October 7 — OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY

Presence of God. — May your blessed Rosary, O holy Virgin, be a weapon of defense and a school of virtue for me.

Meditation

1 — Today’s feast is a manifestation of gratitude for the great victories won by the Christian people through the Rosary of Mary and, at the same time, it is the most beautiful and authoritative testimony to the value of this prayer. The liturgy of the day is a commentary and an amplification of the Rosary: the three hymns of the office, the antiphons of Matins and Lauds run through its various mysteries, the lessons sing its glories and the continuous references to the Virgin, who “sprouts among the flowers, who is surrounded by roses and lilies of the valleys,” are a clear allusion to the mystical crowns of roses that the devotees of Mary weave at her feet with the recitation of the Rosary. Today’s feast tells us that honoring the Rosary is honoring Mary, since it is nothing other than the meditation on the life of Our Lady, accompanied by the devout repetition of the Hail Mary. It is precisely under this aspect that the Church praises this practice and recommends it to the faithful with such insistence: “O God — invokes the Oremus of the day — grant that, meditating on these mysteries with the most holy Rosary of the blessed Virgin Mary, we may imitate the examples they contain and obtain the rewards they promise.” The Rosary well recited is prayer and school together; its mysteries tell us that in the life of Our Lady everything is judged in relation to God: her joys and her contentments are for what gives pleasure to God, while her sorrows coincide, so to speak, with the very sorrows of God who, having become man, willed to suffer for the sins of humanity. The only joy of Mary is Jesus: to be His Mother, to hold Him in her arms, to present Him to the adoration of the world, to contemplate Him in the glory of the Resurrection, to be united with Him in heaven. The only sorrow of Mary is the Passion of Jesus: to see Him betrayed, scourged, crowned with thorns, crucified for our sins. Here is a first fruit that we should draw from the recitation of the Rosary: to judge the events of our life in relation to God; to rejoice in what pleases Him, in what unites us to Him, to suffer for the sin that separates us from Him and is the cause of the Passion and death of Jesus.

2 — The second fruit that we must draw from the daily recitation of the Rosary is the penetration of the mysteries of Christ; through Mary and with Mary, who opens the door for us, the Rosary helps us to penetrate the ineffable grandeur of the Incarnation, the Passion and the glory of Jesus. Who more than Our Lady has understood and lived these mysteries? Who more than Our Lady can give us the understanding of them? If during the recitation of the Rosary we knew how to truly put ourselves in spiritual contact with Mary to accompany her in the various stages of her life, we could catch something of the sentiments of her heart before the great mysteries of which she was a witness, and often also a protagonist, and this would serve marvelously to nourish our spirit. In this way our Rosary would be transformed into a quarter of an hour of meditation, I would almost say of contemplation, under the guidance of Our Lady. It is precisely this that Our Lady wants and not certain Rosaries recited on the lips, while the thought wanders in a thousand directions! The Hail Marys, continuously repeated, must express the attitude of the soul that strives to raise itself to the Virgin, to launch itself toward her, to be taken by her and introduced into the understanding of divine mysteries. “Hail Mary!” say the lips, and the heart murmurs: Teach me, O Mary, to know and to love Jesus as You have known and loved Him.

A similar recitation of the Rosary requires recollection, requires, as St. Teresa of Jesus says, “that before beginning it, the soul ask itself with whom it is about to speak and who is she who speaks, in order to better know how to behave” (cf. Way 22, 3). The Saint, with her fine wit, mocks those people “so attached to reciting, [that] they recite so many vocal prayers so quickly as to make one believe that they have obliged themselves to recite a given number of them every day and that they seek to satisfy their obligation quickly” (ibid., 31, 12). Rosaries recited in such a way cannot truly nourish the interior life, bear little fruit to the soul and give little glory to the Virgin. Recited instead with a true spirit of devotion, the Rosary becomes a very effective means of cultivating Marian piety, of entering into the intimacy of the Most Blessed Virgin and of her divine Son.

Colloquy

“O Mary, as among the blessed spirits there is none who loves you more than you love yourself, so we have not, nor can we have, after God, anyone who loves us more than you, our most loving Mother. And if one could gather the love of all mothers for their children, of all spouses for their spouses, of all saints and of all angels for their devotees, one would not attain to the love that You bear for a single soul and hence also for my soul”.

“O Mary, since you love me, make me like unto yourself. You have all the power to change hearts; take then my heart and change it. Make me holy, make me your worthy son.

“Let others ask of you what they will: health, riches, earthly advantages; I come to ask of you, O my Mother, those things that you yourself desire from me and are most pleasing to your heart. You who were so humble, obtain for me humility and the love of contempt. You, so patient in the sorrows of this life, obtain for me patience in adversities; You, so full of love toward God, obtain for me the gift of holy and pure love. You, so full of charity toward your neighbor, obtain for me charity toward all and particularly toward those who are adverse to me; You, in short, O Mary, who are the most holy of all creatures, make me holy. To you love is not lacking, nor power: you will all things and can obtain all things for me! Only my negligence in having recourse to you, only my little confidence in your succor can prevent me from receiving your graces” (St. Alphonsus).