The Republic Rosary

MY PRECIOUS FRIEND, there are as many ways of saying the rosary of our Lady as there are unique human personalities here on our one earth. Prayer is essential in the life of a Christian and this is true for many reasons. The mark of our baptism that has forever called us out of this world and set us aside as members of the one great family of God had effectively placed us in a new, supernatural order, the order of grace, an unseen order where nothing depends on us because everything here depends on God. Mutual communication, therefore, is critical between the creature and his or her Creator. This mutual communication is done by means of prayer and there is no prayer outside of Holy Mass that is as effective a tool in elevating the mind and heart of the Christian soul to God than the rosary of our Lady.

How do we begin to love prayer in general? As one of the three eminent good works, along with fasting and alms giving, prayer when it is a sincere expression of a humble and contrite heart is like a longing to be consumed, like a love longing for Itself. Prayer shapes our soul - it calls out to the Light that beckon our minds outside of the darkness into repentance and were we faithful to our penance brings forth an increase in our hearts of the supernatural life of grace which is the dominion of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, where there once was only death. Verily, we struggle all our lives for or against fighting the battle of Christian prayer until we are consumed by the empire of either one. Who can not love prayer when he or she knows that the true liberation of the self from evil which is the goal of each life's pursuit of happiness wholly and completely depends on habitual, efficacious prayer? It is the beginning and the end of all good things in creation.

Beloved of God, this is what's practical about prayer - it informs our minds of higher intentions beyond the scope of the self and bends our will according to these supernatural truths. It gives us a motive of charity and a powerful intention to fulfill the will of God by uniting God's will here on earth as it is in heaven through our free human acts propelled by the power of God's grace.

How to begin to pray? The actions of all three theological virtues of faith, love and hope are ideally present in prayer. But to begin to pray, faith alone will suffice. Christian faith is not only a belief and a humble acceptance of all of God's revealed truths, it is also manifest in different degrees as a willingness to obey the will of God. Without obedience, which is the common fruit of all three theological virtues, there will be no movement in the spiritual life of a Christian, no progression in the interior life, no advancement toward our place with Jesus in Paradise, our one true Country. The highest perfection of obedience is union with Christ, oneness with the will of God - the Alter Christus.

One must learn to freely and obediently embrace the truths of the Christian faith - all the dogmas of our Holy Mother Church, principally the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Redemption, as well as all other truths that the Living Magisterium of the Church proposes to our faith humbly and entirely (and even in advance without fully understanding or knowing all about them) and to humbly submit both his or her mind and heart to the belief in the unseen reality of God, trusting that God can neither deceive nor be deceived and that God is a God that rewards the good and punishes evil. This is the basic disposition of the soul in prayer.

The obedience of faith in prayer require a generous exertion of effort which is equal in measure to our necessary acceptance of certain amounts of interior (aridity, diligence, vigilance, uncertainty) as well as exterior discomfort (bodily positions, mental, emotional and physical states, external conditions and disturbances). Patient obedience is required during the progress of every prayer from it's very first expression in the life of a Christian soul and from act to act unto it's greatest perfection in the beatific vision of God. However, our efforts in prayer being proportional to our nearness to God in our hearts, when devotion replaces discomfort and charity replaces effort, exertion in prayer by degrees disappear until only true devotion and perfect charity remain at the beatific vision of God. Both the basic disposition as well as the necessary obedience form a synergistic whole which when taken courageously and faithfully from one act to another form a habit of grace that is the substance behind the Christian practice
of prayer. A habit of the soul that combine all three theological virtues into one act of pure release that bring us alive to the reality of all that is absolutely certain in the life of every Christian.

To love God, my precious friend, we must take a genuine interest in Him. We must struggle to pursue Him and seek His face, learn His ways, the exceeding excellence of His perfections, the glories of His triune Persons, His peculiar nature, His greatest desires, His dearest pleasures, His loves, His hates, His favorites, His expressions, His friends, His enemies, His beneficent Providence, His experiences with mankind, His will for us as individuals as well as His will that drive the purpose of His creation. Contemplation on God as He is presented to us both in our Holy Scripture and Sacred Tradition in the person of the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, as well as in the unfolding of creation manifest before our own eyes everyday as Divine Providence reveal to us the image of our Creator in our true selves. And as we discover our true selves, we also find our true place in God's creation and realizing that same image of God imprinted on every unique human soul - an image that bears common witness unto every restless human heart of a common Creator - our mind is led into the existential questions that begin and end into the certainty of the revelations of divine truths safeguarded by all honorable religions. And then, we learn to realize and truly appreciate the fullness of the truth that subsists in Mother Church, the Roman Catholic Church, whose bright magnitude is like the sun compared to the brightest stars of the sky.

