by Fr. Brian Wirth,
Director of Rural Life
As the fall harvest progresses, I again want to assure my prayers to all of our diocesan farm families and hired hands for a safe and successful harvest season. Farmers (and farmers’ wives), thank you for your sacrifices, dedication, and love for the land and God’s creation. Personally, it has been a joy to drive along Highway 6/34 and see all of the combines, grain carts, semis, and trucks hard at work.
A few weeks ago, I had the privilege of being able to go home to help my dad and brother haul and unload soybeans for the day. It was nice to get away, lend a hand, and be back working on the land where my vocation was sown and cultivated.
In my last column, I referred to the poem “On Work”and the phrase “work is love made visible.” In this column, I want to keep this line in mind but also place a focus on the spiritual realities in view of the fall harvest. While certainly physical, labor is equally spiritual, which corresponds to man’s human nature as body and soul.
Thus, focusing on the spiritual nature, I wish to speak on one of the Church’s greatest spiritual treasures: The Rosary.
As many know, the Church dedicates October to the Most Holy Rosary. Originally declared as the Feast of Our Lady of Victory by St. Pope Pius V in thanksgiving to God for the Christian defeat of the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto Oct. 7, 1571 (attributed to Christian soldiers praying the Rosary), St. Pope Gregory XIII later changed the name to the Feast of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary in 1573. Further, Pope Clement XI extended the Feast to the Universal Church in 1716 and finally in 1913, St. Pope Pius X set the date for the feast day we know in current time on Oct. 7.
Concerning the Rosary, I recall the words of St. Pope Paul VI: “By its nature the recitation of the Rosary calls for a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace, helping the individual to meditate on the mysteries of the Lord’s life as seen through the eyes of her who was closest to the Lord. In this way the unfathomable riches of these mysteries are unfolded.”
Similar to the Rosary, the fall harvest offers, as mentioned in the poem “On Work,” “a quiet rhythm and a lingering pace.”
As labor-intensive as harvest time is for farmers, the pace can feel like sprinting a marathon. Yet, like the journey of the Christian life, there certainly is a great urgency among His chosen disciples. Viewing the “lingering pace” of Jesus’ public ministry, his miracles, the many works recorded within the Acts of the Apostles, St. Paul’s journeys, we must remember that the Christian life, although a race (1 Cor. 9:24-27) is a marathon, not a sprint. And within the ebb and flow of life, amid the “lingering pace” there are occasions of “quiet rhythm,” a separation from the crowds to be in prayerful solitude with the Father as modeled by the Son (Mk. 1:35; Lk. 5:16). Within its Mysteries, the Rosary offers both, all under the loving mantle of our Blessed Mother.
Although fall harvest days are long, there are moments during the day in which farmers can enter into the silence amidst the beauty of God’s manifold creation and close the door of the inner room of the heart during their various labors (Mt. 6:6).
Within the “quiet rhythms” of silence and the “lingering pace” of combines harvesting corn/soybeans, running the grain cart, hauling grain in the semi, hooking augurs to the tractor PTO, listening to the augur cascade layers of grain into grain bins, and all of the various white noises that the fall harvest provides, God extends to farmers (and to all of us in the quiet rhythms and lingering paces of our own God-given vocations) one of his greatest gifts: the grace of silent contemplation via the intimacy of prayer.
St. Pope John Paul II affirms this: “The most important reason for strongly encouraging the practice of the Rosary is that it represents a most effective means of fostering among the faithful that commitment to the contemplation of the Christian mystery.” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae #5). Among the rural landscape, farmers are gracefully immersed with Jesus and Mary within the Christian mystery.
As Mother of God, Mary’s entire life is the perfect embodiment of “work as love made visible.” Her entire earthly and heavenly life is simply contemplating the Word made flesh (Jn. 1:14) in loving faith and works. Equally, farmers and all persons are called to the same wondrous reality in our vocations and daily lives.
By praying the Rosary and meditating upon its mysteries, like Mary, we as disciples and her spiritual children are able to learn Christ from Mary and remember Christ with Mary, especially Christ’s Paschal Mystery, salvation history, and our role within salvation history, which equips us to reap the spiritual and physical fruits as disciples of her Beloved Son, Our Lord and Savior.
Therefore, brothers and sisters, during this month of October and fall harvest, through the intercession of Our Lady of the Rosary, may the mustard seed (Lk. 13:18-19) that has been sown within us grow into the bountiful and eternal harvest of the Kingdom of Heaven, the greatest work of love made visible via spiritual faith and physical works.
