Our Lady of the Rosary

THE MEMORIAL OF OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY

On October 7^th, the Church celebrates the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary. The Church instituted this feast following the victory of the Christian navy with ships from Spain, Venice, and Genoa under the command of Don Juan of Austria over the Moslem Turkish fleet of at least 15,000 ships at the Battle of Lepanto on October 7^th, 1571. Knowing that the Christian navy was vastly outnumbered, St. Pope Pius V called for all of Europe to pray the Rosary for the Blessed Virgin's intercession in granting victory. The Christian commanders prayed for the Blessed Virgin's intercession as they prepared for the battle. Commander Don Juan's battle flag was an image of Christ crucified flown from the mast of his ship, and Admiral Andrea Doria carried a copy of Mexico's image of Our Lady of Guadalupe into battle. Only forty years earlier, the Blessed Virgin appeared to a Mexican peasant named Juan Diego, promising her intercession for the people of Mexico and the defeat of the old pagan gods. At that time of crisis for the future of the Christian nations of Europe, they pleaded for her intercession in defeating a Muslim invasion that threatened all Christendom.

The battle took place while the Confraternity of the Rosary was celebrating a solemn procession in the streets of Rome, and the faithful were praying to the Virgin Mary to intercede for victory over the Turkish aggressors. When the smaller Christian navy was victorious, Pope Pius V attributed their success to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, calling her "Mary, succor of Christians." The defeat of the Turkish navy was decisive and prevented the intended Islamic invasion of Europe. The Church celebrated the feast for many years as "Our Lady of the Victory." Later, it was renamed "Our Lady of the Rosary" and was extended throughout the Universal Church by Pope Clement XI in 1716, who had canonized Pope Pius V in 1712.

The prayers of the Rosary are vocal and mental. The spoken prayers center on the "The Lord's Prayer" and the "Hail Mary." The mental prayers focus on the chief mysteries of the life, death, and glory of Jesus Christ, the life of the Virgin Mary, and the mystery of our redemption. The complete rosary is comprised of five Joyful Mysteries, five Luminous Mysteries, five Sorrowful Mysteries, and five Glorious Mysteries. The Blessed Virgin has revealed that with each "Hail Mary," a rose' of prayer is offered to our Blessed Mother and our Savior. This form of prayer, therefore, came to be known as a Rosarium,' a rose garden of prayer. There are many different ways to pray the Rosary, but most often, six prayers are offered: "The Apostles' Creed," "The Lord's Prayer," the "Hail Mary," the "Glory Be," "The Prayer of Fatima," and the "Hail Holy Queen." A seventh prayer may also be added: "The Prayer of St. Michael the Archangel.

The story of the Rosary is as old as the Church. "The Lord's Prayer" and the "Apostles' Creed" are the oldest prayers and date to the 1^st century AD. "The Lord's Prayer," which forms the framework for the Rosary. The Lord Jesus Himself composed it and taught it to His disciples. The early Christians took seriously His command when Jesus said, "In this manner, therefore, you shall pray" (Matthew 6:9). Many early Christians, especially those who lived in monastic communities, prayed the "Lord's Prayer" with the 150 Psalms and kept track of their prayers with 150 pebbles. By the 4^th century, there is evidence that ordinary people began to take up this practice. However, since most could neither read nor afford a handwritten copy of the Psalms, they repeated the "Our Father" 150 times.

The "Apostles' Creed" prayer was given to the Church by the Apostles themselves, probably at the Council of Jerusalem in 49/50 AD or shortly after that. The Apostles' Creed continues to be considered a summary statement of the Apostles' faith as taught to them by Jesus and witnessed by them in their experience of the mission of the Messiah. It is a declaration of what every new generation professes to believe as Christians and is also the ancient baptismal symbol of the Church. St. Ambrose described the Apostles' Creed as "the Creed of the Roman Church, the See of Peter, the first of the Apostles, to which he brought the common faith" (St. Ambrose, Explanatio Symboli 7).

The "Hail Mary" prayer is from the angel's greeting to the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation, where he identified the Virgin Mary as the "has-been graced," a perfect past participle indicating that she was and always had been full of the grace of God (Luke 1:28). The grace that filled Mary was the Divine Presence of Him who is the source of all grace. God's grace dwelled within Mary as His Divine Presence was within the sacred Tabernacle of the Ark of the Covenant. It was there that God's presence abided above the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant, Israel's most sacred shrine (Ex 24:22; 40:34). For New Covenant believers, Mary is the symbol of the "daughter of Zion," the prophet Zephaniah spoke of when he wrote: Shout for joy, O daughter Zion! Sing joyfully, O Israel! Be glad and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! (Zephaniah 3:14).