If you are to take a steadfast interest in prayer, my precious friend, and walk the undiscovered landscapes of your own soul to paint the potential of your own infinite world within as seen through the eyes of God, presented as light to the eyes of your faith and distilled as images of truth in your heart, then take up your rosary, Beloved of God. Let this be the beginning of our journey into the wilderness together alone with the Alone and in communion with Christ and our Holy Mother Church. Let us each renew by our own lives daily, the promise of our Republic peace. Let our will of filial love for God and our devotion one to another summon the Providence of our God who is the first defender of the Republic of our people as one nation, distinct from all the nations of the one family of the nations of mankind, from all enemies spiritual, as well as internal and external.

Among the many special ways one might say the rosary of our Lady, I present to you, my precious friend: The Republic Rosary. I have learned that trusting in the Mother of God allows the flexibility as well as the expansiveness of spirit to be able to adapt the timeless expressions of the mysteries of our Lady's rosary and bring the strength of their virtues to bear according to the circumstances of my present day and the evils of our present time, whether they be personal or social.

In my entry on The Scourge of the Devil, a reflection on the body and soul of the rosary is included. Beloved of God, if we are to be flexible, it is important to know that both the body and soul of the rosary of our Lady is the unchanging foundation upon which we shall be able to build our own personal or communal expressions of adoration, praise, thanksgiving and/or petitions that adapt our meditations on the virtues of Christ and the graces that we receive with each mystery that we explore with the Queen of our Hearts to our own specific advantage here in the daily combat that we, as Christians, wage against the evils of our present time.

In our commemoration of February 25, and the first EDSA revolution of the Filipino people that by the grace of God and the kind and efficacious intercession of our Lady liberated our people and our Republic from tyranny and absolutism, I present to all my fellow Filipinos, the Republic Rosary.

It is to be prayed with true love of Country in heart and a firm hope for the promise of the present in mind - one faithful Republic.

Personally speaking, my precious friend, I harbor no hate for our present or past governments, what I hate is the sickness that is killing our nation.

The Republic Rosary

First Our Father - "for our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI and all Bishops in communion with him most especially the Bishops of the Philippines" (whose authority are as the anchors that hold fast the one universal Christian faith as we exist as the present Church of our present time in the sovereign soil of our native Philippines.)

First Hail Mary - "for an increase in faith for all Christians."
Second Hail Mary - "for an increase in hope for all Christians."
Third Hail Mary - "for an increase in love for all Christians."

The First Joyful Mystery - The Annunciation - "for all our poor and dispossessed, all our weak and oppressed, all who are directly suffering from social injustices, all who are the victims of the collective sins of our people."

In our Lady's Fiat, let us also recall to mind our duty to the poor of our Lord and our Christian obligation to take the love and the light of Christ to the very least of our brethren.

The Second Joyful Mystery - The Visitation - "for our young and the future generations of our people."

In our Lady's willingness to lovingly perform her duty to her kinswoman, let us also reflect on and be willing to do our loving duty to the younger generations and ensure for them the future of our Republic peace.

The Third Joyful Mystery - The Nativity - "for the generations of the past" (and their unbroken lineage of hope for a better home for the present generation of our people.)

Let us meditate on the poverty of infant Christ at the manger who instead of surrounding Himself with riches and power, surrounded Himself with love and nothing else.

Let us bring to mind what true happiness for us shall really consist of as true Christians and preserve ourselves and our Republic from the heretical materialism (that both the goal and the substance of life is purely material because the physical universe is all there is), atheistic secularism (that there is no God because man is independent and self-sufficient by himself alone), moral relativism (that justice is arbitrary because there are no moral absolutes as both good and evil come in convenient shades of gray), and social Darwinism (that brute force is the singular social requirement, in the absence of virtue and truth, that measure the excellence of nations or individuals) that is consuming the world around us.

