The Secret of the Rosary - Twelfth Rose

Twelfth Rose - The Our Father

THE OUR FATHER or the Lord's Prayer has great value----
above all because of its Author Who is neither a man nor an
Angel, but the King of Angels and men, Our Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ.
Saint Cyprian says that it was fitting that our Savior by
Whom we were reborn into the life of grace should also be
our heavenly Master and should teach us how to pray.
The beautiful order, the tender forcefulness and the clarity of
this Divine Prayer pay tribute to our Divine Master's
wisdom. It is a short prayer but can teach us so very much
and it is well within the grasp of uneducated people, while
scholars find it a continual source of meditation on the
mysteries of our Faith.
The Our Father contains all the duties we owe to God, the
acts of all the virtues and the petitions for all our spiritual
and corporal needs. Tertullian says that the Our Father is a
summary of the New Testament. Thomas à Kempis says that
it surpasses all the desires of all the Saints; that it is a
condensation of all the beautiful sayings of all the Psalms
and Canticles; that in it we ask God for everything that we
need; that by it we praise Him in the very best way; that by
it we lift up our souls from earth to Heaven and unite them
with God.
Saint John Chrysostom says that we cannot be our Master's
disciples unless we pray as He did and in the way that He
showed us. Moreover God the Father listens more willingly
to the Prayer that we have learned from His Son rather than
those of our own making which have all our human
limitations.
We should say the Our Father with the certitude that the
eternal Father will hear it because it is the prayer of His Son
Whom He always hears and we are His members. God will
surely grant our petitions made through the Lord's Prayer
because it is impossible to imagine that such a good Father
could refuse a request couched in the language of so worthy
a Son, reinforced by His merits, and made at His behest.
Saint Augustine says that whenever we say the Our Father
devoutly our venial sins are forgiven. The just man faIls
seven times a day, but in the Lord's Prayer he will find seven
petitions which will both help him to avoid downfalls and
will protect him from his spiritual enemies. Our Lord,
knowing how weak and helpless we are, and how many
difficulties we get into, made His Prayer short and easy to
say, so that if we say it devoutly and often we can be sure
that Almighty God will quickly come to our aid.
I have a word for you, devout souls, who pay little attention
to the prayer that the Son of God gave us Himself and asked
us all to say: It is high time for you to change your way of
thinking. You only like prayers that men have written----as
though anybody, even the most inspired man in the whole
world, could possibly know more about how we ought to
pray than Jesus Christ Himself! You look for prayers in
books written by other men almost as though you were
ashamed of saying the Prayer that Our Lord told us to say.
You have managed to convince yourself that the prayers in
these books are for scholars and for rich people of the upper
classes and that the Rosary is only for women and children
and the lower classes. As if the prayers and praises which
you have been reading were more beautiful and more
pleasing to God than those which are to be found in the
Lord's Prayer! It is a very dangerous temptation to lose
interest in the Prayer that Our Lord gave us and to take up
prayers that men have written instead.
Not that I disapprove of prayers that the Saints have written
so as to encourage the faithful to praise God, but it is not to
be endured that they should prefer the latter to the Prayer
which was uttered by Wisdom Incarnate. If they ignore this
Prayer it is just as though they pass up the spring to go after
the brook and refusing the clear water, drink dirty water
instead. Because the Rosary made up of the Lord's Prayer
and the Angelic Salutation, is this clear and ever flowing
water which comes from the Fountain of Grace, whereas
other prayers which they look for in books are nothing but
tiny streams which spring from this fountain.
People who say Our Lord's Prayer carefully, weighing every
word and meditating upon it, may indeed call themselves
blessed for they find therein everything that they need or
can wish for.
When we say this wonderful prayer we touch God's heart at-
---the very outset by calling Him by the sweet name of

