Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.
Today we celebrate a Franciscan saint in the liturgy, St. Seraphin of Montegranaro in Italy.
He was born in 1540, died in 1604, and he was one of those amazing, simple, but extraordinary laybrothers who make up a large part of the saints of the Franciscan order.
He spent his life doing the simple tasks of friary life, such as begging the food necessary for the friars, cooking that food for the friars, cleaning the friary, etc.
But in that he exercised extraordinary virtues and obtained extraordinary gifts from God as well, so that he was known for working frequent miracles as well.
His life would be really exciting to tell, but I'll just focus on one aspect of his life for a spiritual takeaway.
We read in his biographies that the Franciscan biographers of St. Seraphin tell us that when he entered the order, when he was entering the novitiate, he was completely illiterate.
But nevertheless, he brought two books with him to the friary that he read every single day.
And these two books contained all the wisdom that he ever learned and all the heroic virtues that he ever practiced.
And these two books were metaphorical books. They were the crucifix and the rosary.
He would have these books with him every day and gaze into these books every single day.
Gaze upon the crucifix, our Lord, and his love for us.
And then to love our Lord back, he would place himself at the foot of the cross with Mary by praying the Holy Rosary constantly and frequently.
And he was one of those saints, not exactly a Padre Pio, but one of those saints that prayed the rosary multiple times a day, countless times a day.
And it's this exhortation to pray the rosary frequently that I'd like to share with you today as a takeaway.
St. Seraphim again prayed not just one, but many.
And a lot of us are capable of that, praying more than one rosary a day, multiple rosaries a day, the whole entire rosary of four mysteries every single day.
If we challenge ourselves, we'll see we're capable of doing that.
And perhaps, almost certainly, you already do that anyway.
But all right. So maybe I exhort you to keep on doing it.
But it's nevertheless a great resolution to make.
And I'm meeting, in fact, many people who already do that.
It gives me confidence to exhort more people to do that because it's within our reach.
And it's a great tool for spiritual growth.
God has given us the Holy Rosary as a means of easy union with him, as a means of living a life of union with him.
The rosary is designed, we can say it's engineered, to be prayed in its entirety every single day.
To be a daily psalter, a daily contemplation on the whole life of Jesus and Mary from beginning to end.
Don't get me wrong. If you pray one rosary every single day, that's already phenomenal.
It's not like, oh, you're not doing enough. You're doing something wrong because you're just praying one.
No, it's simply an exhortation.
Okay, maybe you can grow. Keep using that rosary that you pray to grow further.
And if you just pray one, don't feel bad.
You're already amongst a very small number of Catholics who pray it all and who actually pray the rosary every single day and who are very pleasing to Our Lady's heart.
But again, I'm just saying, well, maybe.
Maybe you can grow using that Holy Rosary even more.
I suggest this resolution, and in order to maybe put this resolution into practice, five practical suggestions.
One, we have to grow gradually.
If you're going to take that step from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 2, 2 to 3, 3 to 4, expect that that growth will come gradually.
It's difficult to go from 1 to 4.
You might have to, again, go from 1 to 2 and then 2 to 3.
And if you're struggling just to pray one, again, you might have to grow to that one just a decade at a time.
So expect gradual growth. We human beings grow gradually.
Two, plan your resolutions of gradual growth.
Our resolutions have to be concrete and specific.
Then they become effective.
So if you want to go from 1 to 2, well, plan the time of day that you're going to pray your second rosary and then your third and then your fourth.
First one, I don't know, in the car on the way to work.
Second one, I don't know, on my lunch break.
Third one, when I come home from work.
Fourth, before I go to bed.
Plan it so that it has a time during the day, so that you have a concrete item to aim for.
It makes our resolutions easier to keep.
Or if, again, you want to grow incrementally by decades, same thing.
I'll pray a decade as I'm walking from here to there, as I'm driving from here to there, as I'm walking from here to there, as I'm waiting here for something to happen.
One decade at a time. Plan those in.
And when we're intentional like this, we realize it's possible, and we also realize that we learn not to waste time during the day as well.
If we are intentional, especially if we challenge ourselves to something this arduous, the whole rosary every day, this helps us to also clean up our day, so we're not wasting time during the day.
If we think about it, we realize, oh, I waste time here.
Instead of doing A, which is not so good, I could do B, which is far better.
Pray the rosary.
Third suggestion, have an intention for your holy rosary that motivates us.
Our mind is full of anxieties and fears and worries, but also hopes and joys and gratitudes.
We can turn those into prayer.
We should turn those into prayer.
And the rosary is an easy way of turning everything that's on our mind into holy prayer, so that we're not just worrying and doing nothing about our worries, but we're turning them into petitions to God through Our Lady.
In fact, again, I'm blessed to meet so many holy people.
It's something that I'm grateful to God for.
But I recently met a priest whose motivation to pray the rosary was his concern for five marriages at a certain point in his life before he even became a priest.
He was concerned about five married couples that he knew, and their marriages were not in good shape.
He began to pray the rosary for them and fervently because he was concerned for them.
And with that fervent prayer, guess what happened?
All five marriages not only survived, but actually wound up thriving.
But that helped him to pray the rosary every single day and with fervor because he had concrete people to pray for.
He had concrete anxieties to bring to Our Lady, concrete petitions to make to Her that can help us as well.
Four and five, the fourth suggestion, pray to pray.
That should be one of our intentions.
We should ask Our Lady, help me to pray my next rosary.
Help me to grow in my life of prayer.
Help me to pray it tomorrow.
Help me to go from where I am now to more.
Prayer is not within our power.
It's a gift from God.
We have to pray to obtain it.
And lastly, pray with supernatural faith.
At the beginning, it might be very exciting.
I'm gonna pray a second rosary.
I'm gonna pray a third.
I'm gonna pray a fourth, and that's great.
God gives us that.
But sometimes there might be dryness, and in those moments of dryness, we have to have that supernatural vision that our prayers, even if they're not pleasing to us, consoling to us are always pleasing and consoling to the hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Even if we're praying in the midst of dryness, the consolation there for the hearts of Jesus and Mary is always there.
So five suggestions for growth in prayer, growth in the Holy Rosary.
I suggest, especially in the month of October, that everybody consider that.
The Rosary, the entire Rosary, every single day, is an excellent way of leading a life of union with Jesus through Mary, with God and Mary.
St. Seraphim, we began with him.
Let's not forget him.
Let's not forget him.
St. Seraphim is an excellent example of that.
These are the two books that he, though illiterate, read every day of his life, the Crucifix and the Rosary.
Our Lord and living in the presence of our Lord with Mary by praying her whole Rosary every single day.
Praised be Jesus and Mary, now and forever.