Today's Rosary | Holy Rosary University

Friends of the Rosary, Today’s Gospel (Luke 15:1–3, 11–32) portrays the prodigal son. The father stands for the divine mercy of God, and the older son stands for all of us sinners who misunderstand divine love. “Everything I have is yours.” The Father says the same to us today. In this magnificent parable, we see the prodigal son agonizing over his sins, feeling a great emptiness after he turned t...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, we read in the Gospel (Matthew 21:33-43, 45-46) that Jesus told the chief priests and the elders the striking parable of the landowner who planted a fertile vineyard. The vineyard stands for the people of Israel, the Church, and the world, but we are not the owners; we are just the tenants, entrusted with the responsibility of caring for it. "The stone that the b...

Friends of the Rosary, We read in the Gospel today (Luke 16:19-31) the story of the poor and hopeless beggar Lazarus, who is carried to paradise — to the “bosom of Abraham— and the rich man taken to the underworld. The conversation between the rich man buried in the torment of hell and Abraham in heaven is extremely revealing. This parable, presented by Christ himself, depicts an utterly unique vi...

Friends of the Rosary, During Lent, we prepare ourselves for the central events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Because of the sins and disobedience of the human race, Christ, the Son of God in human nature, decided to pay for our redemption with his blood. Through his infinite mercy and love for us, he set us free from the slavery of Satan and of sin. God the Father glorified him with the resur...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, Tuesday of the Second Week of Lent, we see in the Gospel, Christ the Lord condemning the religious externalism, vanity, and hypocrisy of the Pharisees of that time, and currently, all of us. We should look into our Lenten practices of piety and works of charity and see whether they are performed to be seen. Also, today the dioceses of the United States celebrate the M...

Friends of the Rosary, Mercy comes before love. It perfects love. Christ the Lord, through his disciples, is telling in the Gospel of Luke (Lk 6:36-38) today: "Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” God is love (1 John 4:8), but we encounter Him first as mercy. St. Thomas Aquinas explains that mercy is love responding to suffering and weakness (Summa Theologiae II-II, q.30). God acted...

Friends of the Rosary, The Transfiguration of Christ is closely tied to the Passion, as it occurs just before Jesus' journey to Jerusalem and death. It acts as a preview of his resurrected, glorified body. In today's Gospel, the Second Sunday of Lent (Matthew 17:1-9), the transfigured Lord Jesus, accompanied by Moses and Elias — representing the Law and the Prophets — reveals His divine gl...

Friends of the Rosary, Jesus commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, as we read today (Matthew 5:43-48). How do we make sense of this commandment? It’s because it's the way to achieve perfection. “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." Loving our enemies tests the quality of our love - love understood not as an emotion but as an act of willin...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, on this Friday of the First Week of Lent, Christ the Lord (Matthew 5:20-26) commands us to be reconciled with one another. “If you recall that your brother has anything against you, go first and be reconciled.” To reconcile with our brothers, we first need to forgive. A lack of forgiveness in us blocks the flow of divine grace. We resist forgiving because we feel that...

Friends of the Rosary, Lord Jesus urges us to persist in prayer. He promises that we will get what we want through perseverance and effort. This way, we will appreciate what we receive. If the gift doesn’t come immediately, our souls will expand in anticipation. St. Augustine said that God doesn’t always give us what we ask for immediately, and in fact, he compels us to ask again and again In toda...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, we read in the Gospel (Luke 11:29-32) about the people of Nineveh, who are a model for Lent. At the preaching of Jonah the prophet, they did penance and obtained pardon and divine mercy. Jesus said to the crowd, “This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah. Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,...

Friends of the Rosary, In today's Gospel (Matthew 6:7–15), Our Lord teaches us to pray. Moreover, He gives us the "Our Father" prayer, the model of all prayer. It's planted deep within us the desire to speak to God and listen to him. After all, we are wired for the Divinity. It's a waste of time to be seeking only worldly things—money, pleasure, power, honor. Sooner or later,...

Friends of the Rosary, Lent is a period of preparation for the central events of Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Christ, the Son of God in human nature, died on the cross on Good Friday because of the sins of the human race. By being obedient to his heavenly Father, Christ made atonement for all our disobediences and set us free from the slavery of Satan and of sin. In his resurrection, his human n...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, the First Sunday of Lent, presents the scene of the temptation of Christ (Matt. 4:1-4), when Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil after forty days and nights of fasting. The Gospel of the temptation anticipates how the Prince of Darkness will be cast out, and it heralds Christ's victory in advance. Where Adam fell, Christ, the new...

Friends of the Rosary, In today’s Gospel (Luke 5:27–32), Luke recounts how Jesus saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. "He said to him, “Follow me.” And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes complain...

Friends of the Rosary, The Catholic Church celebrates today the feast of St. Jacinta (1910-1920), the youngest of the Fatima visionaries. Along with his brother Francisco — whose feast is April 4 — and their cousin Lucia Santo witnessed the apparitions of Mary in the fields of Fatima in 1917. Jacinta and Francisco, both under 12 years old, were the youngest non-martyrs to be beatified in the histo...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, at the second Lenten Mass, we are instructed in our spiritual program: the imitation of Christ! Do we have the desire to follow in the footsteps of our Master? He says, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Matt 16:24). "  Jesus warns his followers that if they remain loyal to his teaching, they must expec...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, February 18, is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, the solemn observance of the central act of human history: the redemption of the human race by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Lent is the ancient penitential time that precedes the Holy Week and the Paschal Triduum—Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil, before the Easter season, the joy of the Resurre...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, the Church honors the Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order in an Optional Memorial. There were seven noble Florentines in Italy who, in the thirteenth century (1240), banded together to found the Order of Servites of the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially dedicated to penance and the preaching of the seven sorrows of our Lady in the passion of our Savior. Our Lord Je...

Friends of the Rosary, Our modern society, ideologies, and man-made religions try to convince us that all of life is all about us, our interests, views, and personal agendas. The vast majority of people believe that. But that’s a lie promoted by the Master of Lies. The reality is that each and every one of us is part of God’s great design. Your life is not about you, and you are not in control. Ou...

Friends of the Rosary, Today's Gospel features Christ the Lord as the new Moses (Matthew 5:17–37). Jesus went to the mountain and sat to teach. Moses received the law on the mountain, but the Son of God is giving it to us, revealing that He has authority even over the Torah. Christ came not only to fulfill the law but to intensify and perfect it. For example, it does not mean that we have to e...

Friends of the Rosary, Alongside Saints Cyril (827-869) and St Methodius (826-885), we honor today St. Valentine, Bishop and Martyr of Rome (died c. 269), a blessed Catholic priest beheaded. Valentine, along with St. Marius, aided the Christian martyrs during the Claudian persecution. Claudius Caesar, the Emperor, issued a decree forbidding young men from marrying to increase the size of his army....

Friends of the Rosary, In today’s Gospel (Mark 7:31-37), Jesus heals a deaf man with a speech impediment in the district of the Decapolis as people begged him to lay his hand on him. Looking up to his Father and inserting his fingers into the man’s ears, Jesus plugs him into the divine energy, compelling him to hear the Word. Mark described it to us this way, “He took him off by himself away from...

Friends of the Rosary, Life on earth is short, and the demands of our Christian life are very challenging, but we know that if we live up to them, we are other Christs. Every Christian is the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  We are continuing his work of salvation during his years on earth by cultivating our own small corner of his vineyard. The parents who teach their children the C...

Friends of the Rosary, Today, the faithful recall the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, which began on 11 February 1858. Mary appeared to a 14-year-old girl, Bernadette Soubirous, 18 times near a grotto along the banks of the Gave River in France. In the first apparition, fearing she was hallucinating and not knowing what to do, Bernadette Soubirous took her rosary out of her pocket and b...