October 7
Our Lady of the Rosary
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| Blog Pics are mine - enhanced by Google AI. |
Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary - October 7
October 7, today the Church
celebrates a feast that is part history, and part of a love letter: Our Lady
of the Rosary. We will reflect on a battle, a Pope, and a prayer. But if we
listen closely, it is really about a Mother who loves her children over and
over again.
The
Power of Prayer in Lepanto
Let us go back to 1571, when the
Ottoman fleet dominated the Mediterranean Sea, and Christian Europe was
divided, outnumbered, and afraid. Pope St. Pius V, a Dominican who trusted the
Rosary, did what so many popes do in a crisis: he asked the faithful to pray. The
Rosary confraternities across Europe stormed heaven while the Holy League’s
ships, under Don John of Austria, sailed out to meet the enemy near Lepanto.
It was on October 7, 1571, against all expectations, the battle was won. The
Pope credited the victory to the prayers of the faithful and the intercession
of Our Lady, and he established an annual feast of thanksgiving, first called
Our Lady of Victory. Gregory XIII renamed it the feast of the Rosary, and in
1716 Pope Clement XI extended it to the whole Church.
Notice who really won that day. Yes, the sailors fought bravely. But so did the
grandmothers, the farmers, and the confraternity members back home, praying
decade after decade with no idea how it would end. Hidden, faithful,
uncredited. The Rosary has always been the prayer of ordinary people, and
Heaven has always listened.
The prayer that holds a life
The Rosary is not only a weapon of
history. It is a way to walk through the life of Jesus with His Mother at our
side: the joyful, luminous, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries, twenty times the
Gospel connects with the Rosary, from the Annunciation to the Crowning in
Heaven.
Some days the words flow like a river. Some days they feel like a dry creek
bed. You see, it doesn’t matter; the beads keep moving, and Our Lady keeps
working through her intercessory prayers. She never asks us to feel anything,
only to show up. And she always, always leads us to her Son.
Sometimes she does it in surprising ways. A statue of Our Lady of Fatima once
sat forgotten on a high shelf in a prayer meeting hall that I attended, and
someone thought, me, she shouldn’t be up there; she belongs down here with
us. By the next meeting, she was with us, amongst us; ever since that day in
1983, I have been defending her and insisting that our Lady be amongst us. It’s
rather simple: she wants to be in the middle of the room, with her children,
with her Rosary in her hands.
Our Lady of the Rosary is Our Lady of Fatima
And here is where the feast comes
home to us at the National Shrine Basilica of Our Lady of Fatima in Lewiston,
NY.
On October 13, 1917, in the Cova da Iria in Portugal, tens of thousands
gathered in the rain. Three shepherd children, Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta,
had been told that the Lady would reveal her name. And she did: “I am the
Lady of the Rosary.”
In every apparition at Fatima, she asked for the same thing: pray the Rosary
every day. She wasn’t introducing a new devotion. She was pointing to the
oldest weapon we have and telling a world at war to pick it up again. Lepanto
was fought with ships. Fatima was fought with beads and the sacrifices of
children. Same Lady, and same prayer, yet centuries apart.
Then came the Miracle of the Sun, as if Heaven itself wanted to underline her
words. And notice where it happened: the Cova, “the hollow,” a humble dip in
the ground. The Lady of the Rosary chose the lowest place and the smallest
people to carry one of the greatest messages of the century.
Freely given, freely shared
At our Shrine, the Rosary has always
been available at our ministry tables. Some of those rosaries have traveled
far. Not long ago, an eleven-year-old boy from Paris left a note at our rosary
table: he had picked out a rosary, he loved it, and he was taking it home. A
child from across the ocean, carrying the Lady of the Rosary back to France. I
still smile thinking about it.
Rosaries travel in all sorts of ways. Some are tied in kitchens, some prayed in
truck cabs from coast to coast, some shared with a prayer group gathered
online. Wherever there are hands and a heart willing to pray, the Rosary goes
with them.
Come and taste the joy
I want to say something to anyone who
has a forgotten set of beads in a drawer or has never prayed a Rosary at all.
There is a joy in this prayer we call the Rosary that is hard to put into words.
It’s a flutter in my heart, a quiet gladness, the sense of being known and held
tightly by our Lord and our Lady. It comes when I stop trying to pray perfectly
and simply sit with Our Lady, letting her show me her Son. That joy has never worn
down over these past 43 years; it has only deepened. It is not reserved for saints, scholars, or the especially devout. It is for you and me, for everyone!
So today, October 7, pick up your rosary. If you don’t have one, come see us at
the Shrine. Pray one series of mysteries or all twenty. Pray for World Peace, pray
for your family, pray for the Church. Pray in thanksgiving to Our Lady of the
Rosary, who has never failed to answer the prayer of her children.
The battle isn’t over, but neither is the victory. It is being won quietly, in
kitchens, in cars, in hospital rooms, in pews, one Hail Mary at a time. Join us
and start Praying the Rosary every single day. I promise you it will change
your life, and you too will understand the flutter I speak of, in your own heart.
Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us.
Written by: James Dacey, Jr. OFS
