Once when my brother and sisters and I were reminiscing and laughing about the events of our childhood, my young niece started crying because she wasn’t familiar with the events and couldn’t laugh with us. So we stopped and recounted for her the details of each story so that she could be more closely with us in our reminiscences and in that evening together.
This desire to be present to events in the lives of loved ones is natural to us. How many of us could recount in detail the story of our parents’ meeting? How many children hear family stories and ask “Was I born yet?,” “Was I there?”
This desire is one reason the rosary is such a gift. It is like asking God our Father through Mary our Mother, “Where was I?,” “Am I part of these events?” We want to be present to the event of Jesus Christ. As the pope [John Paul II] said in Rosarium Virginis Mariae, we don’t want merely to learn what Christ taught, but to learn him.
My niece desired not just to glimpse the past, but to know her family more intimately here and now. The events of Christ are not mere history, they are mysteries. We can contemplate them repeatedly and never exhaust them.
We don’t tire of the story of how our parents met because our life sprang from that event. How much greater the events of Christ! My eternal salvation and my hundredfold here and now spring from those events. I want to delve deeply into them so I can learn Christ now, so I can participate in his life and belong more to him here and now.
My niece cried because she felt like an outsider. I don’t ever want to be outside of Christ. I want to be with him. The rosary is our standing invitation to be more and more with Jesus Christ in joy, in light, in sorrow, and in glory.
©Magnificat April 2003
