Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary

Hasten, O most powerful destroyer of heresy, hasten the hour of mercy, seeing that the hour of judgement is dearly challenged by innumerable offenses…. Enable me to live, a just life on earth, and reign with the just in Heaven, whilst with the faithful throughout the world, O Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, I salute thee and cry out: Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us! Amen.

FIRST SATURDAY OF THE MONTH

FIRST SATURDAY DEVOTIONS:

Our Lady appeared to Sister Lucia in 1925, promising her gracious assistance unto salvation to all those who practised devotion to her Immaculate Heart through the Five First Saturdays.

Five Saturdays in Reparation for:

The five first Saturdays correspond to the five kinds of offenses and blasphemies committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary:

Blasphemies against her Immaculate Conception;
Blasphemies against her perpetual virginity;
Blasphemies against her divine maternity, at the same time refusing to accept her as the Mother of all men;
Publicly instilling indifference, contempt and even hatred toward this Immaculate Mother in the hearts of children;
Insulting her directly in her sacred images.

How to Complete the Five First Saturdays:

On the first Saturday of five consecutive months, go to confession, receive Holy Communion, and keep Our Lady company by saying five decades of the Rosary with 15 minutes of meditation, with the intention of making reparation for the offences listed above.

Saturday of the Twenty-Sixth Week in Ordinary Time

Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary

First Saturday of the Month

In its present form the Rosary [according to the accepted tradition] is due to St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Friars Preachers, his objective being to stem the flow of the Albigensian heresy, then spreading far and wide throughout Europe. He propagated this form of prayer in obedience to a revelation received from the Blessed Virgin, to whom he had recourse for this purpose, about the year 1206, and to him, we owe the spread of a devotion, which, for many centuries, has produced the most marvellous results in the Christian world.

October 7 is the anniversary of the glorious victory won in 1571 by the Christian forces over the Turkish fleet at Lepanto. This triumph of the Cross over the Crescent was universally attributed to the powerful intercession of the Mother of God whom Pope Pius V fervently invoked with her Rosary in his hand, and to whom the prayers of all Christiandom were addressed. Two years after this great favour had been obtained, Gregory XIII instituted an annual feast of thanksgiving to be celebrated on the first Sunday of October in all churches where an altar in honour of the Blessed Virgin of the Rosary had been erected. From being a local festival, this celebration gradually spread and became general, until Pope Leo XIII raised it to the rank of a double of the second class for the whole Church.

This decisive defeat of the Turks, at the famous battle of Lepanto [1571] and at Belgrade [1716] gave occasion to the institution of the feast and to its extension to the Universal Church.

From a sermon by Saint Bernard, Abbot
(Sermo de Aquaeductu: Opera Omnia, Edit. Cisterc. 5 [1968], 282-283)

We should meditate on the Mysteries of Salvation

The child to be born of you will be called Holy, the Son of God, the Fountain of Wisdom, the Word of the Father on High. Through you, blessed Virgin, this Word will become Flesh, so that even though, as He says: I am in the Father and the Father is in Me, it is still true for Him to say: “I came forth from God and am here.”

In the beginning was the Word. The Spring was gushing forth, yet still within Himself. Indeed, the Word was with God, truly dwelling in inaccessible light. And the LORD said from the beginning: I think thoughts of peace and not of affliction. Yet your thought was locked within you, and whatever you thought, we did not know; for who knew the mind of the LORD, or who was His counselor?

And so the idea of peace came down to do the work of peace: The Word was made flesh and even now dwells among us. It is by Faith that He dwells in our hearts, in our memory, our intellect and penetrates even into our imagination. What concept could man have of God if He did not first fashion an image of Him in His Heart? By nature incomprehensible and inaccessible, He was invisible and unthinkable, but now He wished to be understood, to be seen and thought of.

But how, you ask, was this done? He lay in a manger and rested on a virgin’s breast, preached on a mountain, and spent the night in prayer. He hung on a Cross, grew pale in death, and roamed free among the dead and ruled over those in hell. He rose again on the third day, and showed the Apostles the wounds of the nails, the signs of victory; and finally in their presence He ascended to the Sanctuary of Heaven.

How can we not contemplate this story in truth, piety and holiness? Whatever of all this I consider, it is God I am considering; in all this He is my God. I have said it is wise to meditate on these Truths, and I have thought it right to recall the abundant sweetness, given by the fruits of this priestly root; and Mary, drawing abundantly from heaven, has caused this sweetness to overflow for us.

DAILY MEDITATION

If, in reciting the Rosary, we do not reflect at all, or only carelessly, on the mysteries of our holy Faith, we may be assured that we do not pray except with our lips, and that such a prayer would be to us of no, or of, but little avail. And yet, of all prayers, that of the Rosary is most likely to degenerate into a mere mechanical recital of words, on account of the constant repetition of the same forms. It is evident, then, that, in order to perform this beautiful devotion to the Blessed Virgin well, we must occupy our mind with the truths of our holy Faith. Now, the mysteries of which we meditate, whilst reciting the rosary are , according to the events which they call to our mind, divided into the Joyful, Sorrowful, and the Glorious mysteries…

O Mary, Mystical Rose, as holy Church calleth thee, would that as often as we perform the beautiful devotion of the Rosary, it might ascend to thy heavenly throne as a perfumed offering of thy devoted children!

It is especially to the devotion of the Rosary that the admonition of the Holy Ghost has referenced when He says: “Before prayer prepare thy heart” [Ecclesiasticus 18:23]. Observe well this counsel, O child of Mary, and the roses that will spring up whilst reciting the beads would change themselves into precious gems to adorn the crown that is awaiting you in Heaven! Amen!

Fr. Francis Xavier Weninger [died 1888] – Austrian priest, professor, and author; joined the Jesuits as missionary preacher to the United States.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us Sinners…

As God’s Mother, Mary is the one through whose mediation all blessings come to us. Mary is a creature, and as such is separated by infinite distance from the God who made her. But as His Mother she has become a co-helper in our redemption. Through her free consent at the Annunciation, God took from her the flesh and blood needed for His Incarnation…. In regard to our spiritual life, Mary does not act independently of Christ, and she is never honoured apart from her office as His Mother. She was herself redeemed by His sacrifice. Without Christ, Mary would be as poor as any other creature, but with Him she is immensely rich in grace. With such influence over the heart of her Son, Mary’s intercessory help is almost more than we can imagine. Only in Heaven shall we ever know how many souls she has wrested from the hold of evil. She is the one person whose virtue is unconquerable by the malice of Satan, the one person he hates above all others. Before her he retires in confusion. None of his wiles have any effect against her prayers. In this world where our poor flesh must wrestle with the powers of darkness, it is of inestimable help to know that one stands ever at our side ready to deal our powerful enemy a decisive blow….

Mary, Mother of us all and dispenser of graces, will never stand and let a faithful child be lost. No mother would, were it in her power to save her child. Mary has seen the terrible cost of sin: no wonder she hates it. She has seen how much her Son suffered for mankind: no wonder she loves us. She was present when the price of man’s infidelity was measured in the suffering flesh of her Son. She saw every wound inflicted on His beautiful body, and she watched Him die after frightful agony in order to redeem us. He has bought us with a great price…. Dispenser of the vast stores of Heaven through her Son, Mary stands between our nothingness and the majesty of God. To us she gives the perfect example of a creature not only free from all taint of sin but also full of all grace. And for us, on the other hand, as she stands at the court of heaven, what does she do? She fulfils the office of all good mothers: promising, explaining, pleading for us, as mothers always do.

Sister Mary Jean Dorcy, o.p.

Daily Reflections