Latest / Into the Mysteries of the Rosary / A Happy Announcement | Into the Mysteries of the Rosary Ep 2 | Fr. James Brent, O.P.

Transcript

A Happy Announcement | Into the Mysteries of the Rosary Ep 2 | Fr. James Brent, O.P. · Into the Mysteries of the Rosary

• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, welcome to Into the Mysteries of the Rosary, a mini series of the podcast contemplata.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Today we consider the first joyful mystery, the Annunciation, and we begin with a simple point.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: God has a plan.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: For long generations, even from before the foundation of the world, the plan of God was a great mystery, the mystery with a capital M.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was a secret, hidden in the heart of God.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: But God has now revealed His plan to the apostles, and the Apostles in turn have proclaimed it to us.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: God's plan for the world is essentially a plan of adoption.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: God the Holy Trinity created you in order to adopt you by grace.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Just as a loving family reaches out to adopt an orphaned child into their home, so the triune God reaches out to fallen human beings everywhere in order to adopt us into the Father's house.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yet the plan of God is no ordinary plan of adoption, and the mysteries of the rosary are the story of how God carries out his wonderful plan to make you and me children of the light and of the day.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: The story begins with the Annunciation, and the scene begins with Mary, probably a teenage girl at the time, ordinary by all outward appearances, but with something extraordinary going on invisibly in the depths of her soul.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: Hail full of grace, the angel Gabriel said to her.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: He did not say Hail Mary.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: That is how we say it in the prayer, but in Scripture the angel says simply Hail, full of grace.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: Full of grace is her very name.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: The angel spoke in the past perfect tense, as if to say, Hail, O already fully graced one.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Mary is already full of grace, even before the angel says anything.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: The invisible thing going on in the depths of her soul is the life of grace, a certain fullness of grace.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: This grace was the perfect preparation for her to become the mother of God.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now you and I are often anxious to learn our mission, aren't we?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: We want to know what work or job or task God has for us.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: But there is great danger in identifying with our mission, our job or our task.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: For this reason, the angel does not jump right away to telling Mary her mission or job or task.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: First, he calls her by name Hail, full of grace.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: God first calls her into relationship, into a state of listening.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Then he reveals her mission.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: So too he does with each of us.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: First he calls us into relationship with himself, into a state of listening, and only in the context of friendship with him does God pull back the veil on his mission for us.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And even then he shows us but one step at a time.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: The angel proceeds Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: We hear the story so often that perhaps we no longer really hear it at all.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So let us note well the words of the angel He will be called Son of the Most High.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Once Mary asks how it shall come to pass, the angel says, The Holy Spirit will overshadow you, and the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let us note again, he will be called the Son of God.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: First the angel says he will be called Son of the Most High, then the angel says he will be called the Son of God.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mary was the first person in the history of the world to hear of the divine sonship of Jesus, and immediately she believed, for her mind was full of grace.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_00: Long before the baptism of the Lord, when the Father publicly announced, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, and long before Peter, James, and John climbed Mount Tabor with the Lord, witnessed his transfiguration, and heard the voice of the Father call him his beloved son, Mary already knew the secret.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: She heard it once from an angel.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: He will be called Son of the Most High.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: He will be called the Son of God.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: For long years she had kept in her heart these sayings of the angel, pondering them with a mind full of grace, and waiting for the revelation to come to all the world.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now the glad tidings have come to us, and the world will never be the same.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: The faith of the Virgin is a marvel to behold.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: At the time of the Annunciation, Mary had no one on earth to teach her about the incarnation of the eternal Son of God.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: She had no apostles to announce it to her, she had no church to give her catechetical instructions about the matter.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: She had only the Old Testament, with its prophecies and prefigurations, the words of the angel, and a mind full of grace.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: She was ready to believe in revealed mysteries, careful to reflect upon them, waiting in patience for their fulfillment.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Saint Lawrence Justinian describes the marvel of Mary's mind.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: How entirely blessed was the mind of the Virgin, he says, which through the indwelling and guidance of the Spirit was always and in every way opened to the power of the Word of God.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: But there is more.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: Mary learned something else from the angel.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel referred to all three persons of the Holy Trinity.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel spoke of the Most High and the Lord God, and in so doing he referred to the Father.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel spoke also of the Son, as we have seen, twice calling him the Son.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel also referred to the Holy Spirit, and how the Holy Spirit would overshadow Mary to bring about the conception of the child in her womb.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, Mary was the first to learn the ultimate secret of God, the inner life of God, the mystery of the one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: Who can say to what extent she understood the mystery of the Holy Trinity at the time?
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: It would be wrong to underestimate the wisdom of the woman, whose very name is full of grace.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But just how she understood it at the time belongs to the secret of her soul.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Only Mary knows.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: No doubt she understood it better as time went on.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: Later, for example, after Pentecost, she witnessed the twelve apostles baptizing people in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and surely she drew the connection with the words of Gabriel.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: One thing is certain.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: Mary was the first to learn the two great truths of our faith.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and her Son, Jesus, is the eternal Son of God.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: In the first joyful mystery, we too learn the first lesson of God's plan for our adoption by grace.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_00: The plan revolves around Jesus and His eternal sonship.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: God's plan is for us to receive the Spirit of His Sonship into our hearts, to live His life, to pray His prayer in our hearts, and to call His Father our Father.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: But we will learn those things more clearly later on as the story unfolds in further mysteries.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get into those things now, well, it's time to pick up the rosary and pray.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening to this episode of Contemplata.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends wherever you listen to podcasts.