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A Letter From Our Pastor: October — A Month to Turn to Our Lady of the Rosary
My dear sisters and brothers,
What is your first memory of the Rosary? Did your family pray the Rosary together? Ours did not. Did you learn it if you attended a Catholic school? That is when I learned how to pray the Rosary. My first memory was seeing the beautiful rose glass beads of my Grandmother Lee’s rosary. It was on her dresser, where she also kept the candy. I remember her picking it up and talking to me about Mary’s love for us.
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October brings us the grace of the Holy Rosary, a prayer buried deeply in the heart of the Church, one of its most precious treasures. The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, which takes place, Oct. 7, is a commemorative feast established by St. Pius V on the anniversary of the naval victory won by the Christian fleet at Lepanto. The victory was attributed to the help of the Mother of God, whose aid was invoked by praying the Rosary.
This victory revealed the power of the Holy Rosary more than ever. Catholics who were open to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit took, with deep resolve, the Rosary as their link to God.
Pope St. John Paul II, in his 2002 apostolic letter, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, writes, “The Church has always attributed particular efficacy to this prayer, entrusting to the Rosary… the most difficult problems. At times when Christianity itself seemed under threat, its deliverance was attributed to the power of this prayer, and Our Lady of the Rosary was acclaimed as the one whose intercession brought salvation.” (39).
The Rosary reveals a wellspring of God’s love for us in and through Mary, the glorious mother of our Savior, Jesus Christ. The Rosary is truly a way to discover Christ’s infinite love through the tender heart of his mother and our mother.
“With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depth of his love. Through the rosary, the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the mother of the Redeemer.” (RVM, 1).
So many of the saints throughout the ages, such as St. Dominic, St. Louis de Montfort, and St. Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who had a special concern for the preservation of the Christian family, believed in the grace that flowed through this powerful prayer and the intercession of Mary. Again, as Pope St. John Paul II wrote, “Today I willingly entrust to the power of this prayer…the cause of peace in the world and the cause of the family.” (RVM 39). Was this not the petition of our Lady of Fatima who pleaded with families to pray the daily Rosary?
As we prepare for our stewardship renewal at the beginning of November, let us entrust everything to Mary through her prayer, the Rosary. As our hearts burn with hope, let us give to the Mother of God every concern that we bear, each cross that we carry, piece by piece, worry by worry. No matter what it is, no matter who it is, she will be there to offer everything to our Heavenly Father, whose care for each one of his children reaches beyond anything we could ever imagine.
“Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.”
In Christ, through the intercession of Our Lady Undoer of Knots, I love you,
Fr. Jim
Fr. Jim
