October 2024: Thought for the Day
Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
6 October 2024
The Rosary is not an optional extra. It has the potential to transform our lives if we are willing. So where does that leave those of us who genuinely find it difficult to concentrate whilst praying the Rosary? Despite feeling I don’t pray the Rosary particularly well, over the last few years in which I’ve been praying it on a daily basis, there are several things I’ve come to realize. Whilst we can pray the Rosary to varying degrees of perfection, it is not really possible to pray the Rosary badly. Although we should always hope that we might learn to pray the Rosary better, we are never worse off for praying it.
Robert Verrill OP
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Twenty-Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time
13 October 2024 • Prisoners’ Sunday
‘Mercy, as the expression of God’s love, is something we need to think about more deeply. Certainly, breaking the law involves paying the price, and losing one’s freedom is the worst part of serving time, because it affects us so deeply. All the same, hope must not falter. Paying for the wrong we have done is one thing, but another thing entirely is the ‘breath’ of hope, which cannot be stifled by anyone or anything. Our heart always yearns for goodness. We are in debt to the mercy that God constantly shows us, for he never abandons us (cf. Augustine, Sermon 254:1)’.
Synodal reflection for Prisoners’ Sunday
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Twenty-Ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time
20 October 2024 • World Mission Sunday
John Paul II said that as a young man, praying the Living Rosary helped him realize that not only does Our Mother Mary direct us towards Christ, but Christ also directs us towards His mother. Christ is saying ‘look what marvels I have worked for my mother.’ Devotion to the saints and especially to Our Lady, is so important because it marks out why our faith is so special. God’s grace is not something superficial but penetrates the core of our being. God has promised to make us like Himself. Our Lady is the first in whom this promise has been fulfilled, and so she is worthy of the highest of praise.
Robert Verrill OP
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Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
27 October 2024
‘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 of Fatima