child; the one come to help the other in her hour of need; the 
 Son of God come to purify him who was to become the Great Purifier, 
 getting the world ready for its wedding with heaven. 
 
 Before there could be a reconciliation between God and his human 
 bride, the human race had to make an effort to cleanse itself of its 
 foulness. There had to be a purging. It was fitting that the race 
 should go through the fires of penance in an effort to regain its 
 chastity. Christ could redeem his bride on the Cross, but she had to 
 make an effort to get up out of the mire to come to Him. 
 
 She did this especially in John the Baptist. Because he represented 
 the human race trying to throw off the impurities of sin, he worked 
 no miracles. His life was a grim scraping away of all that could 
 befoul a man. In the person of John, the human race stood before 
 its Divine Lover clean. 
 
 Even then it needed, as did John himself, the divine redemption. 
 
 Again, todav, the world is in need of purging. We should sav this 
 decade of the rosary in unison with the great penitents and contem- 
 platives of the world, whose voices (like the voice of him who cried 
 in the wilderness) are now being heard by the Bridegroom who will 
 come to it, with Mary, over the mountains. 
 
The Nativity 
 
 "AND SHE BROUGHT FORTH her 
 first-born Son, and wrapped Him in 
 swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a 
 manger, because there was no room 
 for them in the inn." 
 A starry night, the light falling eastward from the heights into the 
 valley of the shepherds; a cave brightened and warmed by a fire, the 
 breath and odor of oxen; Marv and Joseph kneeling over the manger. - 
 
 When a king is born, the whole realm is astir. It is an hour of great 
 rejoicing— bells ring, trumpets sound. But with the birth of the King 
 of Kings, there is none of this. What is evil about homage that God, 
 on his coming, should eschew it, stealing into his world like the 
 lowliest of creatures? 
 
 Nothing! But lest the world think that his greatness sprang from 
 riches and honors, the Master of all these things came without them, 
 to force upon men the fact that his worth was not from without but 
 from within. He was great because He was the Son of God. Honors 
 and riches did not matter. 
 
 Because we are the adopted sons of God, we too are great. Our 
 greatness, like his, is from within. The povertv of Bethlehem is a 
 proper background against which to understand this, as we say the 
 third decade of our beads. 
 
 8 
 
Presentation 
 of Our Lord 
 
 "AND WHEN THE DAYS of her puri- H ^(P 
 
 fication were fulfilled according to the i ^ 
 
 Law of Moses, they took Him up to ^ 
 Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord— "** v 
 as it is written in the Law of the Lord, 
 
 'Every male that opens the womb shall be called holv to the Lord/ " 
 Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple to fulfill a ritual. In a 
 certain sense, this was the first liturgical offering of the Son of God 
 to his Father— a kind of first Mass, prefiguring those to come. There 
 is an altar, a sanctuary, a priest; but instead of the host, there are 
 two voung pigeons, the offering of the poor. 
 
 When we sav this decade, Standing with those watching the sacri- 
 fice, each bead will tell us that we too are holy; and in the Law 
 of the Lord it is written that we should present ourselves to the 
 Lord. For the Lord needs our offering. He will be our Redeemer, 
 and He will save us; as He saved the first-born of the children of 
 Israel, when the angel of death struck the first-born of all living 
 things in the land of Egypt. But we must make the sacrifice with Him. 
 
 It was the old man Simeon who did this for all the rest of us, on 
 that memorable occasion, and gave to the world the Nunc dimittis: 
 "Now Thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word, 
 in peace; because my eves have seen thv salvation, which Thou hast 
 prepared before the face of all peoples: A light of revelation to the 
 Gentiles, and a glorv for thv people Israel." 
 
Finding in Temple 
 
 "SON, WHY HAST THOU done so to 
 us? Behold, thy father and I have been 
 seeking Thee sorrowing." "How is it 
 that vou sought Me? Did you not know 
 that I must be about my Father's 
 business?" 
 
 It is a bov who speaks; and a boy 
 of twelve could never realize the anguish of a mother looking for a 
 lost child. At this moment, the Son of God would not step out ol 
 character. He would speak like a bov. But in his simple words there 
 is a tremendous depth which even Mary, at that time, could not 
 completely sound. 
 
 While Jesus grew in age and wisdom and grace at Nazareth, Mar) 
 and Joseph also grew in holiness, doing the things that all parents 
 have to do. Nazareth put the label of sanctity on the broom and the 
 stove, on the nails and the hammer. It was an earthly heaven. 
 
