Bonus: Introduction to Phase Three: “Meditating with the Mysteries”

Hey, I'm Father Mark Murray with Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, and this is the Rosary in a Year podcast. Today, we are beginning phase three, which is called Meditating on the Mysteries.
And I'm very, very happy to be joined here by Father Gregory Pine, the Dominican Friar of the province of St. Joseph.
Father Gregory, welcome. Hey, thanks for having me.
You got it. So I had a chance to be on your podcast, God's Plaining, and I began there.
I'm going to begin here because I'm very self-conscious of this by saying to you and you representing all Dominicans who have lived in the last 800 years. The world over.
Thank thank you thank you the certainly the success of the rosary in your podcast is the fruit of the popularity of the rosary which is the fruit of centuries of work and preaching by the dominicans so thank you hey we're here for it the rosary it's great our religious traditions and orders in general have a tendency of stealing people's stories and stealing people's, the other order's successes. And so I'm trying to break the trend and be very clear that I'm not, the Franciscans are not trying to steal the rosary from the Dominicans.
We learned in our preaching class, there's no real plagiariarism in preaching so you know how sometimes people like over anxiously narrate their sources and they're like as i read you know four days ago while sitting in my barca lounger from ancient christian commentaries a collection of quotations it's like holy smokes just say the thing you know um so too with pious devotions you don't you don't have to attribute it man you can just send it I think it's our ladies insofar as she's all of our mother, our, with pious devotions, you don't have to attribute it, man. You can just send it.
I think it's our ladies, and so far as she's all of our mother, our mothers. I don't actually know how possessives work in the plural, but once I figure it out, I'll say it.
So, she's your mother, my mother, your rosary, my rosary. Party on.
Over here, when I was in seminary, our homiletics professor was a Dominican, and he made a similar reference that the patron saint of preaching is saint dismissed the good thief. And then there's some boundaries to it, but there's a part of that.
But can you share a little bit with the history of the Dominicans and the rosary? Sure. Obviously, the Carthusians had a role and the Dominicans had a role, kind of all medieval religious had a role in the coming together of the rosary.
So you had the folks who were literate praying the 150 Psalms, and often enough the folks who were illiterate praying the 150 Our Fathers, which became the 150 Hail Marys, which were divided into decades, which had then mysteries assigned, etc. But then it was a thing where it was like, hey, this is great.
It's not just for illiterate people, it's for all people. And the Dominicans really started preaching the rosary in full force around about the 15th century.

So St. Dominic lived in the 13th century.
The secret of the rosary about St. Louis de Montfort,

he cites Blessed Alan de la Roche quite a bit, who lived in the 15th century,

and it's to him that we attribute the second half of the Hail Mary. And so you'll have in

the Dominican order various persons responsible for making sure that the friars know to promote

