We read Paul’s Letter to the Romans this week and for the next four weeks. It’s his longest and most theological letter. He assures the Romans he’s coming to Rome as a visitor on his way to Spain, but he never will get there. He arrives in Rome under arrest and is killed outside the city.

Paul knows a surprising number of people in the Roman church. He obviously hopes they will support him on his Spanish mission. His mission is to bring the gospel to the whole world. 

In his letters Paul doesn’t refer to incidents in Jesus’ life, such as his miracles, or quotations from his teaching or his parables. We do that as a matter of course in talking or teaching about faith today. 

True, the gospels were not written when Paul wrote, likely in 56 to 58 from Corinth, but certainly the stories of Jesus’ life and summaries of his teaching were circulating in Christian preaching at the time. Why doesn’t Paul use them?

Does he see the mystery of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus an immediate mystery, taking place now? The gospels bring us back to the time of Jesus, the events of his life and the words of his teaching. Does Paul see the death and resurrection of Jesus as a mystery happening now. Jesus is not dead, but living in the world here and now. 

Paul’s not interested in introducing us to someone of the past, but someone who shares himself and his promise with us now. Is that why Paul’s letters are read with the gospels, so that we may understand they are happening now, in our time, in us? Maybe so.

Fr. Frank J. Matera wrote a book “Preaching Romans: Proclaiming God’s Saving Grace” (Liturgical Press 2010) . I’ll be reading it as we go through Paul’s letter.

For this week’s homily please watch the video below.

Some prophets may leave little information about themselves. The Prophet Joel is a post-exilic prophet we know little about, yet he offers an important insight into the mystery of God in our readings from him this week at Mass.

The Day of the Lord will come, Joel says, when Judea is a desolate, impoverished land, without rain and infested by locusts. In those dire times the Day of the Lord will come. God will hear the cries of his people complaining about their enemies’ taunts: “Where is your God?”

He even predicts the place the Day of the Lord will come, bringing God’s justice and peace: the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the Kidron Valley, lying between the Mount of Olives and the temple of Jerusalem. There God will destroy his enemies and pour blessings on Jerusalem and his holy people, and for this reason Jews through the centuries wished to be buried there. (Joel 4, 12-21)

Jesus crossed the Kidron Valley on his way to the Mount of Olives the night before he died. On that dark night, he pleaded with his Father in heaven to take away the cup of suffering. He faced the great enemy Death, that cries out: “Where is your God?” He died and rose again in Jerusalem, on the Day of the Lord.

Surely Jesus remembered the words of Joel as he prayed on the Mount of Olives, facing the Kidron Valley and the Holy City.

The Apostle Peter quoted Joel when he spoke in Jerusalem at Pentecost forty days after Jesus’ death and resurrection: “It will come to pass in the last days, God says, that I will pour out a portion of my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams…I will work wonders in the heavens above and signs of the earth below…” (Acts 2, 17-19)

The Spirit is “poured out” on the living and the dead on the Day of the Lord.

We are reading from the Book of the Prophet Malachi. Commentators call him a minor prophet and we read from his writings in our lectionary only one day. Hardly anything is known about him. The best guess is that he wrote shortly after or shortly before the Jews returned from exile in Babylon, and he describes what they were like.

The USCCB commentary says they have a “weary attitude, a cynical notion that nothing is to be gained by doing what God wants and that wrongdoers prosper.” In other words, they have given up and have no hope in God’s plan. They have given up hope in their own religious tradition. 

You have said, “It is vain to serve God,
and what do we profit by keeping his command,
And going about in penitential dress
in awe of the LORD of hosts?
Rather must we call the proud blessed;
for indeed evildoers prosper,
and even tempt God with impunity.”

Malachi may be a minor prophet, but minor prophets need to be heard too. Could he be describing our weary attitude today? How many have given up hope in their religious tradition, hope in the world, hope in God?

Yet, God is faithful. He has promised to “speak to the weary, a word that will rouse them.”  Another prophet said that.  There’s an interesting line in the reading from Malachi: “Then they who fear the LORD spoke with one another,
and the LORD listened attentively.” Those who fear the Lord need to talk with one another. Good advice.

