Mount Calvary Midweek
Dear Parishioners and Friends,
In the same week we just celebrated the Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Holy Rosary. The feasts fall just two days apart, as we remembered St. Faustina on Tuesday and Our Lady of the Holy Rosary on Thursday.
In Thursday’s Mass reading, we heard Jesus say, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent?” So Jesus says, “how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” If we are still slow to be bold in prayer, then the Divine Mercy Chaplet assures us of God’s favor, as his “mercy is inexhaustible.”
In light of this, our Lord says “Ask and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.”
Thursday’s feast originally commemorated the victory of Lepanto, in which a navy assembled by Pope Pius V turned back an advancing Ottoman fleet in 1571. Because the Catholic fleet was at a great material disadvantage against the powerful Turks, the Pope asked Europe to pray the Holy Rosary for victory. The result saved Christian Europe.
The Divine Mercy Chaplet and the Holy Rosary not only aid our temporal petitions, but their content forms our souls so that we live according to the gospel. With this perspective, let’s pray more boldly for God’s mercy and redemption.
In Christ,
Fr. Scharbach