the the second half of the Hail Mary. And so you'll have in the Dominican order, various persons responsible for making sure that the friars know to promote the rosary.
It kind of wells up within all the friars' bones, but you try to organize your efforts insofar as you can. To back up just a second from the theme of the rosary itself to more of, so Dominicans, Franciscans, due to just kind of how media works, a large number of the listeners and listeners to this episode may be non-Catholic or certainly may not have a real clear understanding of the difference between Dominicans, Franciscans.
How about in your own words, what would be like the charism, the heart of the charism of Dominicans? And if you want to give a shot at the heart of the charism for Franciscans, you can do that as well. Sure.
Yeah. And if it's any consolation to folks who don't know the differences between or among religious orders, take heart.
At various times in the church's history, like even the Holy Father felt overwhelmed by the number of religious orders, and he was like, this is just out of control. We need to simplify this.
Let's just cook it down to a few different ones that I can actually remember. So, if you feel overwhelmed, know that you have historical antecedents slash you were in good company.
But the basic idea is that we're all here to follow the Lord Jesus. And throughout the history of the church, different men and women have been inspired to follow the Lord Jesus more closely in this way or in that way in imitation of the apostles.
So, some focus a lot on a kind of stability, a kind of fixity, a life of prayer and work, you know, that to be the monastic movement. So if you've heard of the Benedictines or the Cluniac Reform or the Cistercians or the Trappists, et cetera, those would be monks.
Well, 12th and 13th century, you have the Friars Movement to which Dominicans and Franciscans both pertain. And the idea here is that you're really following the Lord who is poor, chaste, and obedient.
So, there's this kind of evangelical radicalism to the Friars' Movement, where there's a certain simplicity. So, it was a movement of laypeople who really wanted to live this evangelical, radical, and kind of wildlife.
And so, you see different trajectories in the two. So So Dominicans tend to be more priestly and more liturgical, and then they tend to have more of an emphasis on the life of kind of doctrinal preaching, as it were, or doctrinal teaching.
Whereas I think, and I told this to you the other day, I think that the Franciscans exist to kind of make the church feel ever so slightly uncomfortable in a good way, because I think that here we are in a fallen world, and we're all just looking to get comfortable and avail ourselves of conveniences, but I think part of the power of the witness of St. Francis of Assisi is to say, like, the only comfort and convenience to be fine is, well, there isn't any, so just follow the Lord Jesus.
So, he's always kind of destabilizingizing us or calling into question the compromises that we've made. And so I think that Franciscans is supposed to show up and be like, what kind of wild evangelical time are we about to have? And you're like, I wasn't planning on it, but I guess I am now.
But you'll often hear Franciscans described as kind of taking very seriously spousal relationship to Lady Poverty. So this is like kind of radical dependence or radical entrustment to the Lord in his providence, which is born out in a certain simplicity of spirit.
So that's my best go. I think that was a great go.
Father Gregory and I were in college together at the same college at the same time. We had somewhat minimal interactions.
I was just there for a year. He was there, I think, for four years.
But one of the reasons that we reconnected is I saw Father do a number of videos. And I remember listening to you speak English and thought, that guy knows how to use words very beautifully.
And I reached out to him to reconnect. You know what you're talking about.
And so it's great to be alongside somebody who knows what they're talking about. Before again, we get into the sort of the general offering of the reflection on meditating on the mysteries, what we're gonna be doing through what we're calling this, the phase three of the Rosary in the Year podcast.
Certainly you are coming to the rosary, not just as a form of devotion in the church, but as a personal sort of devotion in your own life since pretty young. Do you wanna just share a little bit of either maybe your own relationship with the rosary or a favorite story, anecdote about the rosary and praying the rosary in general, either one? Sure.
So I was raised in a Catholic family. Both of my parents, you know, love the Lord.
I mean, my dad's still with us. My has passed to return a reward please god um but uh the the life of prayer and of sacrament was was very precious to them and we prayed the rosary together as a family if not every night growing up you know like a lot of nights uh because you know sometimes folks have music practice or sports practice or whatever it is But my dad would transition from dinner table to the family room, a living room, prayer rosary basically every night.
We weren't your model prayer family. So I don't know that my mom really loved praying the rosary.
So she would always ask us for like our intentions. She loved chatting.
My mom loved chatting. So she'd ask us for our intentions, which was a great way to like get your kids to share with you like their various anxieties or concerns or how folks were doing at school and stuff like that.
So that could, but that could last forever. So I was like a little brat about it because I basically just wanted to get my homework done and then like watch SportsCenter for the 18th time that day.
I just had one petition every day and it was that we would start this rosary as soon as possible. But like we all had our cute and quiet ways of quote unquote rebelling.
I don't know that my sister Kristen really ever made it to the end of a rosary because she would just find the perfect posture in which to fall asleep. It was incredible.
My brother, at certain points, he'd just wander away from the rosary and just be about different tasks. But he got away with a lot because he was the youngest and there's an eight-year gap between him and me.
At one point, he got it from dinner table and he like went to the sink because he didn't like those little like fried onion things that you put on green beans. So he was just washing them off his beans.
But like my mom was his advocate. He could do no wrong in her eyes.
And I remember my dad being like, buddy, what are you doing? And my mom was like, he's just washing his beans, you know, so he could do whatever he wanted during the rosary. He's out of control.
Yeah, so it was a little bit of a circus, but it was a circus that ran for the most part on time. So I was grateful for that.
There's a painting we have in one of our friaries in Newark, New Jersey, where we have our novitiate, where it used to be a convent for cloistered Dominican nuns. And there's a big painting there.
And I think it's like Capuchins or Franciscans or some monks in the chapel. And they're all doing something weird or they're all doing something different.
There's some praying and some are distracted and some are whatever. And there's a certain degree in which the circus that was your family rosary growing up still actually feels pretty similar to some of what we experienced as friars in a holy hour.
You guys don't have the Dominican rosary every day. Everyone is, everyone's there.
Everyone's being themselves, you know, but somehow us being there and being there together is actually a beautiful offering to our Lord and our Lady, even though it can feel like a circus and maybe in fact be a circus. What we're going to move into here is this third phase, which is called meditating on the mysteries.
And essentially there's going to be three types of episodes. The first is going to be Lectio Divina with the

