(The mirror image of the Praise of the Wisdom of the Lord merge the Gifts of the Holy Spirit with Prayers of Praise, thus echoing Mary’s love for her Son that remains rooted in Piety in the fullness of wisdom from Fear of the Lord.)
Luke 2:52. “And Jesus advanced in wisdom, and age, and grace with God and men.”
Psalm 111:1-3. [110] “I will praise thee, O Lord, with my whole heart; in the council of the just: and in the congregation. Great are the works of the Lord: sought out according to all his wills His work is praise and magnificence: and his justice continueth for ever and ever.” [From Book V of the Psaltery]
“Praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. It lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory, quite beyond what he does, but simply because HE IS. It shares in the blessed happiness of the pure of heart who love God in faith before seeing him in glory. By praise, the Spirit is joined to our spirits to bear witness that we are children of God, (Cf. Rom 8:16.) testifying to the only Son in whom we are adopted and by whom we glorify the Father. Praise embraces the other forms of prayer and carries them toward him who is its source and goal: the ‘one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist’(1 Cor 8:6)” (CCC, 2639).
Our Father, 10 Hail Marys (contemplating the mystery), Glory Be and Fatima Prayer.
Excerpt from The Holy Family Rosary:
We are all called to become like Jesus through grace and similarly prepared for our public ministry in likewise unforeseen ways. Through this meditation we uncover useful information on the mystery of dying to self by glorifying God the Father Almighty in like manner as, in, and through reverent recognition of His Only Begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
In hindsight of this truth, we learn that within our concerns for life God truly knows all of our needs. When our attentions are redirected to heaven above through these contemplations of Jesus with His Mother Mary, we find the root of Jesse[1] springs forth as our Source for dispensing the possession of all of God’s Gifts, meeting endless encouragement from the forms of prayers of the Lord merged with the gifts of the Holy Spirit as seen by Mary in Jesus Christ. Truly, such wonder in preparation for illumination by our Morning and Day Star’s[2] travails over life’s tumultuous seas.
These great mystical truths become reinforced when we reverse our concern for self toward our concern for God, exposing contemplation of the two-edged sword of truth found within. They teach us to “see” through the efficacy of prayer within the openly “hidden” truth that the Praise of God’s Wisdom is perfected in the Wisdom of Praising the Lord.
Through Christ we are taught the highest possible merging of prayer with the Gifts of the Holy Spirit are perfectly achieved in the denial of self (hatred even), the selling of all of our possessions (affections), giving the proceeds (distributing our attentions) to the poor in need, and then doing as Christ invites us to: “Come, follow Me.”[3]
Of finding this “Way” of Christ, St. Augustine preached: “Every man can attain an understanding of the Truth and the Life; but not all find the Way. The wise of this world realize that God is eternal life and knowable truth; but the Word of God, who is Truth and Life joined to the Father, has become the Way by taking a human nature. Make your way contemplating His humility and you will reach God.”[4]
Again, within Mary’s thoughts we can ponder her own development in learning to know God’s Will. If you will remember, St. Luke recounted this earlier after the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple when saying: “And after they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their city Nazareth. And the child grew, and waxed strong, full of wisdom; and the grace of God was in him.”[6]
How are we to contemplate truth without reviewing our past as we are gaining in age to recognize that when hope in the Lord is repeatedly displaced in oversight it provoked God’s displeasure? With this knowledge after the joyful and sorrowful events from within David’s House of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we find a different personal concern with pious loving tears in fear of causing offense to replace all wrath-filled fears. Beatus vir![5]
King David prophetically called Christ the King of kings and Lord of lords when singing “Lift up your gates, O ye princes, and be lifted up, O eternal gates: and the King of Glory shall enter in. Who is this King of Glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of Glory.”[6] This is the face of the Lord whom we now seek and hear preached within Christ’s Church, as Pope John Paul II echoed in our receipt of what was to come next in “The outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Baptism (that) grafts the believer like a branch onto the vine that is Christ[7] and makes him a member of Christ’s mystical Body”[8] leading us onward and upwards to the greatest of all these Divine Mysteries… the reality that Eternal Life lies within Jesus Christ.
O Sacrum Mysterium!
[1] Rom. 15:12.
[2] Gen. 1:16; Apoc. 2:28.
[3] Mk. 10:21.
[4] De Verbis Domini Sermones, 54.
[5] Ps. 1.
[6] Ps. 23:9-10.
[7] Jn. 15:5.
[8] Cf. 1 Cor. 12:12; Rom. 12:5; Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae: Chapter 1, #15.