# The Glorious Mysteries: Contemplating the Holy Rosary

An episode of [St. Josemaria Institute Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/966458405), 13 Oct 2026, 20 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1862514/episodes/19864906-the-glorious-mysteries-contemplating-the-holy-rosary.mp3

In this meditation, Fr. Donncha Ó hAodha continues our series on the holy Rosary with a reflection on the glorious mysteries which provide us reason for greater trust in God for our apostolic mission. Our attempts to share the life and love of Christ are fruitful because the Risen Lord is the one who bears fruit, having overcome the tomb. Referencing Scripture and the writings of St. Josemaria, Fr. Donncha leads us in petitionary prayer, asking God to grant us greater confidence and trust in Him. Furthermore, the repeated experiences with our own weaknesses remind us to turn to the aid of Our Lady, just as the first Apostles did. We can turn to through the Rosary, which helps center us on Christ, regardless of how distracted we may become. PAUSE AND REFLECT: • Resurrection: Can I use my imagination to picture the first time Mary saw Jesus after his Resurrection? Do I have faith that enduring joy comes from meeting Jesus, the Risen Lord, repeatedly in my own life? • Ascension: Can I hear the voice of Jesus tell me to 'go out and preach to all nations'? Does this fill me with greater confidence for my apostolic mission, a divine confidence that helps me to get past any feeling of being overwhelmed by the idea of mission? • Descent of the Holy Spirit: Do I ever take myself and my mistakes too seriously to depend on the action of the Holy Spirit in my day-to-day life? How does the Holy Spirit fill me with greater confidence for my apostolic mission, a divine confidence that helps me to get past any feeling of being overwhelmed by the idea of mission? • Assumption of Mary: Do I view apostolate fundamentally as loving people?, If not, how could Mary, my mother, help me to refocus my vision today, so I can draw closer to those people around me? • Coronation of Mary: What areas of my life can I entrust to Mary, assured that she is interceding for me from Heaven? THANK YOU FOR LISTENING! If you enjoyed this meditation, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Your feedback is important to us, and each rating and review helps expand our reach to more listeners! Support the show