scripture passages associated with each of the mysteries. The second is we're going to have,

for each of the mysteries, we're going to have a different saint writing. And then we're also

going to have two images, two pieces of sacred art, which are associated with each of the mysteries. So that's kind of like just enriching this sort of the mental bank from which we can pull and bring to our meditation.
It's kind of what we're going to be doing through phase three. And something particularly beautiful about praying the rosary and meditating on the mysteries, which is more revisiting a place that we've already been, a place that we've already visited and experienced we've already had, as opposed to sort of exploring a new area for the first time or being introduced to a new situation, a new event for the first time.
If we haven't prayed with these mysteries in a different context, and the only time we're reflecting on these events of the life of our Lord is in the context of the rosary, there's a certain part of which we are doing a lot of things at once. We're trying to pray.
We're trying to sort of keep track of the mysteries. We're trying to keep track of the number of Hail Marys, but also we're trying to do some sort of meditation.
And I think that there's going to be an extra level of fruitfulness and efficaciousness of maybe even depth or sort of subjective experience of the prayer. If we've already been there and we're kind of revisiting these places with our Lord, with our Lady, one of the realities of different charisms and different spiritualities is there are certain different ephces or different approaches.
Certainly as a Franciscan or a Franciscan friar of the renewal, there is a particular emphasis on relational prayer.

We are sort of big on Lexus Divina, like a sharing of the heart.

For the Dominicans, your own experience of praying the rosary,

particularly like the role in which the mysteries play,

can you just kind of share either your own personal experience of that,

thoughts on that, or the Dominican approach in general?

As is the case with a lot of Dominican things, our theology is furnished by St. Thomas Aquinas.
And in St. Thomas's estimation, the mysteries save us.
You know, like, I mean, it sounds obvious enough, but sometimes we lose sight of it. So, when you talk about salvation, like, what exactly are you talking about? Well, you're talking about God giving us His divine life anew and afresh when we chose against it, or when our first parents chose against it, and when we came into this world kind of deprived of it and even wounded in our nature.
So there's a sense in which we can approach the life of our Lord and find in it grace. We can find in it salvation.
And that in meditating upon the mysteries, we're accessing that with our minds and our hearts, in effect. So the Lord kind of curates his life with the intention of giving it to us or offering it to us as a whole, and it mounts to his passion, death, and resurrection.
Because from start to finish, he is saving. He is about a campaign of salvation.
He intends to prosecute that campaign with a side purpose from the moment of his conception until his reigning in glory at the right of the Father. Dominican disposition is like, how are we supposed to access those things? It's by faith and by sacrament.
So, you think about it, faith gives us a kind of spiritual access to the things of God, and sacrament gives us a kind of bodily access to the things of God. So there's, you know, spiritual and bodily elements to our praying of the rosary, which, you know, you talk about, it's kind of working your way through the beads as you think your way through the mysteries.
I guess the Dominican emphasis would be on God's initiative and God's sovereignty, like He's saving us, because he's good, because he loves us. And so, sometimes we get bent out of shape, or we get super worried that we're not doing it right.
It's all right. You know, like, God's saving us, because he loves us.
So, I think it's just important that we just put ourselves in living communion with those mysteries, and that's the type of thing that scales. It scales to little children.
It scales to old theologians. It works for all Christians by virtue of the fact that God's already at work in us through our baptism and confirmation, in certain cases by ordination, but that he is poised to bestow upon us generous things because that's why he made us.
That's why he saved us. I'm going to quote Pope St.
Paul VI you paul the sixth said this pope uh john paul the second is kind of echoed it pope benedict as well uh without contemplation the rosary is a body without a soul we certainly know that the the primary mover in prayer is gone the first mover in prayer is god the one who makes it efficacious is god how do we like reconcile sort of that kind of a passivity and a receptivity with also the idea that there is some engagement with contemplation, which is also our response? A lot of people are tempted to think that they need to invent or make up their spiritual lives, so I just kind of want to head that off at the pass, just address that at the outset. Nevertheless, God gives us a mind with which to know and a heart with which to love, so we should exercise them.
But know that you can exercise them progressively better and better over the course of your life, and so if you're not yet perfect yesterday or today or tomorrow, it'll be all right. Like, the Lord's good.
He loves you. He's provident.
He'll see you through. But that requires that you engage to some degree or extent.
So not rationalizing or justifying past silly behaviors, but repenting of the ways in which we have wandered away and then seeking to appropriate our Christian identity and mission with ever greater fervor and zeal. And I think that part of that is just approaching the rosary and saying, all right, what's going on here? I think that words that might appeal to people in a more visceral or instinctual way would be curiosity and honesty.
It's like, what's actually going on? And what does that mean? Because sometimes we have it in our minds as we look at 17th century statuary or 19th century memoirs that saints are wholly unlike us and that they have these wild thoughts and they love with this reckless abandon that is wholly, wholly unlike anything we have ever experienced or encountered in our days. whereas I think that like what's connecting their experience and ours I think the saints were honest you know like I mean they were curious about their own experience and honest with what they found and

