Devotion to Mary, the mother of God, is nourished by nothing so much as by knowledge of Holy Scripture. Fruitful meditation upon the Mysteries of the Rosary relies upon knowledge of the Bible; and because this is so, the prayer of the Rosary is in tune with the Church’s belief that the Bible is our great source-book both of theology and of devotion.
The word ‘Rosary’ immediately evokes the image of a set of beads: but the beads exist for the sake of the prayers which are said upon them; and the prayers are designed to guide us towards the contemplation of the substance of the Mysteries. These Mysteries, when studied carefully and in relation to one another, are found to contain an exposition of the story of man’s Salvation.
This is Your Mother does not simply give references to biblical passages that help us appreciate the Rosary but prints them in full, so that the reader has everything in one volume for ease of use. For each Mystery a full selection of Old Testament texts prepares the way for a meditation followed by relevant reading from the New Testament. These biblical passages are as important for meditation upon the Mysteries as are the sections entitled “Meditation.” The more we ‘get the feel’ of the Old Testament, the better we understand the role of ‘the woman’ who is the mother of all the living, the mother of the Son of God, and the mother of all God’s adopted children.
Here is an invaluable resource for all twenty Mysteries of the Rosary, including the new Mysteries of Light. In this book Fr. Ronald Walls shares with the reader the fruits of a lifetime of biblical scholarship and prayer, but This is Your Mother is not a cold, scholarly book, nor is it sentimental; it is instructive and also full of the warmth of genuine prayer.
