"According to tradition, the rosary was given to St. Dominic in an apparition by the Blessed Virgin Mary in the year 1214 in the church of Prouille. This Marian apparition received the title of Our Lady of the Rosary. Alain de la Roche or Saint Alan of the Rock, a learned Dominican priest and theologian, and established the "15 rosary promises" and started many rosary confraternities. However, most scholarly research suggests a more gradual and organic development of the rosary." (wikipedia)
The feast we are to celebrate is related to an annual feast commemorating the victory of Lepanto.
"In 1571 Pope Pius V instituted "Our Lady of Victory" as an annual feast to commemorate the victory of Lepanto. The victory was attributed to the Blessed Virgin Mary as a rosary procession had been offered on that day in St. Peter's Square in Rome for the success of the mission of the Holy League to hold back Muslim forces from overrunning Western Europe. In 1573, Pope Gregory XIII changed the title of this feast-day to "Feast of the Holy Rosary". This feast was extended by Pope Clement XII to the whole of the Latin Rite inserting it into the Roman Catholic calendar of Saints in 1716, and assigning it to the first Sunday in October. Pope Pius X changed the date to 7 October in 1913, as part of his effort to restore celebration of the liturgy of the Sundays. In 1969, Pope Paul VI changed the name of the feast to "Our Lady of the Rosary"."(wikipedia.org)
Our late Holy Father Pope John Paul II wrote an apostolic letter on the Rosary called "Rosarium Virginis Mariae" (Rosary of the Virgin Mary). It is a wonderful document and is very much worth reading. Below is the conclusion of the said apostolic letter. You can read its entirety by clicking the link provided.
CONCLUSION
“Blessed Rosary of Mary, sweet chain linking us to God”
39. What has been said so far makes abundantly clear the richness of this
traditional prayer, which has the simplicity of a popular devotion but also the
theological depth of a prayer suited to those who feel the need for deeper
contemplation.
The Church has always attributed particular efficacy to this prayer, entrusting
to the Rosary, to its choral recitation and to its constant practice, the most
difficult problems. At times when Christianity itself seemed under threat, its
deliverance was attributed to the power of this prayer, and Our Lady of the
Rosary was acclaimed as the one whose intercession brought salvation.
Today I willingly entrust to the power of this prayer – as I mentioned at the
beginning – the cause of peace in the world and the cause of the family.
Peace
40. The grave challenges confronting the world at the start of this new
Millennium lead us to think that only an intervention from on high, capable of
guiding the hearts of those living in situations of conflict and those governing
the destinies of nations, can give reason to hope for a brighter future.
The Rosary is by its nature a prayer for peace, since it consists in the contemplation of Christ, the Prince of Peace, the one
who is “our peace” (Eph 2:14). Anyone who assimilates the mystery of
Christ – and this is clearly the goal of the Rosary – learns the secret of peace
and makes it his life's project. Moreover, by virtue of its meditative
character, with the tranquil succession of Hail Marys, the Rosary has a
peaceful effect on those who pray it, disposing them to receive and experience
in their innermost depths, and to spread around them, that true peace which is
the special gift of the Risen Lord (cf. Jn 14:27; 20.21).
The Rosary is also a prayer for peace because of the fruits of charity which it
produces. When prayed well in a truly meditative way, the Rosary leads to an
encounter with Christ in his mysteries and so cannot fail to draw attention to
the face of Christ in others, especially in the most afflicted. How could one
possibly contemplate the mystery of the Child of Bethlehem, in the joyful
mysteries, without experiencing the desire to welcome, defend and promote life,
and to shoulder the burdens of suffering children all over the world? How could
one possibly follow in the footsteps of Christ the Revealer, in the mysteries of
light, without resolving to bear witness to his “Beatitudes” in daily life?
And how could one contemplate Christ carrying the Cross and Christ Crucified,
without feeling the need to act as a “Simon of Cyrene” for our brothers and
sisters weighed down by grief or crushed by despair? Finally, how could one
possibly gaze upon the glory of the Risen Christ or of Mary Queen of Heaven,
without yearning to make this world more beautiful, more just, more closely
conformed to God's plan?
In a word, by focusing our eyes on Christ, the Rosary also makes us peacemakers
in the world. By its nature as an insistent choral petition in harmony with
Christ's invitation to “pray ceaselessly” (Lk 18:1), the Rosary
allows us to hope that, even today, the difficult “battle” for peace can be
won. Far from offering an escape from the problems of the world, the Rosary
obliges us to see them with responsible and generous eyes, and obtains for us
the strength to face them with the certainty of God's help and the firm
intention of bearing witness in every situation to “love, which binds
everything together in perfect harmony” (Col 3:14).
The family: parents...
41. As a prayer for peace, the Rosary is also, and always has been, a prayer
of and for the family. At one time this prayer was particularly dear to
Christian families, and it certainly brought them closer together. It is
important not to lose this precious inheritance. We need to return to the
practice of family prayer and prayer for families, continuing to use the Rosary.
