Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary
Today's memorial was established in memory of the victory of the Christian fleet over the Turkish army at Lepanto (on the Gulf of Corinth) on October 7, 1571.
It is a strange Marian feast in October. Why do we call Holy Mother as our 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 during the rosary. Perhaps she knew the Our Father, but it is not known whether in the version of Matthew - the one we recited (Mt 6: 9-13), or of Luke - much shorter (Lk 11: 2b-4).
Every day, like every Jewish woman, Mary prayed psalms and the most frequent, daily prayer of the Jews, starting with the words: Shema Israel - Listen Israel (cf. Dt 6: 4-9), which is both a call and confession of faith, a commandment and an instruction. She was unfamiliar with saying out any prayer formulas. For the psalms are not prayerful formulas. They emerge from the history of Israel, are part of it, and are the prayerful fruit of God's interventions in it. They cannot be separated from Israel story; they are so closely related to it. In the “Shema Prayer” Israel calls first and foremost to listen to God speaking in history, in personal history and to love Him in this history, to love the Lord God, to love with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind, and all our strength. and build the future in God.
Mary listened. She was listening to God's call in the history of Israel and in her own ... Until she heard the Archangel's words: [Chaire kecharitomene] - Rejoice, endowed with full of grace. If she was just saying prayers as an automat and struggling with distractions; if she had not lived through God's continual interventions in human history, she would never have heard the words of the Archangel.
In her prayer, Mary was nourished by the history of the Chosen People, contained in the psalms, always open to the further fulfillment of God's promises. No wonder, then, that the only prayer known to us, the Magnificat, is essentially a psalm - the praise of God working in the history of the chosen people and in her own. Mary is probably surprised by our automated recited Rosaries, with which our thoughts fly like blue birds and perch on imaginary branches that have nothing to do with God and His actions. Yes, she encouraged the simple shepherds of Fatima to recite the Rosary, but to recite the Rosary the way how she prayed.
The rosary did not fall from heaven as an absolute novelty. It appeared in the late Middle Ages as an aid to the simple, non-literate monks who, unable to pray psalms, repeated the Angelic Salutation and the Our Father, meditating on the mysteries of salvation history. So, in its simplicity it was something like a substitute. Some substitutes, however, turn out to be extremely durable, and sometimes they are even brilliant. This is what happened with the Rosary. Gradually, it went beyond the circles of the monks and spread throughout the Western Church.
Today, many of us cannot imagine piety without the Rosary. And there probably are those who will recognize not praying it as a sin. 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 the same which was the essence of Mary's prayer - meditation in the heart of the things that God has done and is still doing. 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 dozens of time Hail Mary, because it is not only the form of the Rosary. It is, however, in a much deeper sense, because the true Rosary is her life and the life of her Son.
Pope Saint Paul VI very consistently avoided the traditional phrase recitare rosario - to recite the Rosary, replacing it with the expression meditare rosario - to meditate, to contemplate the Rosary. This 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 of salvation.
Until next time
fr. george