 Losing Him in the Temple warned Mary and Joseph that this 
 heaven would not last forever. Everv mother knows those times when 
 she loses her boy a little bit: his first dav at school, his first date, 
 his graduation. On these occasions she is reminded that one day she 
 will lose him for good. Man's Boy was growing into manhood. When 
 He reached an age, He would leave her to take up his Father's 
 business. 
 
 We can say this decade with tears in our eyes. It reminds us that, 
 even for those whom God loves most, this life is a life of surrender. 
 Yet is it a Joyful Mvsterv because Christ will never leave us for good. 
 
 10 
 
The Sorrowful Mysteries 
 
 IN THE JOYFUL MYSTERIES, each bead was a step in the life of 
 Mary, her sweet face in the foreground of every picture. In the Sor- 
 rowful Mysteries, she is not so prominent. Where was she during 
 the Agonv in the Garden; when they were scourging Him at the 
 pillar, crowning Him with thorns? Tradition brings her out of the 
 darkness to meet her Son on the road to Calvary. But not until the 
 soldiers had swung the Saviour onto the Cross does Scripture find 
 a place for her in the scenes which Mother Church commemorates 
 in these five decades. 
 
 The story of the passion is nevertheless the story of Mary. The 
 life of the soil is the saga of the wheat and the song of the corn. It 
 nourishes these things and shares their history from the moment the 
 seed drops into the ground to the time when the frost of winter 
 crushes the stalks to the stricken bosom of their mother. So with men. 
 The life of the mother is the ground out of which the son grows. 
 
 When, at Nazareth, or perhaps somewhere in the land of Egypt, 
 the Child Jesus began to notice things about Him, she was there. 
 Speaking humanlv, He took her as much for granted as his cradle 
 and his milk. As He grew, it was she who silentlv molded Him, not 
 by any formal schooling, but simply by being his Mother. All that 
 anyone can say about these years of her life was that she was his 
 Mother. 
 
 During the Public Life it was the same. She figures from time to 
 time in the Gospel story— at Cana and at Capharnaum, on the fringe 
 of the crowd. But if someone should ask her for an account of herself 
 then, she could simply say that she was the Mother of the Master. 
 She would be living her life in his. Every step she took, ever) 
 thought unspoken, was an unstudied reflection, the maternal back- 
 ground, of all that Jesus did and said and was during those years. 
 
 It was no different in the passion. "And thy own soul a sword 
 shall pierce/' When we follow the footsteps of Christ along the was 
 of his Sacrifice, the Mother of Jesus is there. The sword which pierces 
 her Immaculate Heart transfixes her flesh and points to Him. In thesr 
 Mysteries she tells us to look not at her, but at Jesus. 
 
 11 
 
SORROWFUL MYSTERIES 
 
 Agony in theGarden 
 
 THE THREE APOSTLES could see 
 Him in the light of the paschal moon, 
 and there was nothing in the stillness 
 of that hour to muffle the tones of his 
 words. "Father, if it is possible, let this 
 cup pass away from Me; vet not as I 
 will, but as Thou wiliest." 
 He was tempted, not to sin, but to give us up. What did He see 
 in the morrow, to wrench from Him this fearful crv? The vision of 
 the passion sinners was in the cup; and, through them, He saw the 
 sins of all men: treacherv in the sin of Judas, presumption in the sin 
 of Peter, hypocrisy in the Jewish leaders, ambition in Pilate, sensuality 
 in the frivolity of Herod. Because He had taken upon Himself the 
 sins of the world, these sins would become one with Him. At the 
 sight. He was tempted to draw back. 
 
 In the cup, too, was the outrage to be done to his dignitv as the 
 Son of God; the mental anguish which goes with sin and which now 
 becomes an affront to his infinite sanctity; and the knowledge that 
 for many his passion would be a futile gesture. 
 
 When, after the coming of Judas with the guard, his disciples left 
 Him and fled, it was the beginning of the metamorphosis of the Son 
 of God into the likeness of sinful men. Sin begins with a species of 
 freedom wrested from God, and ends in the sinner's betrayal and 
 abandonment at the hand of his accomplices. "All things betray thee, 
 who betrayest Me." Judas was free of Christ. But the Saviour, taking 
 on Himself the iniquity of us all, is caught in the traitor's trap. He is 
 the traitor. Nor could his Apostles come with Him into the abandon- 
 ment. If they fled from Him, He just as truly sent them away, that 
 He might tread the wine-press of sin alone. 
 
