Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
"Not courage, not weapons, not the commander, but Mary of the Rosary gave us the victory" - an inscription placed on one of the walls of the thanksgiving chapel that the Venetians erected in their city after the victorious battle of Lepanto.
The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary as "the feast of the victory of the Virgin Mary" was established in 1572 by Pope Saint Pius V in memory of the victorious battle fought in 1571 with the Turkish fleet at Lepanto, which was attributed to the prayer of the rosary recited during the pleading processions in the streets of Rome. Being aware of who he owed the miraculous saving of Europe from the Turkish onslaught, the Pope gave it the title of the feast of "Our Lady of Victory". It was to be celebrated every year on the first Saturday in October, the day on which this famous battle took place.
His successor, Pope Gregory XIII, ordered in 1573 to celebrate this feast in churches with the image of Our Lady of the Rosary on the first Sunday of October and named it after "Our Lady of the Rosary", emphasizing the influence of the Rosary prayers on the victory.
Initially, this holiday was celebrated only in churches where there were Brotherhoods of the Rosary. After successive victories over the Turks at Belgrade in 1716, Pope Clement XI extended the feast to the entire Church, ordering the celebration of this feast all over the world. On the other hand, Pope Leo XIII, called the Pope of the Rosary, at the end of the nineteenth century gave this feast its own liturgical forms for the Holy Mass and Office and raised it to the dignity of the second-class feast, and added the invocation to the Litany of Loretto: "Queen of the Holy Rosary - pray for us." In 1913, Pius X restored the feast on October 7. Since 1969, by the official decision of Pope Paul VI, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary has been celebrated on the fixed date i.e. October 7.
In the Mass prayers of this feast, we ask God that, while meditating in the Rosary, "the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, through which he obtained eternal salvation", according to these mysteries, "we shape our lives and achieve what they promise". The liturgical readings for this Feast remind us the first mystery: the Annunciation, which gave rise to another and an important fact from the dawn of the Church: the prayer of the Apostles with Mary, the Mother of Jesus, in preparation for Pentecost.
Special external accents of the celebration in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary are wonderful and sometimes impressive processions up to five altars, during which the Rosary is recited and the appropriate words of the Gospel are read at the altars. These processions were introduced in many countries thanks to the Dominicans who promoted the prayer of the Rosary and founded the Rosary Fraternities in parishes
Why do we call Her "Lady of the Rosary”?
It is a strange Marian feast. Why do we call Her "Lady of the Rosary” if she did not know the rosary during her earthly life. Moreover, she did not know any of the prayers that we say in the rosary. Maybe she knew the Our Father ... but it is not known whether in the Matthew version - ours (cf. Mt 6:9-13), or in the Luke version - much shorter (Cf. Lk 11:2-4). She certainly never said the rosary. Every day, like every Jewish woman, she prayed Psalms, because the daily prayer of Jews, starting with the words: Shema Israel ... - Listen, Israel ... (Dt 6: 4-9), which is both a call and a confession of faith and reminder about commandment and teaching. She was unfamiliar with patting any prayer formulas. For the Psalms are not prayer formulas, they emerge from the history of Israel, they are part of it and the prayerful fruit of God's interventions in the history of Israel. Even if we wanted to, they cannot be separated from this history, they are so closely related to it. The Prayer Shema Israel calls first and foremost to listen to God speaking in history, in my history, and to love Him in this history with all oneself and to build their future and their children's future on God. Mary listened, she was listening very much to God's call in the history of Israel and her own ... until she heard the Archangel's groundbreaking words: Chaire, kecharitōmenē, ho kyrios meta sou! Rejoice Full of Grace, the Lord is with you!
She lived through God's constant interventions in human history. In her prayer, Mary was nourished by the history of the Chosen People contained in the Psalms, still open to the further fulfillment of God's promises. No wonder, then, that the only known prayer, the Magnificat, is essentially a psalm - praising God working in the history of the chosen people and her own.