Father----Our Father. He is the dearest of fathers: all-
powerful in His creation, wonderful in the way He

maintains the world, completely lovable in His Divine
Providence,----always good and infinitely so in the
Redemption. We have God for our Father, so we are all
brothers----and Heaven is our homeland and our heritage.
This should be more than enough to teach us to love God
and our neighbor and to be detached from the things of this
world.
So we ought to love our Heavenly Father and should say to
Him over and over again:
Our Father Who art in Heaven,
Thou Who dost fill Heaven and earth
With the immensity of Thy Being,
Thou Who art present everywhere----
Thou Who art in the Saints By Thy glory,
In the damned By Thy Justice,
In the good By Thy grace----
And even in sinners
By the patience
With which Thou dost tolerate them----
Grant we beseech Thee
That we may always remember
That we come from Thee;
Grant that we may live
As Thy true children ought to live----
Grant that we may set our course
Towards Thee
And never swerve----
Grant that we may use
Our every power,
Our hearts and souls and strength
To tend towards Thee And THEE ALONE.
Hallowed be Thy name:
King David, the prophet, said that the name of the Lord is
holy and awe-inspiring, and Isaias that Heaven is always
echoing with the praises of the Seraphim who unceasingly
praise the holiness of the Lord God of Hosts.
We ask here that all the world may learn to know and adore
the attributes of our God Who is so great and so holy. We
ask that He may be known, loved and adored by pagans,
Turks, Jews, barbarians and by all infidels----that all men
may serve and glorify Him by a living faith, a staunch hope,
a burning charity and by renouncing all erroneous beliefs.
This all adds up to say that we pray that all men may be
holy, because our God Himself is all-holy.
Thy Kingdom come:
Do Thou reign in our souls
By Thy grace
So that after death
We may be found meet
To reign with Thee
In Thy Kingdom
In perfect and unending bliss.
Oh Lord we firmly believe In this happiness to come;
We hope for and we expect it,
Because God the Father Has promised it
In His great goodness;
It was purchased for us
By the merits of God the Son
And God the Holy Spirit
He Who is the Light
Has made it known to us.
Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven:
As Tertullian says, this sentence does not in the least mean
that we are afraid of people thwarting God's designs because
nothing whatsoever can happen without Divine Providence
having foreseen it and having made it fit into His plans
beforehand. No obstruction in the whole world can possibly
prevent the will of God from being carried out.
Rather, when we say Thy will be done, we ask God to make us
humbly resigned to all that He has seen fit to send us in this
life. We also ask Him to help us to do, in all things and at all
times, His Holy will, made known to us by the
Commandments, promptly, lovingly and faithfully as the
Saints and Angels do it in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread:
Our Lord taught us to ask God for everything that we need
whether in the spiritual or temporal order. By asking for our
daily bread we humbly admit our own poverty and
insufficiency and pay tribute to our God, knowing that all
temporal goods come from His Divine Providence.
When we say bread we ask for that which is just necessary to
live; and, of course, this does not include luxuries.
We ask for this bread today this day which means that we are
concerned only for the present, leaving the morrow in the
hands of Providence.
And when we ask for our daily bread we recognize that we
need God's help every day and that we are entirely
dependent upon Him for His help and protection.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us:
Every sin, say Saint Augustine and Tertullian, is a debt
which we contract towards Almighty God and His justice
demands payment down to the very last farthing.
Unfortunately we all have these sad debts.
No matter how many they may be we should go to God in
all confidence and with true sorrow for our sins, saying "Our
Father Who art in Heaven, forgive us our sins of thought
and those of speech, forgive us our sins of commission and
omission which make us infinitely guilty in the eyes of Thy
Divine Justice.
"We dare to ask this because Thou art our loving and
merciful Father and because we have forgotten those who
have offended us, out of obedience to Thee and out of
charity.
"Do not permit us, in spite of our infidelity to Thy graces, to
give in to the temptations of the world, the devil and the
flesh."
But deliver us from evil:
The evil of sin and also of temporal punishment and
everlasting punishment which we know that we have rightly
deserved.
Amen (So be it).
This word at the end of Our Father is very consoling and
Saint Jerome says that it is a sort of seal of approbation that
Almighty God puts at the end of our petitions to assure us
that He will grant our requests----very much as though He
Himself were answering:
"Amen! May it be as you have asked, for verily you have
obtained what you asked for." This is what is meant by the
word "Amen."

The Canada54 National Novena includes a daily reading from the Secret of the Rosary.

There are exactly 54 readings. 

• A white rose for priests;
• A red rose for sinners;
• A mystical rose tree for devout souls;
• A rosebud for little children;
• Plus 50 roses representing each Hail Mary recited during 5 decades of the Rosary

JesusMarie.com  - Le Secret du Rosaire - ICI

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A priest discovers a pig chewing on a Rosary. What he does next transforms his dying parish into a National Shrine!

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