I'm Father Mark Mary with Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, and this is the Rosary in New Year podcast,

where through prayer and meditation, the rosary brings us deeper into relationship with Jesus and Mary

and becomes a source of grace for the whole world. The Rosary in the Year is brought to you by Ascension.

This is Day 215. To download the prayer plan for Rosary in a Year, visit ascensionpress.com forward slash rosary in a year or text, R-I-Y to 3377777. You'll get an outline of how we're going to pray each month and it's a great way to track your progress. The best place to listen to the podcast is in the Ascension app. There's special features built just for this podcast and also recordings of the full

rosary with myself and other friars on behalf of myself. And the whole team here at Ascension,

we wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who's helped support this podcast financially.

Your support is so appreciated and helps us to reach as many people as possible.

And if you haven't already, please consider

supporting us at ascensionpress.com forward slash support. Today we will be praying with the third

and the fourth sorrowful mysteries, the crowning with thorns, and Jesus is carrying of his cross.

So as we pray today, we're going to focus again specifically on Jesus, on his heart for you,

his eyes looking at you, his attentiveness to you.

And I'm going to encourage you as you pray here to hopefully respond to an invitation of the Lord.

Is there a place of prayer, an encounter with Jesus that you've already had?

Perhaps going back to the workshop that we visited in our,

and one of our very first episodes, going with Jesus to Galilee or to Bethany,

to Jerusalem.

Or today, if you've never done this before, I'd also encourage you to give shot to prayerfully, like imagining not just you going to Jesus like 2,000 years ago, but him coming to you, to him visiting you, perhaps in your office, in your home, sitting at your dining table.

If you have children, perhaps he's there with you, watching them at one of their baseball

games, going to pick them up at school, sitting next to you in the pastor's seat.

I do believe as we don't just pray the rosary, but as we go about in our lives, trying to deepen and broaden our ongoing conversation relationship with Jesus, if we can actually have some times of prayer where we experience and imagine him, like, coming to us in the modern time, as opposed to us just going back to him.

I think this can be really fruitful and really helpful for us,

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