they found that it always provided an open kind of entryway, as it were, for the working of God. You know, like God makes all things work to the good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
Some 20th century authors add the words, even sin, like there's no part of our experience which God can't use, which he can't save, which he can't redeem. And so we bring that certainty, we bring that confidence to the mysteries and just say like, what are you doing here? Like, what is this? Like, why are you being baptized? You don't suffer the effects of original sin.
You've never sinned. So you don't need to be washed of sin.
Also, you enjoy the life of grace and virtue and gifts of the Holy Spirit to an infinite extent, so you're not getting that either. You're not becoming an adopted son of God because you're the natural son of God.
Why are you being baptized? And why are you being baptized for me? So, we might not be crack philosophers or stud theologians, but you can always bring your questions to the sacred text and then, you know, to the recitation of the rosary and then just ask God, like, what is the work of salvation that is kind of at stake or in process or at present being applied? Because it seems interesting, but I also, I can't comprehend it. So I think it's, that's like what unites our experience.
And I think that's what we can bring to it. The most beautiful and profound and salvific of gifts are being offered to us and presented us, which reveal us the fullness of the meaning of life, which give us proper vision and proper perspective for encountering the world that teach us who we are, who our God is.
Like, like if we're not spending the time to study this and contemplate it and

receive this, it's just like, what are we doing? We're just surrounded by things that are objectively important, objectively salvific. And we're also cognizant of the fact that we're just like not really capable of that much.
You know, like anyone who's ever had a stomach bug, like realizes seven hours in like, wow, I am very, very fragile. You know, this is just a very fragile ecosystem.
And what we say of our body is true to a certain extent of our soul. T.S.
Eliot says humankind cannot bear very much reality. Like we just, I mean, we're just, you get it.
Okay. So can we ascend to great heights by God's grace? Absolutely.
But that's also his work, a work with which we cooperate. But nevertheless, it's his work.
I think what's cool about the mysteries is that he surrounds us with this manifest testimony of his love, of his providence, of his solicitousness for us, so that we would be surrounded, as it were, just kind of compassed on every side with testimony of that. And so, the idea is like, can you intend it? Can you attend to it? And you might come back like, listen, I'm kind of fragile.
I can't bear very much reality. And the Christian response is then to say like, well, can you bear a little? You know, can you, as Princess Anna of Arendelle once sang, do the next right thing? And I think that like the mysteries themselves are curated in such a way that we can, because they scale, right? And they conduct us further up and further into the divine life, which is sweet.
So it's like, you might be looking at your human life and thinking, this is very silly. This is a very silly life.
It's also just kind of weak and wounded and ugly and sloppy and yada, yada, that's and such. It's like, true, but that is precisely the person to whom these mysteries are addressed.
That is precisely the person for whom our Lord Jesus Christ suffered, died, and rose from the grave. Yeah, life, as we know, is difficult.
And we call it a valley of tears, and that's for a reason. I do believe that in prayer in particular, it's where we receive, not just where we think about these things or study these things, but where we become saved by these realities, where we receive these graces, and we actually are transformed.
So now kind of just a transition, like a very kind of a sharp transition. But I'm going to talk about basketball.
If we could talk about basketball real quick, what I want to talk about is this. So we're talking about meditating on the mysteries, but like we're, we're saying these prayers and I'm like doing it while I'm going through life and I'm supposed to be meditating on these mysteries and I get distracted a lot.
And I think about a lot of other things and I feel bad. What would be your just sort of pastoral response to those who like, who are maybe tempted to discourage me'd say first thing is i'm a big proponent of the theological category of the optional just know that like you don't have to say the rosary you can say the rosary so like if you're giving it a go you're doing all right next thing is i i like to think about it in these terms intention and attention and by i like to think about in these terms, I mean St.
Thomas Aquinas described it in these terms, and I don't have original thoughts, so let's go. So, when you say, I'm going to say a rosary, that's good.
It's meritorious, all right? It merits for you a reward of a richer relationship with the Most High God, which he then doles out as he sees fit to dole out. All right, so how do you make good on that intention? You could start a rosary and then fall asleep.
It's still meritorious. Now, if you know that you're going to start a rosary and fall asleep and do that unto ages of ages, well, maybe it's not as meritorious because in case in point, you're actually using it as, oh, do I get to say the word

