Someone might ask: “What is the sense of praying to Our Lady while meditating on something else? Would it not be easier to meditate first, and then say ten Hail Mary’s?” Find out the answer.
Newsroom (11/10/2022 08:45 PM, Gaudium Press) Our Lady of the Rosary: this invocation to Her is beautiful! The Rosary makes Mary Most Holy the great source of inspiration for our meditation and the immediate target of our prayer during meditation.
Because of this very special focus on Our Lady, the Rosary is the Marian devotion par excellence. It was revealed by the Blessed Virgin to St. Dominic of Gusmão, who was fighting a “disease” that was infecting the South of France, and with inroads along the Mediterranean coast of Spain: the Albigensian heresy. To overcome this heresy, Our Lady revealed the Rosary, which thus became the symbol of the orthodox soul devoted to Her.
At one time it hung from the habits of almost all religious, it was in the pocket of every Catholic, countless people were buried with it in their hands. When one wanted to symbolize piety, that symbol was the Rosary.
What is the Rosary?
What is the Rosary? In brief, the Rosary is a composition of meditations on the life of Our Lord and of His Mother, combined with vocal prayers. This combination of vocal and mental prayer is truly splendid, for, while a petition is uttered with the lips, the mind concentrates on a point. Thus man does in the supernatural order all that he can. For by his intentions, he unites himself to that which his lips pronounce, and by his mind he gives himself to that which his spirit meditates.
By this form of prayer, man is intimately united with God, especially since this connection is made through Mary, Mediatrix of all graces.
Someone might ask: “What is the sense of praying vocally to Our Lady while meditating on something else? Could it not be something simpler? Would it not be easier to meditate first, and then say ten Hail Mary’s?”
The answer is very simple. Each mystery contains, in its details, endless elevations, which our poor spirit is seeking to fathom… Now, to do this perfectly, we need to be assisted by God’s grace, and this grace is given to us by the help of Our Lady. In other words, we say the Hail Mary to ask the Blessed Virgin to obtain for us the graces needed to meditate well.
This devotion contains enormous strength and substance; it is not merely made up of emotions; on the contrary, it is serious, full of thought, with firm reasons. It constitutes the spiritual life of Catholics.
The Holy Rosary
It is worth pointing out that Our Lady, as Queen – and glorious Queen – has the right to set her own preferences! And She has wished to elevate this devotion above all others, distributing very special graces through the recitation of the Holy Rosary.
We must ask the Blessed Virgin for the grace to recite the Rosary every day of our life. I would also like to make a recommendation: never be without the Rosary so that, even while you sleep, you try to have the Rosary close at hand, so that you can feel it with you.
Thus, when our last hour comes and our hands can no longer be opened or closed, and are moved by others who assist us, let us have, as our last act of prayer, the Rosary wrapped around our fingers, so that when the Resurrection of the dead comes and our bodies come to life again, the Holy Rosary will be between our fingers, vivified.
So we must look to this Feast of the Rosary full of hope, and ask Our Lady, who helped the Christians win the Battle of Lepanto, to grant us the grace of the coming of her Kingdom, which will also be the Kingdom of the Rosary.
The Holy Rosary is a devotion of struggle! We are in a time of struggle. Let us ask Our Lady to make us fighters entirely for Her.
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm
