By Fr. Victor Feltes
Mary Jo lived with a special devotion to our spiritual mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and she looked forward to journeying beyond death to be with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Besides coming to Holy Mass and helping bring Christ in Holy Communion to others, Mary Jo prayed the Holy Rosary daily, sometimes several times a day, growing her in her Christian likeness to Jesus and Mary. When a person picks up the practice of the Rosary for the first time, much of one’s attention is focused on tracking the beads and remembering the prayers. But with more experience, the words and the beads can drift to the background, clearing a place for meditation on its Holy Mysteries.
These twenty mysteries of the Rosary help us reflect upon joyful, luminous, sorrowful, and glorious episodes from salvation history. Mary is a firsthand witness to about three-fourths of these events. So for instance, we can contemplate Jesus with Mary at the Nativity and hold the Baby Jesus in our arms. We can consider how much Jesus loves us to become incarnate as one like us, and be moved to love him in return. We can stand with Mary at the Crucifixion, at the foot of Jesus’ Cross, and share in her compassion for her Beloved Son. We can behold Jesus’ heroic virtues in his sufferings for us, refusing to spare himself, and resolve to do hard things for him in return.
Prayerfully meditating upon the Rosary helps us to become more like Jesus and Mary. The same is true with the Beatitudes. Who is poor in spirit, relying completely on God? Who mourns and meekly, non-violently, hungers and thirsts for what is right? Who is merciful and clean of heart? Who promotes peace, yet is persecuted for the sake of righteousness? Jesus and Mary and the saints are like this, and we are called to be like them. As St. Paul our patron says, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” so that we may “conquer overwhelmingly through him who loved us.” And God will help us do so, if we give him our “Yes.”
In her final season of living with illness, Mary Jo told every new doctor she met: “I’m ready.” And thirteen years to the day after her husband Allan’s death, she passed on as well. Pray for Mary Jo’s soul, in case any impurity remains within her gold, so that as a perfect offering God may take her to himself. And learn from her example, for blessed are those who grow in the likeness of Jesus and Mary and the saints, ‘for their reward will be great in Heaven.’
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