Dear Parishioners:
October is a month dedicated to both our Blessed Mother Mary and the Holy Rosary. Since the early days of the Church, Christians have used knotted cords or prayer beads to help keep track of their prayers.
The Rosary as we know it today evolved in the Middle Ages, when the "Hail Mary" prayer became widely known. The term "Rosary" comes from "rosarium," or a bouquet of roses. The prayers of the Rosary were seen as a spiritual bouquet offered to Mary.
La Visione di San Domenico (The Vision of Saint Dominic), Bernardo Cavallino, 1640
Tradition tells us that Mother Mary appeared to St. Dominic in 1274 and gave him the Rosary as an aid in his preaching against the Albigensian heresy, which denied the Incarnation of Christ. Mary presented him with the Rosary, instructing him to preach her psalter to win over hardened hearts. She explained that this prayer was a spiritual weapon to fight heresy and the key to reforming the world.
St. Dominic then began to preach the Rosary to both the faithful and heretics. He taught people to meditate on the mysteries of Christ's life while praying the Hail Marys and Our Fathers, a practice that began to yield conversions and a strengthening of faith.
While praying each decade of the Rosary, we meditate on key moments in Christ's life. For this reason, the Rosary is often seen as a way to draw closer to Christ through Mary. St. Pope Paul VI taught that the Rosary helps us "meditate on the mysteries of the Lord's life as seen through the eyes of her who was closest to the Lord."
We live in difficult and violent times. I hardly need to elaborate on the multitude of crises and evils that fill the globe. Sadly, many are being swept away by this flood of evil and succumbing to fear, anxiety, despair, and discouragement. Too many turn away from faith in God, the Creator, and from the hope and joy that only Christ offers.
But no matter how tempting it is, we must not shrink back in the face of evil and uncertainty. We must take up prayer with a living faith, a firm confidence, and great fervor. There is no better way to do this than by praying the Holy Rosary. Saint Padre Pio taught us that "The Rosary is the 'weapon' for these times." The Rosary is prayed at OLM every day after morning Mass.
We have a Rosary every Monday night in October at Devotions. Rosaries are available at every door as you leave the Church. So we need to take up our Rosaries and pray. Why?
Pope Leo XIV prays the Rosary.
Through the Rosary, a prayer of immense power, countless miracles have been obtained and victories won. We celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on Tuesday. At the end of his audience on September 24, the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy, Pope Leo said, "I invite everyone to pray the rosary every day during the coming month of October for peace personally, with your families and in your communities."
The Holy Father also invited us to conclude the recitation of the Rosary with the ancient invocation "Sub Tuum Praesidium" and with the prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, that he may protect us and help us in the struggle against evil.
Pope Leo affirmed this prayer, citing the first book of Job, as the weapon against the Great Accuser who "goes around the world seeking to accuse. Only prayer can defeat him. The Russian mystics and the great saints of all the traditions advised, in moments of spiritual turbulence, to shelter beneath the mantle of the Holy Mother of God, pronouncing the invocation 'Sub Tuum Praesidium.'"
The invocation of "Sub Tuum Praesidium" is recited as follows: "We fly to thy protection, O Holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin". With this request for intercession, the Holy Father asked the faithful of the whole world to pray that the Holy Mother of God place the Church beneath her protective mantle, to preserve it from the attacks of the Devil, and so that evil may not prevail in our world.
Let us take up the Rosary daily this month. Join us every Monday at 7:00 pm for Marian Devotions as we pray the Rosary. Be well. Do good. God Bless. Go Sox! Go Pats!!??
.