By DONAL ANTHONY FOLEY
October is the month of the rosary and the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated on October 7. This feast was instituted following the victory of Catholic forces, the Holy League, against an invasion fleet of the Ottoman Empire, near Lepanto in the eastern Mediterranean, on October 7, 1571. The Pope, Pius V, had called for the faithful to pray the rosary for victory, and the Holy League did indeed triumph thus preventing the invasion.
At the moment of victory, Pius V, who was many hundreds of miles away in a meeting, at the Vatican, got up, went over to a window, and by means of a special revelation, exclaimed: “The Christian fleet is victorious!”
And last month, on September 12, the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary was celebrated in her honor. Pope Innocent XI declared it a universal feast in 1684 in commemoration of the Battle of Vienna in September 1683. This was another defeat for the armies of the Ottoman Empire, by Holy Roman Empire forces in union with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, under the leadership of the Polish king, John III Sobieski. Before the battle, he placed his force of 80,000 troops — which was faced by an opposition force of 130,000 — under the protection of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and attributed the victory to her.
Thus we can see that devotion to Mary, and the rosary, has been very fruitful in the past, and could certainly be said to have saved European civilization on the occasions highlighted above.
As regards the rosary itself, it is very much rooted in the Scriptures and in Catholic tradition, and in essence it is a prayerful biblical meditation with the Blessed Virgin. The Our Father is Jesus’ own prayer given to His disciples when they had asked Him how they should pray (Matt. 6:9-13), while the first part of the Hail Mary is a compilation of part of the dialogue between Mary and the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation (Luke 1:28), along with the exclamation made by Elizabeth during the Visitation (Luke 1:42). This part of the prayer was originally known as the “angelic salutation” (greeting), with Elizabeth’s words only being generally added during the medieval period.
We can still find echoes of this name in our own time. There is a pub in Nottingham, England, where I live, called “Ye Olde Salutation Inn” which dates from around 1240, and claims to be the oldest in the city. (It is not recorded whether Robin Hood supped there. . . .)
The current building was constructed in 1240 as a workshop for a tanner, with living accommodation above, on the site of an old alehouse known as “The Archangel Gabriel Salutes the Virgin Mary.” This in itself shows us how much Catholic spirituality influenced everyday life in medieval times — people thought there was nothing strange about calling an alehouse after an episode from the Gospels.
The second part of the Hail Mary, the intercessory prayer to Mary, dates from later on and was gradually adopted by the Church in general, with the whole prayer being finally fixed in its present form during the 16th century.
The word rosary itself means a crown of roses, a spiritual bouquet given to the Blessed Virgin. In English it has been called “Our Lady’s Psalter” or “the beads.” This last term derives from an Old English word for prayers (“bede”) and the word for request (“biddan” or “bid”). The rosary probably began as a practice by the laity to imitate monks who said the monastic office (Liturgy of the Hours), during which they prayed the 150 Psalms, the Psalter. The lay faithful, many of whom could not read, substituted 50 or 150 Ave Marias, Hail Marys, for the Psalms. Sometimes a cord with counters on it was used to keep an accurate record of the number of prayers said.
So in the course of time, there came to be a parallel Psalter, that is, one of 150 Hail Marys, the Marian Psalter, or what we now call the rosary.
The first clear historical reference to the rosary is from the life of St. Dominic (1170-1221), the founder of the Order of Preachers or Dominicans. He preached a form of the rosary in France during the period that the Albigensian heresy was devastating the faith there. Tradition has it that the Blessed Virgin herself asked for the practice as an antidote for heresy and sin.
The mysteries of the rosary were originally divided into three groups of fifties dedicated to the joyful, sorrowful, and glorious mysteries of Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection. The 15 mysteries were officially established by Pope Pius V in 1569, and in 2002, Pope John Paul II added the luminous mysteries.
During each of her six apparitions at Fatima, our Lady specifically asked for the rosary to be said. This aspect of her message could not have been more emphatic. On May 13, at the first apparition she said: “Pray the rosary every day to obtain peace for the world and an end to the war.” She made a similar appeal on both June 13 and July 13, and, likewise during the August and September apparitions, she urged the children to continue to pray the rosary every day. Finally, on October 13 she said: “I am the Lady of the Rosary. Continue always to pray the rosary every day.”
At Lourdes, the Blessed Virgin had called herself the Immaculate Conception, but at Fatima, she placed so much stress on the importance of the rosary, that she actually described herself there as the “Lady of the Rosary.”
Soviet Withdrawal
The power of the rosary was graphically demonstrated in 1955. Fr. Petrus Pavilcek, a Franciscan, had organized a Rosary Crusade in Austria from 1946 onward, which eventually had ten percent of the population praying five decades of the rosary daily for peace in the country, and the end of the Russian wartime occupation of part of the country. He also organized candlelit processions in Vienna with a Pilgrim Virgin statue of Our Lady from Fatima.
On May 13, 1955, it was announced that the Soviets were willing to withdraw from Austria and sign a peace treaty. This was the only time in the history of the Soviet Union that the Red Army voluntarily withdrew from a country it had occupied. In contrast, the attempted revolutions in Hungary, in 1956, and Czechoslovakia, in 1968, were brutally put down by Soviet tanks.
The most obvious reason for this is surely that many Austrian Catholics had prayed the rosary for this intention, and that their number and fervor were sufficient to obtain the grace of a peaceful withdrawal by the Soviets.
The rosary is no less powerful today.
Pope Francis spoke of the rosary during his Sunday angelus address on November 17, 2013: “I want to recommend some medicine for all of you. It’s a spiritual medicine,” he said, holding up a white medicine box containing a rosary.
“Don’t forget to take it. It’s good for your heart, for your soul, for your whole life.”
The rosary is a devotion for all times and all places, but above all during the month of October.
+ + +
(Donal Anthony Foley is the author of a number of books on Marian Apparitions, and maintains a related web site at www.theotokos.org.uk.)
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress