Bonus: Introduction to Phase Two: “Biblical Roots of the Rosary”

Hey, I'm Father Mark Mary with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, and this is the Rosary in the Year podcast. Today we are beginning phase two of the Rosary of the Year podcast.
Congratulations, everyone who made it through phase one. Today we begin at phase two, which is called the biblical roots of the rosary, and I am joined by Mr.
Jeff Cavins. Jeff, thanks for joining me.
It's a pleasure to be with you. It's going to be a wonderful, wonderful trip throughout the entire year.
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to journeying with all the folks who are going to be praying with us.
Now, Jeff, for those who aren't familiar with you, would you mind just giving a brief introduction and a little bit, again, of your history with Scripture and the study and writing on Scripture. Sure.
Well, I was raised Catholic and grew up kind of an average Catholic guy, I guess, in Minnesota. And when I was about 17 years old, I started to really search for God.
And in my freshman year of college, my now wife led me into a deeper relationship with Jesus, which at that point I fell in love with Scripture. And I ended up going to Bible college in Dallas, Texas.
And then after that, I was in radio and television, and I left the Catholic Church. I left the Catholic Church and started working in Protestant and non-denominational churches.
and then went back to school. And I was ordained a Protestant pastor of a non-denominational organization.
And that's funny to say that, a non-denominational organization, but I was ordained as a pastor. And it was when I was about 25 years old that I had such a hunger for Scripture, and I knew the various stories of Scripture, but I didn't know the story.
And so I was getting ready to go into a Hebrew class at the University of Minnesota when an idea came to my mind, and that idea is the current Bible timeline chart that takes you through the Bible in chronological order. And so I went home that day and I spent 48 hours up in my mother-in-law's basement creating that chart, not knowing that that would basically define my life.
And I had no idea. So when I left the Catholic Church, a lot of people will say, well, didn't you miss Mary? Didn't you miss the Rosary? Didn't you miss the Eucharist? And my answer is, no, I did not, because I never knew these things.
I had a very poor formation growing up, and it wasn't until I was studying the early church that I started to realize that everything that I was doing I couldn't find in the early church, and everything that was happening in the early church was not found in my church.

And so that brought about a little bit of a crisis of faith.

And when I came back to the Catholic church, one of the reasons was Mary, the Queen Mother,

and all that goes with that, the rosary and everything else.

And so a full circle came back and the rest is history. And you know, Jeff, I feel like I have a bit of a full circle moment back, and the rest is history.

And you know, Jeff, I feel like I have a bit of a full circle moment here as well.

I entered the Friars 2009, and one of the things we all did is we went through your video series on the Bible timeline,

and guys have been doing it every year.

Every year, you're part of our initial formation.

And we first met when I wasn't ordained to priesthood. It was at the Ascension Summit, and I was out there to give a talk.
And I was in the middle of seminary still, and particularly I was writing a class or a paper on the Gospel of John. And I remember that I was using some of your resources on it.
So it's, yeah, your work has certainly been fruitful for myself and the rest of the friars. And so I'm very grateful to be here collaborating with you on this episode.
I know you mentioned you were baptized Catholic. You went through a period where you're no longer practicing.
You're belonging to the other sort of Christian denomination or non-denomination organization. When you were coming back and being reintroduced again to the rosary, with your relationship with Scripture and the rosary and Mary, were there some hurdles? To get over? Yeah.
Yeah, sure. And especially for my wife.
When I came back to the Catholic Church, I had to leave my pastorate in Dayton, Ohio, and my bishop wanted me to go to Steubenville. And so I went there and Scott Hahn and I became just the best of friends.
And my wife ended up being his assistant. And she wasn't Catholic at that point.
She was going through RCIA at Steubenville. And I can remember this idea of finding it difficult to go through anyone other than Jesus, because Jesus had become everything to me in my life.
Everything. I mean everything.
And so the idea of going and asking somebody else to pray for me was foreign to me. But once I got into the Bible and started understanding the role of the Queen Mother in the Old Testament,

then I started to realize that what I was entering into wasn't foreign. It was just hidden, and I didn't see it.
And nobody brought it up when I was in Bible college. And so that was a bit of a hurdle, this idea of, am I taking something away from Jesus? And then once you get to know Jesus really deeply, you know that he's not jealous, he's not envious in that way, but he

shares his glory. And it's like me saying to somebody, I have three daughters.
They are

absolutely the most beautiful ladies on earth. Well, if somebody came up to them and said,

I met one of your daughters and she is absolutely beautiful. Now, I wouldn't respond with, stop right there.
Just stop right there. Where do you think she got it? I wouldn't act like that.
I would rejoice in somebody thinking that my daughter was beautiful. In the same way, God shares this life with the Blessed Virgin Mary and the role, and

that role glorifies God.

It takes nothing away from God.

It just allows that light to shine evermore.

So Jeff, I'd love to kind of go to begin with again.

Maybe you mentioned Mary as Queen Mother.

Would you share a little bit on that?

Yeah, I'd be happy to. When you look at the Bible and you go back into the Old Testament, you see a number of individuals who hold positions in the kingdom of David.
And these are very important positions. And you see concepts, you see geography, all of this.
Well, all of Scripture is Christocentric, which means that it all finds its ultimate meaning in Jesus. And when we leave the Old Testament, we don't really leave it.
But what we're looking at in the New Testament is the fulfillment of everything that was given to us in the Old Testament, the fulfillment of everything. And so, one of the positions that we find in the Old Testament was the Geberah in Hebrew, Geberah, which means queen mother.
Now, we didn't make that up. The Jewish community didn't make that up.
That was something that was given in the Old Testament. You can see this in Kings quite a bit, where the queen mother has a special role.
Now, who would be the queen mother? Well, in the West, that would be the wife of the king in the Western countries. But in the Near East, the queen mother was the mother of the king.
Why? Because oftentimes in cultures back then, the king might have more than one wife. He might have three or four wives.
And so who's going to be queen? Well, there's only one, and there's only one unique relationship, and that is the mother of the king. So in the Near Eastern communities and countries, it was the mother of the king who held this prized position and even had a throne to the right of the king, just to the side of the king.
And her job was to be an advocate, an intercessor on behalf of the people. So when we talk about Mary being an intercessor and an advocate, we didn't make that up.
That's a biblical thing. And so when we come to the New Testament, we have to ask ourselves, well, who has the role of the queen mother? Very easy to answer.
Who's the mother of the king? Well, who's the king? The king is Jesus. Who's his mother? That's Mary.
And this is a concept that's hard for a lot of non-Catholics to understand. You know, I've had many situations

where I talked to someone and said that Mary is the mother of God, which was determined at the council in Ephesus that she is the mother of God. Now, that's received as she gave birth to God as if God had never existed, and that's not what we're saying, that she is the mother of God.
Jesus is God. And that was the focus of that entire ruling, that conclusion at Ephesus, is that Jesus is God, and Mary gave birth to God.
So if I say that to someone, and I'll say, Mary is the mother of God, they'll say, oh, no, no, no, no. I'll say, well, let's do this.

Who's Jesus? And they'll say, he's the son of God. Is he God? Yes, he is.
Who's his mother?

Mary. So Mary's the mother of God.
And they'll say, no. So, okay, we'll do it again, you know,

until finally people get it, you know, that, yeah, she is the mother of God. She's the mother of Jesus.
There's also another really important role in the Old Testament called the al-habayit. Al over the ha-bayit house.
The one who's over the house, the prime minister. That one's another great role that we end up seeing in the New Testament with the papacy.
So these critical roles are important. So as the queen mother, the mother of the king, the blessed Virgin Mary has a particular charism.
She, of course, conceived without sin. And she has been given to us as a mother.
And at the end of John's gospel, we see Jesus on the cross. He has given everything.
He's given his sweat, his blood, his body. He's given everything as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
And even there on the cross, listen to what he says. He gives his mother to John.
He says, behold, your mother. Now, most theologians would agree that what Jesus did at the cross is universal in that it is for all of us.
And so if he gave his mother to John, he gives his mother to us. And so we have this spiritual mother who loves us and cares for us.
And I think that one of the greatest things that she does as the Geberah or the

queen mother is that she leads everybody, not just kings and queens and famous people and the rich or who. She leads everybody, everybody on what? On a walk through her son's life.
I can't think of a more capable, a more equipped, a more graced person than the Blessed Virgin Mary to say, Jeff, or whatever, no name, Beth, Sarah, John, Thomas, come with me. I will take you through the life of my son with the hopes that you will be more perfectly formed to my son.
I will join you in prayer. I will be with you in prayer.
Now, you and I love that, and it's fantastic. But if I came to my Protestant friends and said that that is the reality, and it's a great gift and benefit to you, and if people did not have, say, an anti-Catholic bias, they would jump all over it and say, this is one of the greatest theological points and experiences known to mankind, is that the mother of Jesus is going to be a prayer partner taking me through her son's life and praying effectively that I would become more like her son.
This is an incredible opportunity. Incredible.
I think one of my favorite parts in doing the Rosary in the Year as sort of the speaker, the presenter, I'm also first, I'm like the first student as well. And I've had an opportunity in putting together a number of these episodes to also study.
And one of my things that's been most fruitful for me is my own just really actually deeping dive in studying scripture, particularly in relationship to Mary and her different titles and roles and how, for example, there's the connection between Our Lady is the new Ark of the Covenant and how this actually makes a lot of sense for her assumption as well into the temple, into the new Jerusalem, and seeing the visitation in its reference to David and the Ark. So it's been extremely fruitful for myself, my own sort of prayer and study.
And so I have all the confidence in the world it'll be that for those who are joining us and our listeners as well. I think the rosary, it's almost funny with the question, like, is it scriptural? Because it feels like reflecting on scripture while praying with scripture.
You know, like the foundational, the core prayers of the rosary, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, you know, that we're pulling from scripture. and we're praying these while reflecting on the mysteries of our Lord's life, the mysteries of our salvation.
If we can kind of focus a little bit on the Hail Mary, we'll have a couple of episodes. There's going to be three episodes, a little teaching on it in this second phase.
But what stands out for you is important and noteworthy about the Hail Mary and about that prayer and its use in the rosary? Yeah, it's a good question because when we speak of these theological points, these truths, we find our foundation in Scripture. There is a certain primacy to Scripture in our lives as Catholics.
And when it comes to the prayers of the rosary, these are prayers that are scriptural. So for example, we have the Hail Mary, Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou, right? And we can go on, and we can find this in chapter one. In chapter one, I'll just read this to you real quickly here.
Now, this is from Gabriel, the angel Gabriel, the archangel. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, who a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David.
And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
Now, I didn't write that. The church didn't write that.
Those are words of an archangel. An archangel proclaimed this when he said, Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
That is very, very powerful.

Now, if you couple that, what Gabriel said, with Elizabeth in the very same chapter,

later on here, we have verse 39.

In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a city of Judah.

And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

When Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the child leaped in her womb.

and I'll see you next time. And so you tie those two statements together.
You've got Gabriel, the archangel, you've got Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, and both of them exclaim something and we put them together. And I can't find better words in the Bible to put into a prayer than those two.
And at the very end, when we pray, you know, to pray for me until the hour of my death, Well, that came later and that came much, much later when we had the Black Plague. And the Black Plague, of course, there was a lot of people that were dying all around Europe.
It was an amazing thing. And this is when people started to pray that God, that the Blessed Virgin Mary would pray for them now and at the hour of our death, which all across Europe was happening daily.
That is something that we all need. So it's a very biblical prayer.
And of course, the Lord's Prayer, most people know the Lord's Prayer. When the disciples saw Jesus, he was going up to pray all the time.
And then finally they said, teach us how to do this. We'd like to know how to do this.
And then he gives us the Lord's Prayer as a template. It's a prayer, but it's also a template that helps us to stay on target in our prayers.
So both of them are completely biblical. Yeah, Jeff, and to kind of just compliment your answer from a bit of a different perspective, when we're presented the rosary as a form of prayer and a form of meditation with the prayers and the mysteries, you know, I do think what is implied, if we're going to be praying and meditating on mysteries, what's a prerequisite for that is actually, even apart from the rosary, praying with and studying and spending time with the different scripture passages, again, particularly that correlate to different mysteries.
I find it's going to be difficult for you to be on your walk or your drive or your run. Maybe you're in the chapel, but maybe you're living life and you're trying to pray the rosary and you're trying to reflect on these mysteries.
It's going to be quite difficult if the only time you're ever visiting these mysteries of our Lord's life, the only time you're visiting these scripture passages is while you're praying the rosary. I certainly think that a great compliment to it as well is just spending time sitting with and receiving the Word of God, letting it be written on our minds and hearts.
And when it's written in our minds and hearts, then when we come to the rosary, we just come, if you will, with so much more that we're bringing to the table of prayer. Yeah.
You bring up a great point. Years ago in the 1990s when I was on EWTN with Life on the Rock and Mother Angelica, that's when I started to really grow in the rosary.
And what I would do, I was teaching the Bible timeline, of course, at EWTN. And like you said, learning the Bible, understanding scripture enhanced my experience in praying the rosary.
Because when you start to meditate on one mystery, if you know the Bible, that expands. And it's like, I need more time.
This is incredible. I'm starting to see these connections as I meditate on it.
And what I would do is, I was a runner back then. I would go to Mountain Brook High School.
I still remember the name of the school. And I'd run around their track late in the evening because it was so hot during the day.
And I ran the rosary. I ran the rosary.
Every time I ran around, I prayed one of the decades. And I meditated on that.
And it was amazing how big it got because I knew the Bible. And then, you know, and then you add to that pilgrimages, you know, people who go on a pilgrimage and that adds to it, particularly if you go to the Holy Land.
And so the more you know the Bible, the bigger your experience is going to be and the more comprehensive that experience will be for you as far as meditating on it. But I just forgot about that until you just brought it up, but I used to run the rosary, I guess.
Yeah, I love that. And so, Jim, how would you respond to the person who says that Scripture itself, again, as I mentioned in Jesus' own words about not throwing up empty words like the pagans, not babbling, I think that's a commonly referred to Scripture for those who have questions or concerns about the rosary, which certainly feels like repetition and saying a lot of the same thing over and over again.
What's your response to that? No, great question. Because a lot of people who don't understand the rosary, particularly our wonderful non-denominational friends and Protestant friends, they're going to immediately look at that and say, I don't know, repetition there.
Jesus says something about that. Well, yeah, Jesus does say something about repetition.
He certainly doesn't say anything about repetition in the rosary. But what he's talking about there is that the pagan cultures, when they would try to get a hold of their God, they would oftentimes have to do unusual things.
They would do unusual things with dances and incantations and so forth. And they would also repeat things over and over and over.
And it was almost like their God is not paying attention. And what they're doing is trying to gain the attention of their God.
And so we're not like that. We weren't like the Greeks or the Romans in that we had to repeat things over and over in different ways, almost like a secret formula or Gnosticism, this kind of hidden knowledge.
We don't have to do that because we have a relationship with God. We don't need any kind of secret handshake to get in there.
So that's what Jesus is talking about with vain repetition. You think you're going to get the attention of God.
You know, Father, something that's important to bring out here is this. God is not against repetition.
He is not against repetition. In fact, we see in the Old Testament that repetition is incredibly important.

We have repetition in the days. We pray the same way in the every day.
We offer up monthly sacrifice in the Old Testament. Annually, we do the same things.
We have a liturgical year in the Old Testament. It beats the rhythm of life and the agriculture.
It is absolutely a beautiful, beautiful thing. Here's what's really interesting.
I ran into a great quote that I'll share with you here. And I think all of our friends that are joining with us will appreciate this.
It was by Romano Guardini. And he wrote this.
He said this, repetition can have a real meaning. Is it not an element of life? What else is the beating of the heart but repetition? Always the same contraction and expansion, and yet it makes the blood circulate through the body.
What else is breathing but repetition? Always the same in and out. But by breathing we live.
And is not our whole being ordered and sustained by change and repetition? If this is so everywhere, why should it not also be so in religious devotion? Life is repetition, and we learn from repetition. Even the word in Hebrew for wisdom, chokhmah, is like the rapid hitting of a nail with a hammer, over and over and over and over.
We learn. We learn.
So, no, God is not against repetition. Repetition is a friend in prayer.
It's the heart, and that is we don't want vain repetition. We don't want to say, well, I'm going to say 20 prayers to get God's attention.
Well, that's vain repetition. Our prayer, we're in a relationship with God, and the repetition is for you.
It's for you. God hears you.
Yeah, Jeff, I was at a wedding just recently where the father of the bride shared a few words. And one of the things that he mentioned is that ever since his daughter was a little girl, he would put a note in her lunch.
And even today, now she's post-college, he sends her a note every day. Every day he sends her something, right? And this is a repetition, but you better believe the daughter loves it every single time.
And it's such a sign of her father's love. And John Paul II in his apostolic exhortation on the Most Holy Rosary, he looks at the rosary and its repetition kind of from this lens.
It's this ever new returning with love to the one that you love. And this is where repetition is done right, this ongoing returning with a new love.
Also, John Paul II,

Pope Benedict, Paul VI, they also do exhort against this empty repetition, this mechanical repetition. We do as we are praying in general and praying the rosary, we do want to have it

be lifting our minds and our hearts to God as much as possible, not just getting it done,

not just checking it off the list. But yeah, I think it's beautiful.
And certainly for the

I don't know, is there anything particularly that you find beautiful or moving or that you love about the rosary as a form of devotion and prayer? I do. I would say a couple things.
One is what John Paul II said, and that is that the rosary beats the rhythm of human life. and if I run into you and I talk to you and I don't really know you very well and we start to share our lives and we're having a good conversation, I can place you somewhere on that rosary and where you're at right now.
You know, it's like a young couple that grows up and they're married and they have a child. It's so joyful.
It's so joyful. And then they go through those times of life, the regular times of life, you know, and how God meets us in the luminous mysteries.
And then they reach, I kind of joke about it a little bit, but they reach their teens and we start to go through the sorrowful. You know, things are tough at times.
Things are difficult. We're trying to build a home and my son is sick and I got laid off at work and all these things.
And then when you know it, in the end, it's the glorious. It's the glorious.
And we have these waves in our life, not just our whole life, but in your marriage. You know, you're married and maybe that really joyful phase.
Maybe you are experiencing some sorrowful suffering right now in your life. Or maybe it's the kids have grown up.
We have grandkids now and it's glorious, you know. So it could be in any aspect of your life.
But there was also one more thing, and that was Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Jewish philosopher who John Paul II used in faith and reason. And that was this, that in prayer, and specifically for us as Catholics, this rosary right here, this was given to me by Pope John Paul II, and he gave my daughters, my wife one.
And in the rosary, I can go to a doctor's appointment with my daughter. And while she's seeing the doctor, I'm sitting in the waiting room, and the rosary allows me to have a temple in time, a small temple in time.
When I say, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit with my rosary, I have entered in to something special at this point. And I can do it in the waiting room.
I can do it while driving in the car with a spouse. I can sit there and pray.
I can do this while watching my kids play football. There's just waiting for a test from the doctor, you know, studying for my final, anything, you name it.
I can set up kind of a temple in time with the rosary, and I can walk with the Blessed Virgin Mary and have her pray and intercede for me as I am focused on the focus of the rosary, which is the mysteries of Jesus. And that to me is an incredible thing.
And that is, it's so portable. It's so portable.
And also tactile. If you keep it in your pocket, you're probably going to be, or your purse, you're going to be reminded of it six, seven, eight, nine, maybe 10 times a day.
You're going to be reminded. And if you're going through a difficult time and you feel that in your pocket, why not take the time and just say, you know what, I'm going to carve out 15 minutes here.
I'm just going to pray. And I need help.
I need help in my life. So I think that it's portable and it knows where I'm at and I can enter into it every single day.
And I really, really, really like the whole sorrowful mysteries.

I get asked that question sometimes, what's your favorite?

My favorite are the sorrowful.

And the reason they are is because it just makes so much sense out of life when I understand what suffering is, especially in light of St. Paul and Colossians 1.24.

I feel, he says, I rejoice in my suffering for your sake.

and I'll see 1.24. I feel, he says, I rejoice in my suffering for your sake, and I fill up in my body that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ.
Now, what could be lacking in the sufferings of Christ? John Paul II said, what's lacking in the suffering of Christ? Nothing. But that you might come to know the love of God.
He has made room in his suffering for you to participate. And I find this to be one of the greatest ways to enter into that and to participate in the suffering of Christ.
He has redeemed my suffering. It is made redemptive now.
And I can take that broken leg, I can take that broken heart. And I can say, listen, blessed mother, you've been there.
You've been there in spades. I need your help.
And I will offer this up. Help me offer up this suffering for my daughter, for my pastor, for my parents, for my spouse.
And that is one of the greatest for me in my life, particularly the Sorrowful Mysteries. Yeah, beautiful.
Thank you. Thank you, Jeff.
And yeah, thank you for being here today. And I'm exceedingly grateful for your work and what you've done with the Bible and the Bible timeline.
And I think you've done quite a bit more in laying the foundation and building up Ascension than a lot of folks know. So as part of the team Ascension, I'm exceedingly grateful for all the trailblazing and the foundation laying that you did to create the foundation on which, if you will, Rosary in the Year is building.
It's really great to be with you and to begin or come to the beginning of the Rosary in the Year and to have you join me and again, share your love of scripture and the rosary. So I'm extremely grateful, Jeff.

Thank you. It's good being with you.

Thank you. All right, everybody.
Thanks again for joining me. And I look forward to continuing the rosary in a year pilgrimage journey with you.
Poco a poco, friends. All right.
God bless y'all.