soporific on a podcast? I sure hope so. As a soporific.
You're using it as a way to put yourself out, a sleep inducer. Okay, so that's not really so much a rosary as it is a kind of like meditation technique.
Okay. But provided that you're intending to say a rosary, it merits as such.
Okay. How do you make good on that intention? Well, you pay attention.
You attend first to the words, then to the sense of the words, and then to the God present in the sense of those words. You're praying the second luminous mystery, the miracle of the wedding feast of Cana.
Then you get caught up thinking about God and thinking about the fact that he could not have created, but he did create. You know, like you were thinking about him changing water to wine, but miracles, creation, things got wild.
Like, should you then reign it in on account of the fact that it has drifted from the express mystery upon which you're supposed to be meditating right now? I think you're all right. I think you're going to be all right, provided you're thinking about God.
But like the words and the mysteries are tools whereby to help you think about God, right? Because the words narrate salvation history, and then effectively the mysteries illustrate who God is in human flesh, in human time and space. But at the end of the day, it's about God.
I also do think that an attentive, a pious, a sort of leisurely, a well-formed praying of the rosary does bring us in touch with such a profound grace and such a profound like wealth of encounter with God, that there is also reason to do a little bit of work of sort of, again, the Lectio Divina, the reading, the saint writings, the meditating on sacred art, the study of these mysteries of scripture. Like all of this, I do think, right, like is just going to really enhance and make, again, maybe subjectively, but just even more profound and like the praying of the rosary.
So could you share a little bit of your understanding of the rosary and the place it plays in kind of common devotion? Yeah. So I think that like, basically we're trying to live a Christian life.
And then the question is, what do we need to do in order to live a Christian life? And you can look first at what's obligatory, right? You got to go to Mass on Sundays and Holy Days. You got to receive Holy Communion once a year, obviously, encouraged to receive more than once a year.
You got to go to the Sacrament of Confession, if conscious of grave sin, at least once a year, obviously, encouraged to go more than once a year. You've got to observe the Church's fasts and abstinences, and you've got to support the church and her temporal needs.
Those are the five precepts. That's what's obligatory.
You know, we can elaborate other things, but that's the baseline. Then what next? Some people will say, well, like, you be you.
Just do what feels right, which, okay, maybe there's something to that. But I think we can discipline the discourse a little bit, because there are certain things that the church says, hey, these are really darn good ways to be a Christian.
And so I made reference to the Inquiridian of indulgences, or just like the handbook of indulgences. And if you've heard of an indulgence, it's a way to deal with the punishment associated with sin, either for yourself or somebody who's passed from this life.
And we make a distinction between a partial and a plenary indulgence. A plenary indulgence deals with all the punishment associated with sin.
There are certain things that you need to do in order to fulfill or in order to obtain a plenary indulgence. So you have to perform an indulgence act, receive Holy Communion on the day itself, go to the Sacrament of Confession within a week in either sense, like before or after, and then pray for the Pope, like in Our Father, Hail Mary, and then distance yourself from sin, so like kind of renounce any attachment to sin.
But when it comes to those indulgenced acts, there are four indulgenced acts which you can perform any day of the year. They always work, and those would be 30 minutes of prayer in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, making the Stations of the Cross in a public church or oratory, reading sacred scripture for 30 minutes, and then reciting the Most Holy Rosary in common.
So, when you're looking to conceive of and implement a life of devotion, a life of piety, I think that's a good place to look because the church obliges you to certain things and she exhorts you to certain things, and then she commends certain other things and allows certain other things. So, it's good to take note of those.
But for instance, the church seems more motivated that you pray the Most Holy Rosary than that you pray the Divine Mercy Chaplet. I don't say that to be like, stirring up controversy.
FG prefers the rosary to the DMC. It's like, okay, I'm just saying the things.
You know, I'm just saying the things. So I think that the reason for which we are kind of exhorted to, you know, positively encouraged to pick up the Most Holy Rosary is because it's proven efficacious in the life of the church, because it has a kind of heritage of sanctification.
And so, yeah, like, I think in the 21st century, we were all really nervous about making strident recommendations, like, you have to do this, or you have to do this, or, because all of our contemporaries are making them, so a lot of us are inclined to back away from them. But here's a case where the church says, like, listen, the rosary makes saints, so you might pick it up, you might pray it.
think that's the basic disposition so the last question is this i mean this is the most this is the most edgy controversial question it's going to put you on the hot seat love it potentially make you the bad guy love this is a question which for pious catholics could be like coming after the easter bunny or santa claus i. Now, if a Catholic is, you know, with good intention, is trying to pray the rosary and they fall asleep, does their guardian angel finish the rosary for them? That's a great question.
So I don't know. I will tell a little story and then I'll wrap it up.
I promise this story will only take 75 minutes. It's like second or third grade.
My sister, Kristen, whom I mentioned sometimes falls asleep when praying the rosary. Although I haven't checked in with her on her rosary praying practice in like 15 years.
So she might be, um, a vigilant rosary warrior. So I don't mean to besmirch her name.
Um, but she had a friend in grade school who was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo an aggressive course of treatment during which this friend lost her hair uh so she and her other friends were like sweet just like awesome squad in solidarity they all cut their hair real short uh but at one point she was praying in ovena for her friend and um you know it was day two, day three, I don't recall. She was praying in bed before she went to sleep.
And she fell asleep before completing the prayers of the novena. And she came downstairs the next morning, obviously distressed, because it's like, what's the point of a novena that you interrupt? And she was greeted by my mother.
And my mom said, so I noticed, you know, like when I went