In my Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte I encouraged the
celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours by the lay faithful in the
ordinary life of parish communities and Christian groups;(39) I now wish to do the same for the Rosary. These two paths of Christian
contemplation are not mutually exclusive; they complement one another. I would
therefore ask those who devote themselves to the pastoral care of families to
recommend heartily the recitation of the Rosary.
The family that prays together stays together. The Holy Rosary, by age-old tradition, has shown itself particularly effective
as a prayer which brings the family together. Individual family members, in
turning their eyes towards Jesus, also regain the ability to look one another in
the eye, to communicate, to show solidarity, to forgive one another and to see
their covenant of love renewed in the Spirit of God.
Many of the problems facing contemporary families,
especially in economically
developed societies, result from their increasing difficulty in
communicating.
Families seldom manage to come together, and the rare occasions when
they do are
often taken up with watching television. To return to the recitation of
the
family Rosary means filling daily life with very different images,
images of the mystery of salvation: the image of the Redeemer, the image
of his
most Blessed Mother. The family that recites the Rosary together
reproduces
something of the atmosphere of the household of Nazareth: its members
place
Jesus at the centre, they share his joys and sorrows, they place their
needs and
their plans in his hands, they draw from him the hope and the strength
to go
on.
... and children
42. It is also beautiful and fruitful to entrust to this prayer the growth
and development of children. Does the Rosary not follow the life of Christ,
from his conception to his death, and then to his Resurrection and his glory?
Parents are finding it ever more difficult to follow the lives of their children
as they grow to maturity. In a society of advanced technology, of mass
communications and globalization, everything has become hurried, and the
cultural distance between generations is growing ever greater. The most diverse
messages and the most unpredictable experiences rapidly make their way into the
lives of children and adolescents, and parents can become quite anxious about
the dangers their children face. At times parents suffer acute disappointment at
the failure of their children to resist the seductions of the drug culture, the
lure of an unbridled hedonism, the temptation to violence, and the manifold
expressions of meaninglessness and despair.
To pray the Rosary for children, and even more, with children,
training them from their earliest years to experience this daily “pause for
prayer” with the family, is admittedly not the solution to every problem, but
it is a spiritual aid which should not be underestimated. It could be objected
that the Rosary seems hardly suited to the taste of children and young people of
today. But perhaps the objection is directed to an impoverished method of
praying it. Furthermore, without prejudice to the Rosary's basic structure,
there is nothing to stop children and young people from praying it – either
within the family or in groups – with appropriate symbolic and practical aids to
understanding and appreciation. Why not try it? With God's help, a pastoral
approach to youth which is positive, impassioned and creative – as shown by the
World Youth Days! – is capable of achieving quite remarkable results. If the
Rosary is well presented, I am sure that young people will once more surprise
adults by the way they make this prayer their own and recite it with the
enthusiasm typical of their age group.
The Rosary, a treasure to be rediscovered
43. Dear brothers and sisters! A prayer so easy and yet so rich truly deserves
to be rediscovered by the Christian community. Let us do so, especially this
year, as a means of confirming the direction outlined in my Apostolic Letter
Novo Millennio Ineunte, from which the pastoral plans of so many particular
Churches have drawn inspiration as they look to the immediate future.
I turn particularly to you, my dear Brother Bishops, priests and deacons, and to
you, pastoral agents in your different ministries: through your own personal
experience of the beauty of the Rosary, may you come to promote it with
conviction.
I also place my trust in you, theologians: by your sage and rigorous reflection,
rooted in the word of God and sensitive to the lived experience of the Christian
people, may you help them to discover the Biblical foundations, the spiritual
riches and the pastoral value of this traditional prayer.
I count on you, consecrated men and women, called in a particular way to
contemplate the face of Christ at the school of Mary.
I look to all of you, brothers and sisters of every state of life, to you,
Christian families, to you, the sick and elderly, and to you, young people: confidently
take up the Rosary once again. Rediscover the Rosary in the light of
Scripture, in harmony with the Liturgy, and in the context of your daily lives.
May this appeal of mine not go unheard! At the start of the twenty-fifth year of
my Pontificate, I entrust this Apostolic Letter to the loving hands of the
Virgin Mary, prostrating myself in spirit before her image in the splendid
Shrine built for her by Blessed Bartolo Longo, the apostle of the Rosary. I
willingly make my own the touching words with which he concluded his well-known
Supplication to the Queen of the Holy Rosary: “O Blessed Rosary of
Mary, sweet chain which unites us to God, bond of love which unites us to the
angels, tower of salvation against the assaults of Hell, safe port in our
universal shipwreck, we will never abandon you. You will be our comfort in the
hour of death: yours our final kiss as life ebbs away. And the last word from
our lips will be your sweet name, O Queen of the Rosary of Pompei, O dearest
Mother, O Refuge of Sinners, O Sovereign Consoler of the Afflicted. May you be
everywhere blessed, today and always, on earth and in heaven”.
From the Vatican, on the 16th day of October in the year 2002, the beginning of
the twenty- fifth year of my Pontificate.
JOHN PAUL II
Thank you for your blog. What a beautiful picture of Mary! Would I be able to use it?
ReplyDeleteI took this from Google and don't have a personal copyright to it so I think you may use it just like I did.
ReplyDelete