 This is the background of the first Sorrowful Mystery. 
 
 12 
 
Scourging 
 at the Pillar 
 
 "NOTHING DESERVING of death 
 has been committed bv Him. I will 
 therefore chastise Him and release 
 Him." It was to be a whip fashioned 
 of leather thongs, weighted near the 
 
 ends with lead or bone. The scourging ordered by Pilate was not the 
 preliminary to crucifixion but an attempt on the part of the governor 
 to save Jesus from it, a compromise tossed to the Jews in an effort to 
 sate their lust for Our Lord's Blood. It bespoke both the justice and 
 the weakness of Pilate. He did not want to crucify an innocent man; 
 he did not have the courage to free Him. 
 
 Our Lord was bound with his face to a column, hands outstretched 
 above Him, while two soldiers whipped Him to blood. The mute wit- 
 ness of his shroud testified to sixty blows, not counting the ones 
 which failed to break his flesh. The weakness of Pilate, the nakedness 
 of Christ, the beating to pulp of the most beautiful of the sons of 
 men, suggests that at this point in his passion Our Lord took upon 
 Himself the sins of the flesh. Men have sought to anoint their bodies 
 with luxuriousness, thev have poured over themselves the sweet 
 scents of sensuality, they have stretched themselves on the couches 
 of forbidden delights. But to the eves which have looked upon the 
 beaten Christ, thev are lepers. There is no beauty in them, nor is 
 there anv place where thev can lay down their bruised and bloody 
 limbs to rest. 
 
 No one could understand this better than the Most Pure Heart of 
 Marv, to whom we say this decade of our beads. 
 
 13 
 
Crowning with 
 Thorns 
 
 PILED IN THE COURTYARD where 
 Jesus was scourged was a heap of fire- 
 wood, brush grubbed from the farms, 
 a thorn v weed good for a quick, hot 
 fire. Out of these thorns a cruel thought 
 was born. Here is the King of the Jews; 
 let us put a crown upon his head. So 
 out of thorns they made a kind of bonnet which thev beat to a fit on 
 his sacred head and tied with a twist of greenwood. Over his shoul- 
 ders they threw a purple cloak. Into his hand thev thrust a reed. 
 "They mocked Him, saying, 'Hail, King of the Jews!'. . . and kept 
 striking Him/ 
 
 In the deeper realities of the passion, this mockery was not what 
 it was meant to be. One of the purposes of the passion was to bring 
 to visibility in Jesus the hideousness of sin in the soul. Power and 
 glory a soldier could love. But when he saw it as it really was, he 
 despised it indeed. 
 
 The reed and the robe and the thorns on Jesus' head were symbols 
 of worldly power, of the hunger in men for greatness. Before his fall, 
 Adam was great. Should we have seen him in his innocence, what 
 would have kept us from adoring him? He was the image of God. 
 But sin cut him down to littleness, leaving in him and in all his 
 children a hunger for greatness swept awav. 
 
 That is why men are jealous of honor and resent being ignored. 
 Wealth, ability, and especially power, bring to a man the homage 
 of others; a false glory, because no one is great for what he has, 
 only for what he is. 
 
 This lust for power, symbolized by kingship, is the mother of in- 
 justice and bloodshed, of wars and dire oppression. Because it is the 
 verv opposite of God, Christ exposed it against the background of 
 Himself in this moment of his passion; and the soldiers, seeing it for 
 what it was worth, paid it the tribute it deserved. 
 
 M 
 
Way of the Cross 
 
 THE EXECUTION WAS carried out 
 in the Roman manner, with due regard 
 for the customs of the native people. 
 Though it was the habit of Rome to 
 send the criminal on his way unclothed, 
 St. Mark tells us that "they took the 
 
 purple off Him and put on Him his own garments, and led Him 
 out to crucify Him." 
 
 The blood\- sweat in the Garden, the scourging and the crow ning 
 with thorns, had taken toll of Jesus. But thev forced Him to carry 
 his own Cross, as was the case of all those to be crucified. It was 
 not the entire Cross that Jesus carried, but the cross-beam of the 
 rood, which, weighing some one hundred pounds, proved too heavy 
 for Him. Tradition says that He fell three times before the soldiers 
 forced a farmer, coming from the fields, to shoulder the beam and 
 walk with it behind Our Lord to the place of crucifixion. -"And they 
 forced a certain passer-bv, Simon of Cvrene, the father of Alexander 
 and Rufus, to take up his Cross." 
 
