My Fiery Chariot

Learning to love the Bible and the Rosary

0/31/2021

1 Thes 4:13-18 We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too will God, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven,  and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore, console one another with these words.

My favorite Marian prayer is the Holy Rosary. I pray it every day: while driving in my car, while waiting to check out at the store, in between penitents in the confessional. If you see my lips moving but no sound coming from my mouth, you can be sure I am mouthing the mysteries of the rosary. Many days, I have gone to bed praying the rosary, and I fall asleep before I finish. My Guardian Angel picks up the prayer where I left off and finishes the rosary for me.

Often I forget what day of the week it is (does that happen to you?), and do you know how I remember the day? I think of what mysteries of the rosary I prayed yesterday, and then I know what day it is today. For example, I prayed the Glorious Mysteries yesterday, so it must have been Sunday, and I know today, therefore, must be Monday.

On Sundays and Wednesdays we pray the Glorious Mysteries, on Mondays and Saturdays we pray the Joyful Mysteries, on Tuesdays and Fridays we pray the Sorrowful Mysteries, and only on Thursdays, the Luminous Mysteries. By the way, Thursdays are my favorite days of the week because we pray the Luminous Mysteries – or Mysteries of Light – added by Pope St. John Paul II. When you are the pope you can add mysteries to the Holy Rosary. It is good to be the pope.

But do you know the most risky time to pray the rosary? It is on the road, while driving because it makes you drowsy. One thing that helps me overcome that sleepiness is Scripture. That is, I try to think of how that mystery of the rosary can be seen in scripture. For example, today’s first reading is taken from 1 Thess 4:13-18, where St. Paul talks about the so-called “rapture,” that is, being taken up, or snatched up, to heaven, before we experience bodily death.

Protestants get a lot of mileage out of that passage writing books and making movies about the rapture. But Catholics should get even more mileage out of it as a Scriptural sample of the 4th Glorious Mystery, the Assumption. How so? Well, the mystery we meditate on in the Assumption of Mary is that she did not experience bodily death, but was in a sense, “raptured up” into heaven. In other words, I find the rosary rooted in Scriptural soil, and that gets me excited, and I never fall asleep meditating on the mysteries of Mary and Jesus.

The Old Testament also provides much food for meditation on the 4th Glorious Mystery, or the Assumption of Mary. Of course, the Old Testament often uses figurative or imaginative or poetic language to express timeless truth, so it often sounds like a dream or like seeing shadows. It is not quite clear. Whatever the Old Testament priests, prophets and kings were doing in darkness and shadows, they were ultimately paving the path for the coming of Christ and his Mother Mary. Jesus, therefore, is the “new Adam,” the firstborn of the new creation (Rm 5:17), and Mary is the “new Eve,” the mother of all those living in Christ (Rv 12:17).

Thus, for example, when I read in Genesis 5:24, how Enoch, the great grandfather of Noah, was “taken up” into heaven, I see that as a shadowy prefiguration of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. Enoch was like Mary. Or, when I read in 2 Kings 2:11, how the prophet Elijah was “carried off” into heaven in a fiery chariot, I see another shadow of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. Elijah was like Mary.

That is what St. Augustine meant when he famously said: “The Old Testament is revealed in the New and the New Testament is concealed in the Old.” They fit perfectly together like a hand in a love, and therefore, the two Testaments should be the springboard for meditating on the mysteries of the Holy Rosary.

That is how I pray the rosary on the road and I do not fall asleep. But if I do happen to fall asleep and crash my car, then maybe that will be my “fiery chariot” in which my Guardian Angel will “take me up” into heaven.

Praised be Jesus Christ!