This is a time to listen to the prophets. 

The feast of the Holy Rosary is a good time to reflect on this centuries old Christian prayer. Many people may have a rosary, but where did it come from, and what about praying the rosary? 

The icon pictured above was brought home from the Holy Land in the 6th century by a pilgrim who visited the holy places where Jesus was born, died and rose again. It was folded into a travel bag and placed in a honored place on returning home. The pilgrim was probably well-off to afford such a souvenir. Historians say there are many like this brought by pilgrims after the Holy Land was opened to Christians in the 4th century.

The icon pictures two great mysteries of Jesus. His birth and his death. Mary appears in both presentations. In the first, she holds on her lap the One who created her, yet he is her Son. In the second, she stands at his side as he goes to his Father and her Father. Mary knows the mysteries of his life, death and resurrection better than any other creature.

Pilgrims to the Holy Land saw Mary as their guide. She made them aware of the promises of Christ. The rosary, much simpler in form than the icon, is a way of remembering the promises of Jesus with Mary as our guide.

When we take a rosary in our hand we remember Mary, the mother of Jesus. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” we say, words the angel said when he came to her in Nazareth. She comes with her grace to us now.

Mary believed the words of the angel at Nazareth. She believed in the One who was conceived in her by the Holy Spirit. She raised him as a child. She knew the great things he did. She was with him when he was put to death on a cross and rose from the dead. Mary kept all these things in her heart. Now she shares those mysteries with us. 

When we ask her to pray for us now, she does, by leading us of the mysteries of her Son, whom she knows so well. She knew them first through the joys and sorrows of  faith. “How can this be?” she said more than once.  She believed then, she helps us believe now.

Mary helps us to believe in the promises of Christ, her Son. From her place at his side, she calls us to come to that feast Cana foretold, a feast of unending joy, where death is no more.

“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

When we pray the rosary It doesn’t matter if we know all the prayers or get them exactly right. The rosary is a flexible prayer. With Christmas, there are the joyful mysteries when the angel came, when Mary visited Elizabeth, when the Child was born and she raised at Nazareth..

During Lent and Fridays through the year she leads us into sorrowful mysteries that pierced her heart. At Easter and all the Sundays of year she shares the glory of the Risen Jesus and promises are meant to best ours.

Pope John Paul recommended we join the luminous mysteries to the traditional joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. Jesus was baptized; he went to Cana in Galilee for a wedding feast. He was transfigured on the mountain and taught patiently in the towns of Galilee. He gave himself as bread broken for us to eat and wine to be drunk. 

Pope John Paul called the rosary a “school of Mary.” She is a good teacher who intercedes for us with her Son. 

Here’s St. Bernard speaking of her:

“The child to be born of you will be called holy, the Son of God, the fountain of wisdom, the Word of the Father on high. Through you, blessed Virgin, this Word will become flesh, so that even though, as he says: I am in the Father and the Father is in me, it is still true for him to say: ‘I came forth from God and am here.’

By nature incomprehensible and inaccessible, invisible and unthinkable, God wished to be understood, to be seen and thought of. 

But how, you ask, was this done? He lay in a manger and rested on a virgin’s breast, preached on a mountain, and spent the night in prayer. He hung on a cross, grew pale in death, and roamed free among the dead and ruled over those in hell. He rose again on the third day, and showed the apostles the wounds of the nails, the signs of victory. Finally in their presence he ascended to the sanctuary of heaven.

Wisely meditate on these truths; rightly recall the abundant sweetness, given by the fruits of this priestly root. And Mary, drawing abundantly from heaven, will cause this sweetness to overflow for us.”

The Feast of the Holy Rosary entered the Roman calendar in the 16th century when the Ottoman Turks were repelled at the borders of Europe. The victory was ascribed to divine intervention and trust in Mary’s prayers. In 1572, the year after the battle, Pius V established the Feast of “Our Lady of Victories” , later changed to “Our Lady of the Rosary”.

The Rosary helps us know Jesus and the power of his resurrection.