The Rosary in a Year (with Fr. Mark-Mary Ames) - Day 7: Grace Will Overflow

Episode Date: January 7, 2025

Praying the Rosary is not just for ourselves! Fr. Mark-Mary reveals how your prayers of the Rosary are a powerful action that God can use to create an overflowing of grace into your relationships, your family, and our world. Today’s focus is on prayer as a source of grace and we will be praying one Our Father, three Hail Marys, and one Glory Be. For the complete prayer plan, visit https://ascensionpress.com/riy.

I'm Father Mark Mary with Franciscan Friars with Renewal and this is the Rosary in a Year podcast where through prayer and meditation, the rosary brings us deeper into relationship with Jesus and Mary and becomes a source of grace for the whole world. The Rosary in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. This is Day 7. To download the prayer plan for Rosary in a Year, visit ascensionpress.com forward slash rosaryinayear or text R-I-Y to 33777. You'll get an outline of how we're going to pray each month

and it's a great way to track your progress. The best place to listen to the podcast is in the Ascension app. There are special features built just for this podcast and also recordings of the full Rosary with myself and other friars. All right, friends, we've made it to day seven. We've made it through one week together here on our journey with the Rosary in the Year podcast.

And just a reminder of where we've been. We began with a basic look at prayer. This reminder that in our prayer in general, we want to be raising our minds and our hearts to God. For two days, we had the opportunity basing our meditation on the litany of the sacred hearts of encountering Jesus, encountering his heart, which is kind and merciful. We've been with Jesus in the throne room where he reigns, and we've been with Jesus in the workshop

where he patiently and mercifully teaches us. And and we've been with Jesus in the workshop where He patiently and mercifully teaches us and then we've been with Mary. We've taken her into our own home. She's a real mother and she needs to be more than just a statue in our lives but someone we talk to, someone we relate with, someone we share our hearts with, someone we honor and venerate, but also someone who wants to be asked to help and whose intercession is so powerful. And now we're turning our attention to how the rosary can become a source of grace for the whole world.

We touched on it a little bit yesterday as we looked at the battle and the rosary and the weapon, particularly the spiritual battle in which the devil is trying to cut us off from our supply lines. Today we're going to turn our attention more specifically just to grace and how the praying of the Rosary is a source of grace. So here's a quote, these are words from Pope Benedict XVI again from his audience on the Most Holy Rosary. May Mary help us to welcome within ourselves the grace emanating from these mysteries, so that through us we can water society, beginning with our daily relationships and purifying them from so many negative forces, thus opening them to the newness of God. I love this image.

I love this image of prayer, of our own sanctification, of our own growing in holiness as our own growing in love with Jesus through the Holy Rosary of ourselves being filled up with the water of grace and filled up to overflowing. It's not just for ourselves, but this water, this grace will overflow into our relationships, into our family, and into our world. The rosary is a powerful weapon, right? The rosary is a spiritual weapon by which God does powerful things in the world.

Things often beyond our visibility, things that we are not conscious of or aware of, but nonetheless real. And there's a reason again for this new springtime, this deep invitation to the most holy rosary so that you and I, as authentic men and women of prayer, you and I, as authentic men and women of contemplation and through it, men and women of contemplation and through it men and women of authentic holiness

may ourselves water this world, be conduits through which the grace can flow and overflow into the world. And this, my friends, brings me to a really personal and deep experience that gives witness to this is just not an abstract reality. The year of the rosary declared by Pope John Paul II during his pontificate went from October of 2002 to October of 2003. In the fall of 2003, I began college, I went to a Catholic school, but in August, September of 2003,

for the very first time in my life, I stopped going to Sunday Mass. very first time in my life, I stopped going to Sunday Mass. I was raised in the faith, I had a great youth ministry, but through a variety of reasons, I just stopped going to Mass. I was in the context of kind of a general dorm get together where I had a conversation with an atheist and I started to defend. She said she didn't believe I started to defend the faith in this light bulb went on.

And I just had this deep, almost St. Paul like experience of I believe and it needs to affect my whole life. And this moment, this unmerited grace radically changed the trajectory of my life. This moment, the saving event in my life, it happened in late October 2003. At the culmination, at the end of the year of the rosary, and

with faith, I deeply believe it was the graces of those who faithfully, who humbly, who hiddenly prayed the most Holy Rosary that the grace overflowed from them and poured into my life. And in a real way, it was through these prayers that Mary brought me to Jesus. And there's a reason my name is Father Mark Mary. By baptism, I'm Mark. And what the Lord made clear in bringing about salvation and bringing about my vocation

is that Mary was His chosen instrument. She really was sent by Him to come into my life to bring me to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I'm here as a disciple. I'm here as a Franciscan friar, a consecrated religious. I'm here as a priest. And I'm here doing this Rosary in a Year podcast as one who believes that the Rosary helped to save my life and to save my soul.

I don't know the men and women who prayed this Rosary, but I hope one day to meet them in heaven where I can thank them. My friends, the world needs grace. The world needs Jesus. And across the world there's so many people who are losing their way. Maybe there's members of our own family, those we love, our church. We don't know how the Lord is going to use these prayers. But I believe with all that I am, that not a prayer said will go unanswered.

That as we are renewed in our devotion to Christ, as we are renewed in putting Him at the center of our lives, as we are renewed in our fidelity to Mary into our praying of the Most Holy Rosary. That there will be a new flood of grace, a new downpour of salvation, of saving love and help from above. And so, my friends, we continue this journey. It's going to be a long journey again, patience and perseverance. But we come each and every day

with radical hope that God is going to receive our prayers and do something beautiful in the world and in our church. Let us pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Glory be to the Father

and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Alright everybody, thanks for joining me and praying with me today. I look forward to continuing this journey with you again tomorrow. Alright, Poco Poco friends. God bless y'all.