All toward one faithful Republic, my faithful friend, for the lineage of hope that descend from the will of our God in heaven and connect to the hope of our present generation as a guide across the void of the Third Christian Millennium must also connect with the hopes of generations past as an unbroken lineage of hope that anchors our collective lives firmly unto the truth of God's eternal decree at the outset of exile time at the order that summoned our young Republic as a Mother Protectress to our people. So that what began in God shall return again for our own good and the glory of God in creation. This lineage of our Republic hope that without the presence of the original lineage of our own kings and queens all of whom have fallen in battle against the beast of war can only remain unbroken by an unbroken fidelity to the one God of our common Creation and an absolute allegiance to His Peace. Beloved of God, I therefore, humbly present to you that the malevolent forces of heretical materialism, atheistic secularism, moral relativism and social Darwinism that is at work in our world today shall all - if we allow this darkness to completely consume our land - work to sever our connections not only to each other but also to our past, our future and eventually, our God, effectively killing our Mother Protectress and exposing the debt of life entrusted to our present care and protection to the relentless hatred of the beast of war. But there is yet hope, even the smallest of light shines in the darkness - let us carry forward the momentum of all hopes past, of the sacred blood and noble suffering shed in the nameless service of our Country, let us carry the forward momentum of this lineage in our hearts to propel our own hopes, by the grace of God, into the promise of the present even as we also look with good faith in God towards the future. Let us build like natives, serve like citizens and live like Christians - as pilgrims to this world - knowing full well the value of each good work - each of us can make a difference, my preicous friend, but all of us can shape a national destiny.

The Fourth Joyful Mystery - The Presentation - "for the promise of our present generation."

We witness the piety (social and supernatural duty) of the Holy Family and meditate upon the obedience of Christ and our Lady both of whom (Whom) were above the law (Christ because He is God and our Lady because she is the Immaculate Conception - though Mary did not know this at the time) yet chose to humbly submit to it.

May we each find the will by the grace of God in each our selves to defend and preserve within ourselves the immaterial social virtues such as honor, duty, integrity, valor, justice and mercy that with charity strengthen the peace of our people and with piety that make our nation great in the eyes of God, angels and men.

May we oppose evil not by wasting ourselves against it - for we can not long oppose evil without sin. But by turning away from evil and completely devoting ourselves to the good, so that the more evil there is, the more devoted we become to the good. By loving and understanding the good and providing for the service and preservation of the good, by being the best of our better selves and being good and true at what we do - according to our own humble states of life - we turn to God and His will of good. By our turning towards God and the principles of the Gospel of Christ, we shall in Christ build the bedrock foundation of the Republic peace that by the grace of God shall outlast this long, dark night and align the path of our people toward the dawning of a new hope of a new morning from on high.

Let us recollect our intense desire for a lasting internal and external peace that pave the way for a bright new morning for our people. Let us stand apart and move away from the evils of our present time and be firmly united in our hope for a better homeland.

Let us show the world and the enemies of our peace a united front and begin without fail to build a better peace for our nation today. Let us stand in opposition only to despair and reconcile with
ourselves with all that is noble and good and worthy of praise from all the corners of our land.

Let us defend the truth in our hearts - the truth of a love that is 7,107 islands strong - and be the best of our better selves, relying completely on the one God of our common Creation to prosper the peace of our one faithful Republic and advance our nation, and our people, toward a better tomorrow today.

Let us persevere as one people in the spirit of the evangelical counsels - especially of humble obedience, to break the cycles of violent revolution that erupts to bring us to the brink of the abyss of anarchy and teaches only disobedience to our ranks, already confused and suffering from much internal strife and uphold the strength and resilience of our young social Democracy that allow for the authentic Christian liberty that under the framework of our Republic enable us to live freely with the purity of mind and poverty of spirit that reveal to our people the way back to Christian charity, the queen of all virtues.

The Fifth Joyful Mystery - The Finding in the Temple - "for all Filipinos living and working overseas."

May they never forget their ancestral roots and never be ashamed of their identity as Filipinos, as a people apart from all the peoples of the world who, either in word or in spirit, belong to our one faithful Republic whose ethos is Peace as a distinct nation from among the one family of the nations of mankind.

Let us recall the journey to Jerusalem, the cold uncertainty of the road taken from one place to another, the warm togetherness of the Holy Family and the breaking of the bread and sharing of the Passover meal taken at Jerusalem. Let us meditate on our own journey as Country, the cold and uncertain way ahead that we all take as a people, our warm togetherness as a hopeful whole that we very frequently overlook and the heretofore unnamed goal of that same togetherness at a destination we all consider as sacred and well worth the rigors of the journey.

Let us recall the loss and the grief of our Lady and Saint Joseph as they searched for the child Jesus and the relief they must have felt at finding Him again teaching in His own House with the Father and the Holy Spirit. Let us bring to mind all Filipinos who live and work overseas and the grief that we all feel at the point of separation. But let us be comforted by the fact that if we really take the time to look for them we will find them here with us in our own House living in our own hearts.

Peace to our people, love to our nation, and adoration to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Glory to God in the highest and Peace to all men of goodwill.

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Pray for us.