The addition of the greeting of the Angel Gabriel to Mary seems to have begun in the Church at Ephesus, where St. John, the Beloved Apostle, served for many years as the bishop of that community of believers. According to tradition, Mary lived there when Johs was the Bishop of Ephesus. It was natural for those praying the angelic greeting to add Mary's name, so they prayed: "Hail, Mary, the Lord is with you!" Soon the greeting of St. Elizabeth to Mary at the "Visitation" was added to the prayer: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus" (Luke 1:28). The community at Ephesus had a special devotion to the Virgin Mary, and it was at Ephesus that the universal Church, at the Council of Ephesus in 431, declared that the Virgin Mary rightly deserved the title St. Elizabeth gave her as "Mother of God" when she called Mary the "mother of my Lord" (Luke 1:43). The Council of Ephesus proclaimed that Mary, as the mother of the man/God Jesus, was indeed the "Mother of God" and not just the mother of the human Jesus. After the announcement of the council's decision, the people of Ephesus took to the streets, shouting the proclamation by making a spontaneous petition to the Virgin Mother: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us!" The final portion of the "Hail Mary" petition was not added until the terrible years of the 14^th century as the "Black Death" ravaged Europe. At that time, the people of the Church cried out to the Blessed Mother in fear and hope in the petition: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners," adding the words "now and at the hour of our death. Amen."

The repetition of the "Hail Mary" prayer throughout the Rosary cycle is not mindless chanting but a mental anchor. Repeating the ten "Hail Mary" prayers as one contemplates each mystery helps the mind focus on the mystery's meaning and blocks worldly thoughts that may attempt to disrupt the experience. The goal is to leave behind our ties to the present and enter into Mary's life, which becomes a present reality in our life's journey with her son, Jesus Christ.

By the 8^th century, monks replaced the pebbles they had used to count their prayers with knotted cords, and by the 11^th century, the current form of the "Hail Mary" prayed 150 times and divided into 15 decades had replaced the 150 Psalms. In 1040, a noble English woman named Godiva (yes, the same Godiva who, according to legend, rode naked on a horse to shame her husband) bequeathed in her will to an Abby that she founded a beautiful rosary made of precious stones divided into 15 decades with each decade divided by larger precious stones. She requested that the statue of the Blessed Virgin that she had donated to the Abby wear her rosary. Godiva's gift is the earliest surviving description of the Rosary in its present form.

The fourth prayer, "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit," is a prayer of joy and praise from 600 AD. The fifth prayer, "Hail Holy Queen," or "Salve Regina," was composed as a prayer of love to our holy Mother Mary in the 11^th century by a poor disfigured monk: "Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy! Our life, our sweetness, and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn, then, most gracious Advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us; and after this, our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus; O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary. Pray for us, O holy Mother of God that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ."

In the next several centuries, both St. Dominic (1215) and the Blessed Alan de la Roche (1460) received instruction from the Virgin Mary on praying the Rosary. She instructed them to encourage the prayers of the Rosary recited with a meditation on the life of Christ. She promised unique spiritual gifts from a devotion to the Rosary, telling them that the regular practice of praying the Rosary "will cause virtue and good works to flourish." She promised that the Rosary would obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God and, among other promises, that "the rosary shall be a powerful armor against Hell; it will destroy vice, decrease sin and defeat heresies." In 1567, the Church established the Rosary in the devotion of the universal Church.

The sixth prayer, "The Prayer of Fatima," was added to the Rosary by the Virgin Mary herself. It is the prayer she taught the visionaries at Fatima in the early 20^th century when she introduced herself as the "Lady of the Rosary." She prayed with the children of Fatima: "O my Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who have most need of your mercy." In every appearance of the Virgin Mary since her visitation at Lourdes, France, in 1854, she has prayed the Rosary with those with her just as she prayed the Rosary with St. Dominic and the Blessed Alan.

In addition to the Joyful, Glorious, and Sorrowful Mysteries, the Luminous Mysteries were added to the Rosary by Pope John Paul II in 2002 to complete the meditation of the Christ event from His birth and childhood, to His ministry in proclaiming the coming of His Kingdom, to His self-sacrificial death, to His Resurrection, to His glorious Ascension, and the welcoming of His mother into the heavenly Kingdom that is a promise of our own hoped for bodily resurrection. Pope John Paul II recommended the Virgin Mary as a model of contemplation and invited the faithful to embrace Jesus's words from the Cross as words spoken to each of us as the "beloved disciple" when He said: "Behold your Mother!" (Jn 19:27). The Rosary permits us to share in the mysteries of the Lord's life as seen through the eyes of his blessed mother who was the one human being who knew Him best. The beauty and spirituality of the Rosary lie in pondering the mystery of our redemption over and over and in holding these mysteries as precious treasures in our hearts, just as Mary did when these events unfolded in her life.

See the document "The History of the Rosary."