 Many people followed the slow procession down the cobbled 
 streets towards the Ephraim Gate. Among them were women from 
 Galilee with Our Lord's holy Mother. The human heart has no room 
 for words by which to get this scene out of its breast. We can onlv 
 weep with the daughters of Jerusalem. After the decade is over, the 
 thought will come, as a kind of wonderment, how 7 to measure that 
 kind of a love which would put the Mother of God to this pain, in 
 order to save the souls of such as we. It would have been easv to 
 die for her, for the good and the beautiful. It needed a greater love 
 to die for the thankless and for the corrupt. 
 
 15 
 
Crucifixion 
 and Death 
 
 WHEN THE CRUCIFIXION was 
 over, they took Him down from the 
 Cross and. according to tradition, laid 
 Him in the arms of his afflicted Mother. 
 I could say this decade here, at the 
 foot of the Cross, but my presence 
 seems like an intrusion. Christ is dead. 
 It is the Thirteenth Station. Here is the end of the passion. What the 
 executioners have left of Him now belongs to the Mother. Pilate has 
 given the order, and the shamed face of the world is turned away 
 from her sorrow. What keeps me here? 
 
 It is not Mary alone who holds Christ dead in her arms beneath 
 the long shadow of the Cross. This is her second fiat, her second 
 Bethlehem. She laid Him to sleep in a wooden manger that she 
 might one day give Him over to the wood of the Cross. Now that 
 she has done this, she utters her fiat again, and gives Him over to 
 the Church. All that He is— the Godhead in Him, eternally begotten 
 of the Father; and the Manhood in Him which, in the fullness of 
 time, He took from his Mother; all the wounds of Bodv and Soul men 
 laid upon Him— all is now safe in the arms of the Church. The 
 Church, a new' Mother, will cherish Him forever. 
 
 The Pieta is the end of the Cross. Now begins the Tabernacle. 
 Because this is true, the Mother with her dead Son in her arms draws 
 me, as Bethlehem drew the shepherds. Calvarv is not only a Cross, 
 it is also a crossroads. One life ends here, and another begins. 
 
 It is the compassion which begins, a new life and a new era. 
 Within the arms of Mary, and within the arms of his Church, is the 
 Cross-born Body of Our Lord of which we are now members. We 
 must let Him live out his new life in us. Those who fled from the 
 Cross into the night accepted death and rejected life. The resurrec- 
 tion meant nothing to them. It is the mercy of God that I, following 
 the sinner s instincts, did not go with them. 
 
 in 
 
The Glorious Mysteries 
 
 IF WE THINK OF THE ROSARY as a three-act drama, the Joyful 
 Mysteries come to us in the colors of our Blessed Mother; in these 
 decades she takes personal command of our attention. In the Sorrow - 
 ful Mysteries the spot-light is away from her, and she does not step 
 into its brightness until the end, on the way to Calvary and at the 
 foot of the Cross. These decades are the story of her tragedy told 
 in the language of redemption. We have eyes for no one save Christ 
 suffering, but in the Blood of the Son is written the story of the 
 Mother. We sav our Hail Marys to her against a background of 
 the Stabat Mater. 
 
 As the curtain rises for the Glorious Mysteries, a new personage 
 takes part upon the stage. She is the Bride of Christ, the Church. 
 The Canticle of Canticles speaks of her as one might speak of a 
 beautiful woman, warm with love and graced with virtue. In the 
 ecstasy of song, a lover often tells his beloved that she to him is all 
 the world. For everyone but Christ this is hyperbole, an exaggera- 
 tion. But for Him it is the truth. His Bride is the world of the re- 
 deemed and, in his love, He wants her to embrace in herself "every 
 man who comes into the world." 
 
 When Scripture speaks of the passion of Christ, the Sacred Word 
 does not let us forget, in the awfulness of the details, that its purpose 
 is to redeem us in love. As the incarnation was a kind of proposal 
 from the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity to Mary, so too was 
 the passion a kind of proposal from the God-Man to his Bride, man- 
 kind. Redemption was the ring which Jesus would put on his Bride's 
 finger. But just as Mary had to say Yes, so too must each man com- 
 ing into this world say Yes. He must accept Christ in love. The Bride 
 of Christ has many minds and many wills because she is the world. 
 