## Transcript

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence; I beg your pardon for my sins and the grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.
When we meditate on the glorious mysteries of the Rosary, what we find as a dominant thread going through them is confidence and joy in our mission. When we contemplate you, Lord Jesus, in the mystery of your glory, the risen one, the eternal one, the victor over death and evil, we draw from that all the strength we need to bring the Church forward, each one of us in our own situation, in our own environment. The resurrection of Christ gives life to the whole world and constantly gives life to the Church. And it's such a beautiful thing, isn't it, to contemplate the Risen Lord, and you might say all the effects of His resurrection, in and through the heart of Mary, His mother. Saint Ambrose encourages the Christian people, saying, "Have in yourselves the soul of Mary, so as to worship the Lord; have in yourselves the soul of Mary, so as to rejoice in God.” That's what we do in the Rosary. We relive the mystery of the resurrection, the ascension, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the glorification of Our Lady in her company. And there's no better vantage point in which to participate in the mysteries of our redemption, especially the Resurrection.
What was it like for Our Lady on Easter Sunday morning? We can picture her, contemplate her, as she waits for the first light of the resurrection. Obviously, Our Lady must have been very tired, very drained, because if Our Lord spared His mother the stain of original sin, she wasn't in fact spared all the effects of original sin. So, Our Lady did suffer tiredness and bereavement and sorrow. In fact, given her particular sensitivity, because she is the Immaculate Conception, she is particularly sensitive to injustice and to sin and to evil; she suffered more than any of us could have suffered. That's the devotion we have to Our Lady of Sorrows. “There is no sorrow that compares with my sorrow” (Lamentations 1:12 as quoted in The Way of the Cross, station 8). But it's good to meditate on the fact that just as there's no sorrow that compares to the sorrow of Mary, there is no joy that compares with the joy of Our Lady of the Resurrection-- Our Lady of Easter, Our Lady of Eternal Life, the mother of the Risen One. There is no joy that can compare to her joy!
Our Lady, therefore, very early on Easter Sunday morning, perhaps she's sitting quietly. Perhaps she hasn't slept much; perhaps she's trying to pray. She waits. She contains within herself the hope and the faith of the Church. She awaits the blessed hope, the coming of Our Lord, and that first encounter of the Risen Lord, which is not recorded in Scripture, perhaps because it is ineffable, can't be put into words. We can contemplate it. What's it like when Jesus meets his mother after his rising from the dead? What is that encounter like? How wonderful it must havebeen! How extraordinary! How beautiful! How unspeakably joyful! In Psalm 139, there are those prophetic words, "I am risen, and I am with you always.” Words of the Psalms, which speak in anticipation of the Resurrection of Jesus. “I am risen, and I am with you always.” Our Lord says that in His own way to His mother. We can imagine their embrace, their smiles, and the radiance of their faces. That is the joy of the whole Church, of all places and of all times.
We share in the joy of Mary. We share in the joy of the resurrection, which she, you might say, anticipated in the Magnificat. “My soul glorifies the Lord. My spirit exults in God, my Savior” (Lk 1:46-55). Our Lady's soul is full of joy, full of joy, and in Eastertime we kind of exult ourselves in her joy. We say, “Regina Caeli, laetare, Alleluia-- Queen of Heaven, rejoice, Alleluia! For He whom you didst merit to bear has risen as he said, Alleluia.” "We can ask the Lord, as we contemplate the glorious mysteries, that we would always be filled with this joy and with the confidence and trust it brings us for our mission. "God does not lose battles" (The Way, no. 733). His resurrection is the final word on history; the ultimate and decisive word on human history, on our destiny, is not death, is not evil, is not the triumph of falsehood or treachery. It's the opposite. It's Christ saying, “I am risen and I am with you always” (Mt 28:20). I guess this is what explains the confidence and the joy of all the saints, and we think indeed of Saint Josemaria, who was such a joyful person and somebody who transmitted joy and still does transmit joy to so many people; it's an important part of his charism. Indeed, we can't take ourselves too seriously because Our Lord has won the battle. The decisive battle has been won. The war is over. All that remains are the little skirmishes, which serve to bring us closer to that risen glory."
So, Lord, in the glorious mysteries, we worship you, we contemplate you, we venerate you as the Risen One, the one who triumphs over evil and death, who brings brightness and warmth and joy to our existence, who restores to mankind all beauty, all fullness, all flourishing, all joy!
We get from our contemplation of the mysteries of glory- the glorious mysteries- we get great confidence for our mission. We cannot fail, if you like, because Our Lord has come out of the tomb. Paraphrasing Saint John Henry Newman in his “Biglietto” discourse (1879), as it's called, the short address he gave in Rome on receiving the cardinal's hat. Towards the end of that discourse, if I remember correctly, he talks about Christian hope and Christian faith because he says we worship one who came out of the tomb. Jesus doesn't remain in the tomb, and that's why anything we do in our mission to love God, to spread the faith, to share the doctrine of Christ, is always fruitful, because it is imbued with His eternal life. That's why Scripture says that the chosen ones of the Lord never labor in vain: “My chosen ones do not labor in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).
Lord, give us this faith, this Easter faith, this resurrection-faith.
Even if at times, we're challenged, and there's no doubt about it, sometimes we will be challenged. We will have sufferings. We will have obstacles in our mission. We will make mistakes. We will get things wrong. Others will challenge us. Maybe Satan will rail against us. He always does, sometimes openly, sometimes more subtly. But we can remember the great professions of faith of different saints, such as Saint Teresa of Calcutta. Nothing can take away from us the joy of Christ risen.
In the Ascension, of course, in that mystery, we contemplate our mission, and we see Our Lord as He sends us out: “Go teach all nations, baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” A mission which might seem too much, overwhelming, daunting, beyond us. And indeed, it is, except for the fact that, as St. Matthew reports it, Our Lord finishes giving us the great commission and sending us out with His promise: “Behold, I will be with you always, until the end of time.” I will be with you always.
And Jesus, how true this is!
The Risen Lord remains with us in His Church. The Church is always full of life, full of vibrancy, pulsating with the life of the Holy Spirit, with the presence of Jesus, with the love of the Father; Our Lord is always with us, always. Even if at times, we're trying to bear witness to Christ in a very secularized or even anti-Christian environment, do not worry. “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of time.”
Lord, increase my faith, increase my hope, increase my love.
It's true, I guess, that the apostles, after the Ascension, have mixed feelings. On the one hand, they're sorry; it's hard to lose the physical presence of our Lord. And yet we're told in Scripture that they went back to Jerusalem, full of great joy. So, we can see that on the one hand, humanly speaking, it's challenging for them, very challenging. On the other hand, they do seem to perceive clearly that while the Lord is not with them physically, He is nonetheless with them in a very deep and real way. Saint Leo the Great, in a homily he gave on the Ascension, he says that at the moment of the Ascension, the visible presence of Christ has passed into the sacraments. And as the apostles grow in their faith, and especially after they receive the Holy Spirit, they realize that every day in the celebration of the Eucharist, they touch the Risen Christ. They are filled with the risen Christ at Holy Communion; they radiate the Risen Christ. Notwithstanding their own spiritual poverty, they radiate the Risen Christ, like we do through our Eucharistic life. Christ is always present in His Church. Now, in this period, in the time of the Church, as we call it, in His sacraments, especially and most especially in the Eucharist, “I will be with you always. “
And that's why one of the greatest sources of confidence in our mission comes from the Eucharist. Lord, if you are with me in the Eucharist, if the Eucharist is the making-present of your self-giving love-- “this is my body, this is my blood” --if You give yourself to me really, truly, and substantially, in Holy Communion, what can stop us?!
Every word, every effort, every action, which is done with the aim of loving God and loving others, is unfailingly fruitful because it's full of the risen life of Jesus. This gives us great confidence. Maybe that is why Saint Josemaria, in The Way (no. 528), says: “a great characteristic of the apostolic man is his love for the Mass.” Our apostolate, our evangelization, our sharing of the faith, is a radiation of the love of Jesus in the Eucharist, in us and through us. ‘I will be with you always, yes, even till the end of time’.
What's lovely about the glorious mysteries, of course, is that we realize the weaknesses also of the Apostles. They are unsure of themselves, and after the Ascension, they do what's very logical: they go to Mary, like we do. All of us, when we have a challenge in our lives, we tend to go to our mother, the mother of Jesus and our mother, and we seek her loving protection, her encouragement. If we want to be faithful, if we want to be apostles of the Lord, it's important that we would be very Marian, and that's why the Rosary is such a lifeline, such a powerful and transformative prayer. It's a Christ-centered prayer. And after the Ascension, we find that the apostles gather in the upper room with Mary, the mother of Jesus, and there they await the Holy Spirit.
They have not yet been, as Scripture uses the phrase, “clothed with power from on high.” They're a little bit like deer in the lamp lights of a car. They're overwhelmed. They need to move, but they can't. And they're the blazing light of the Resurrection is too much for them yet. They know they need to bring that eternal life to everybody, but it's a bit too much for them. It's not surprising they haven't yet received the Holy Spirit. And as we contemplate the third glorious mystery, the descent of the Holy Spirit and the apostles, we experience, we relive the great source of joy and confidence in the Christian message, in the Christian mission, which is the help of the Holy Spirit. The Church is not just a group of like-minded people who want to keep the legacy of Jesus Christ alive. The Church is not just an association which recalls historical realities of the past, no. The Church is the body of Christ, of which the soul is the Holy Spirit, and the mission of the Church, our apostolic mission, our evangelization, is essentially the work of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, who continue their missions in and through us.
Lord, how good you are to call us to your service. Give me, give us great confidence in our mission.
The final two glorious mysteries are, of course, you could say, the beautification of Mary. Our Lady is already beautiful, but she is particularly radiant in her Assumption and in her Coronation as queen. And how does this relate to the apostolic mission that we have? Well, Our Lady is our great intercessor before God, and she intercedes for us, and she accompanies us from heaven. Our Lady is not far away from us. She's closer than ever because she's close to God. I remember somebody saying once that they had great regard for Our Lady, but that she seemed perhaps somewhat distant from them because she's the all-pure one. Our Lady is the Immaculate Conception. She is all holy, and we're not all holy. And while such reasoning is understandable, it's not correct. It's not true. In fact, Pope Benedict XVI, in a very beautiful homily he gave on the eighth of December 2005, he reasons it this way. He says, "The closer a person is to God, the closer that person is to people. We see this in Mary. The fact that she is totally with God is the reason why she is so close to human beings. For this reason, she can be the mother of every consolation and every help. A mother whom anyone can dare to address in any kind of need, in weakness and in sin, for she has understanding for everything, and is for everyone the open power of created goodness.”
How beautiful, Mother! Your holiness, your beauty, your immaculate conception, in no way distance you from us. On the contrary, it brings you closer to us. And by the same logic, in our own way, the closer we are to God, the closer we are to people. We know that apostolate,evangelization, sharing the faith of the Church, offering it to people at least, is fundamentally loving people. What is apostolate? It's to love people, and how do we love people? By loving God. How can we be close to the souls we would like to bring to Christ? Be close to Christ first. We see this in all of the saints. We see it in a preeminent way in Our Lady. The closer a person is to God, the closer that person is to people. And in this context too, don't we see it in a palpable way in the life and in the ministry of Saint Josemaria Escriva? The closer to God, the closer to people.
I thank you, my God, for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me in this time of prayer. I ask your help in putting them into effect. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph, my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

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