Mary is probably surprised by the patted rosaries, with which our thoughts fly like blue birds and sit on imaginary branches that have nothing to do with God and His actions. Yes, she encouraged the simple shepherds of Fatima to pray the rosary, but to pray the rosary, the model of which is her prayer and which has its source in the prayer of Israel. The rosary did not fall from heaven as an absolute novelty. It appeared in the late Middle Ages as a help for simple monks who could not read or write. Who, unable to pray with psalms, they repeated the Angelic Salutation and the Our Father, meditating on the mysteries of the history of salvation. So, in its simplicity it was something substitute - like a makeshift. However, turn out to be extremely durable, and sometimes even brilliant. This is what happened with the rosary. Gradually, the Rosary went beyond the circles of monks and spread throughout the Western Church.
Today, many of us cannot imagine piety without the rosary. And there will probably be those who will consider it a sin not to say it. However, it should be remembered that Our Lady of the Rosary did not say the rosary, and yet she is the Mother of the Rosary. The essence of the rosary is what was the essence of Mary's prayer - meditation in the heart of the things that God did and does. Just as the psalms cannot be separated from the history of Israel, the rosary cannot be separated from the history of salvation in Jesus Christ. Mary is the Mother of Jesus Christ, and thus her motherhood extends to this history as well. She is not the Mother of the Rosary because we repeat the Hail Mary dozens of times, because it is only the external outside of the rosary. It is, however, in a much deeper sense, because the true rosary teems with her life and of her Son. Pope Paul VI very consistently avoided the traditional phrase recitare rosario - praying the rosary, replacing it with the expression meditare rosario - meditating, contemplating the rosary. And that is what the rosary is all about. By calling us to the rosary, Mary invites us to her life and to the life of her Son, to a life, which is Salvation.
Revolution of the Rosary in Philippines
Great saints grew up on the rosary, but the rosary was also a support for "ordinary" people who encountered difficult moments in their lives, for those who, humanly speaking, no longer had hope. When dictator F. Marcos started the arrests in the Philippines, people turned to the Cardinal Jaime Lachica Sin for advice. After a long prayer, he called the faithful to take rosaries and go to the main Highway of Manila – Epifanio delo Santos (EDSA).
It was in February 1986. Two million people with rosaries in their hands were praying. After four days, the dictator dispatched tanks to "get things done”. The people stood frightened, without any intention of withdrawing and prayed the rosary. The tanks stopped in front of the people kneeling on the asphalt. The soldiers left the tanks and began praying with them. And so, it was everywhere, and soon the dictator had to leave the country - the power of prayer won over him!
The Rosary is more than a Prayer
However, little miracles also happen in our lives. For me, the Rosary is more than a prayer, it is my way of life. When it is difficult for me, when I do not know what to do - I reach for the rosary and I know that the solution will come from heaven. We cannot always kneel in silence and focus only on prayer. But this is the beauty of the rosary - we can pray it anywhere, being on the street, when we are going for an important meeting, or in the hospital waiting room, even in the market’s line, when walking, driving, etc. Then, reciting the "Hail Mary ...", we present our problems and sorrows, and the rosary becomes part of our life. It becomes a support in difficult times.
Many will ask: why, why should I pray the rosary? Because it is like a conversation between a child and mother; the child tells mother about joys and sorrows - and the mother listens patiently and then does everything to help him. This is what it is like - when we entrust our problems to Mary, she asks her Son for the graces we need. Can a mother be deaf to her child's cries?
Therefore, before you say that nothing can be done in your life, kneel and pray and meditate on the Rosary. Because, as Sister Lucia of Fatima said: “There is no problem in life that cannot be solved with the help of the rosary." And do not be afraid when all kinds of strange difficulties arise! Satan will always do anything to prevent the rosary from being in your life. He knows that when you say this wonderful prayer, Mary takes care of you, and then his whispers are of no use. That is why the rosary is a great help in the fight for purity of heart. When the world attacks us with all sorts of temptations - we hide under our Mother's mantle. Isn't that great? So, pick up the rosary and go with Mary through life!
Until Tomorrow
fr. george