 Being the Bride of Christ, Mary is her Mother. As we say our 
 beads to Man', in this last act of the rosary, we think of her as the 
 co-redemptrix, as the Mediatrix of All Graces, and we feel her hand 
 in ours, bringing us to her First-born. She is still giving Christ to the 
 world; not now to his own who received Him not at Bethlehem, 
 but to his own redeemed in his Blood on Calvary. 
 
 These are the Glorious Mysteries because in Christ, through Mary, 
 thev spell out the conquest of God's love, the marriage of heaven 
 with earth. 
 
 17 
 
GLORIOUS MYSTERIES 
 
 77?^ Resurrection 
 
 SCRIPTURE TELLS us that Our Lord 
 appeared, on the morning of Easter, 
 to the women whom Magdalen had 
 left at the tomb, and to Simon Peter. 
 Like Magdalen thev needed Him, and 
 so He came. 
 
 There was another who needed Him, 
 but not in the same wav. Yet Holy Writ does not sav that He went 
 to her who had brought Him into the world, to the Mother who 
 nourished Him, who followed Him through life, and who laid Him 
 to rest in her arms at the foot of the Cross. But Scripture does not 
 suppose us to be without understanding. 
 
 She knew that He would come to her. Of all those who had heard 
 his words, she alone remembered and believed that He would rise 
 again. Peter loved Christ with the greatness of a great heart, but 
 there was that about his love which confined it to human patterns. 
 He could not see it as something which could transcend death; so 
 when Jesus told Him of the crucifixion, Peter would not accept it. 
 At the mention of death, Peter stopped listening in order to protest. 
 
 Not so with Mary. The thought of the resurrection did not lessen 
 the sorrow which made her the Queen of Martyrs. But she did not 
 forget. She waited for Him, and He came to her. 
 
 She would be alone, and she would have with her the crown of 
 thorns and the nails— the symbols of his love. Suddenly there is no 
 blood on them any more. There is a rustle and the quick sound of 
 familiar steps. Then the voice— so like the tones of Joseph, for the 
 one was always with her in the other. "I am risen and still with 
 thee!" And there was nothing to keep her from rushing into his arms. 
 
 This is the picture behind the Hail Marys of the first Glorious 
 Mvstery. 
 
 18 
 
The Ascension 
 
 WHEN IT CAME TIME for Christ to 
 leave his disciples, He brought them 
 out of Sion and up the road which 
 went to the Mount of Olives. To the 
 north of the road, on a small hillock, 
 near to the top of the mountain, He 
 paused. When thev had gathered round 
 Him, hushed and expectant, because thev knew this was the end, 
 He lifted his hands and blessed them. Then He was gone. He did 
 not just vanish, as after so many of the former apparitions. He "was 
 carried up into heaven." Thev would not see Him again. 
 
 In one sense, his work was done. In another, there was much left 
 to be accomplished. St. Paul tells us that we have to make up what 
 is wanting in the suffering of Christ. These words puzzle us. until we 
 remember that salvation is a work of love, and love is of two. It is 
 also a work of life-giving, and the giving of life is alwavs of two. The 
 bridegroom must have a bride. 
 
 So there is the w ork of the Church which must be ke\ ed to the 
 work of Christ. Jesus, now the glorified Victim of his sacrifice, sits 
 at his Father's side eontinuallv offering Himself for us. On earth, his 
 Spouse, the Church joins in this oblation; liturgieallv in the Mass, non- 
 liturgicallv in the dailv offering of her members for the intentions of 
 his Sacred Heart. So are sons born to God. 
 
 The Mother did not go with her Son into heaven. Under the Cross, 
 Jesus had given her to John, "and from that hour the disciple took 
 her into his home." She would still be the Mother, doing for John 
 what she would have done for Jesus. In being the Mother to John, 
 she was to show- the rest of the infant Church how each member 
 sanctifies himself in the pravers, works, joys and sufferings of life, 
 offered as a work of love for the salvation of the world. 
 
 This decade is for the Apostleship of Prayer. 
 