upstairs to tuck you in, that you hadn't finished, so I held your hand, and I finished it for you, which I think is precious. My mom, cute lady, but it gets better, because later that day, that is to say that night, my sister Kristen came back to my mom and was like, mom feeling a a little tired.
Could you hold my hand and finish my prayers? So I think, I mean, apropos of the category of the optional, you know, like what would be the reason for which we'd be upset at the prospect of falling asleep when praying the rosary? Maybe we are in the middle of a 54-day rosary novena to find our spouse. By we, I don't mean you or me, I mean other people.
So it's like, and you miss a day and you're like, holy smokes, maybe I'm not going to find my... I would just say, it's okay.
Whether or not your guardian angel finished your rosary, I personally don't care that much. What I do care about is whether you want the Lord.
You know, like whether you want the... Because the rosary is an expression of that desire.
And the Lord is enough, regardless of whether or not you get married. He'll always be enough.
And in heaven, you'll only have him. I mean, you get each other, but you get each other in him.
So I think that whenever we find ourselves in such a situation, it's an opportunity to ask the Lord if he's enough for us. And then let him respond.
And maybe just ask consultation of our guardian angel if he has some sweet insights, too. Beautiful.
All right, Great answer, Father. Great answer.
I think we ended very well there. So,

thanks, Father Gregory Pine, for making time for being with me. And thanks, everybody,

for joining us today. And I look forward to praying with you on today's episode as well.

And yeah, really grateful to be making the journey with all y'all. Poco a poco.
God bless y'all.