Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

Some Catholic theologians, clergy and writers teach that we should have a reasonable hope all men and women will be saved. We should reject this erroneous prediction of  our eternal residency. Even a simple man like I can understand that this claim of universal salvation doesn't really pass the smell test.  How could it when Jesus Himself told us: "For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are few who find it (Matthew 7:14)? Less we would forget this essential Truth, from time to time our Lord has used others as His messengers. Here are just a few examples: St Bernard "said with tears that there were hardly one ship out of ten lost on the sea, but on the ocean of life there is hardly one soul saved out of ten." St Teresa of Avila saw souls "falling like snowflakes into hell." Even the Blessed Mother at Fatima told the children:  “Pray, pray a great deal, and make sacrifices for sinners, for many souls...

(Photo©Michael Seagriff) “The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families…that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.” (Sister Lucia dos Santos)

God willing, every Saturday in the month of May, I will share some short reflection on the Rosary. I begin with this insightful and prophetic excerpt from St. John Paul II’s 2002 Apostolic Letter on The Rosary of the Virgin Mary : “The Rosary is a way of contemplating the face of Christ seeing him – we may say – with the eyes of Mary. For this reason, it is a prayer that drawing upon the core of the Gospel is in full accord with the inspiration of the Second Vatican Council and very much in keeping with the direction I gave in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio ineunte : the Church has to launch out "into the deep" in the new millennium beginning with the contemplation of the face of Christ…