 19 
 
Descent of the 
 Holy Ghost 
 
 "WHEN THE DAYS of Pentecost were 
 drawing to a close, they were all to- 
 gether in one place. And suddenly 
 there came a sound from heaven, as 
 of a violent w ind coming, and it filled 
 the whole house where the\ r were sitting. And there appeared to them 
 parted tongues as of fire, which settled upon each of them. And the\ 
 were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in foreign 
 tongues, even as the Holv Spirit prompted them to speak." 
 It must have been a terrifying thing. 
 
 The birth of a nation, forged in war and revolution, is alwavs a 
 terrible thing. But this was the birth of the people of God. The 
 Church, the Bride of Christ, was bespoken for on the Cross, and in 
 the resurrection she took her place bv her Lover's side. She was 
 formed, like Eve out of the rib of Adam, but as yet the breath of 
 power had not been breathed into her mouth. She needed a soul. 
 
 The Holv Spirit is the Soul of the Church. Just as the human 
 spirit enables a man to do the things of a man, so does the Holy 
 Spirit, the Soul of the Church, give to her a supernatural life and 
 the power to generate, preserve and restore it in her members through 
 prayer and Sacrament. Through her, we become the sons of God. 
 
 In this decade, be glad with Mary, and be grateful for the gift 
 of the Holy Spirit, who came first to her at the moment of the incar- 
 nation, then to the Church in the fires of Pentecost, and now to us in 
 the hour when God begot us anew, in the bosom of our Holv Mother. 
 
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r 
 
 The Assumption 
 
 TRADITION TELLS US that when 
 Our Lady died, the Apostles laid her 
 immaculate body in a tomb. Days later, 
 on returning to the sepulchre, they 
 found it empty. 
 
 Mother Church has never confirmed 
 this tradition, in its details. But, in our 
 own day, Pius XII has ratified it in substance, declaring with the 
 infallibility of his sacred office that God did not return the body of 
 his Mother to the earth to await the general resurrection. He has 
 taken her, body and soul, to Himself. She is with Christ in heaven, 
 and there is no physical relic of her left to enshrine, like the martyr's 
 bones, beneath an altar. 
 
 In life, she gave all of herself to God. 
 
 In death, God accepted her unutterable giving to the full, sur- 
 rounding the gift with the glorv which God gives in the measure 
 of our capacity to receive. 
 
 We can say this decade, our eves caressing the empty tomb where 
 thev had laid her for the moment of the Assumption. Or we can see 
 her rising into heaven. This has been the vision of many artists. They 
 have painted her in all the beautv of their colors, and they have 
 surrounded her with a companv of angels. Even then we know it 
 has not been enough. 
 
 But we will say these Hail Marys in a spirit of gladness. There is 
 always Christ, and His Mother, and his Bride. Nothing ever hap- 
 pened to Jesus which did not happen, in a very special way, to his 
 Mother. As she was his in suffering, so now is she his in glory. Since 
 the coming of the Paraclete, Christ and his Bride are a living thing, 
 made one in love. Marv taken into heaven was Christ's triumph. 
 The brightness of this triumph will shine in the face of his Bride on 
 earth. And we are his Bride. 
 
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Coronation 
 in Heaven 
 
 THE ARTISTS of the world have 
 dressed the Queen of heaven and earth 
 in robes of magnificence; they have 
 given her a background of moons and 
 stars, set in the bluest of skies. But 
 when the Church came to write the Mass for her Coronation, she took 
 us back to the beginning of our rosary, to the quiet hour when Gabriel 
 came to announce the Motherhood of the Son of God. We are still 
 finding the historv of the Mother in the historv of the Son. Harkcn 
 to the Church! 
 
 "Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and shalt bring forth 
 a Son; and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and 
 shall be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will 
 give Him the throne of David his Father, and He shall be King over 
 the house of Jacob forever; and of his Kingdom there shall be no end.' 
 
 It is the little maid of Nazareth who is Queen of heaven and earth. 
 She needs the trappings of royalty no more than her Infant Son 
 needed a crown and scepter in the chilly cave of his birth. Like Him, 
 her greatness comes not from without but from within. 
 
 So we end the fifteen decades of our rosarv where we began them 
 —in the Motherhood of Mary. At the incarnation, we were taken with 
 her consent to be the Mother of God, and we saw her as a little girl 
 to whom heaven did mighty things. She gave herself to God. In the 
 Coronation, God reveals that He, in turn, has given Himself to her. 
 
 In this is her Queenship over angels and men, and over the uni- 
 verse of all creation. With the Church, let us rejoice, and make the 
 last decade of our rosarv a song for the King. 
 
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