The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary

Today we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary which has special meaning for me because it was the major feast of the year in the parish of Combapata in Peru where I worked. When we pray the rosary we meditate on the life of Jesus through the eyes of Mary. We reflect on the birth of the Son of God into our human nature and his total outpouring of love and compassion for us throughout his life and death on the cross. That is why the gospel of the day is so appropriate. It is the parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10: 25-37. (The Annunciation is an alternative.) When Pope Francis wrote his encyclical ''Fratelli Tutti'' on fraternity and social friendship, he dedicated a whole chapter to the story of the Good Samaritan. He reminds us that Jesus was answering the question, ''Who is my neighbour?'' For the Jewish people at the time of Jesus, it was thought that the people of their own family and race were the neighbours to be loved and cared for. Those of other races, especially those from Samaria were looked down on as impure and not worthy of help. Jesus turns that thinking on it's head when the person who showed himself to be a true neighbour to the man assaulted and left to die was none other than a Samaritan. By showing compassion to the man in need, he crossed cultural and social barriers. As Pope Francis says, ''Jesus asks us not to decide who is close enough to be our neighbour, but rather that we ourselves become neighbours to all,'' May Our Lady of the Rosary help us to make our own the final prayer of ''Fratelli Tutti.'' ''Come, Holy Spirit, show us your beauty reflected in all the peoples of the earth so that we may discover anew that all are important and all are necessary, different faces of the one humanity that God so loves. Amen.''