Rafael de Mosteyrín, priest and chaplain of the CDP Torrealba, offers this article about the month of October, dedicated to the Virgin Mary in her invocation of Our Lady of the Rosary, especially the 7th.
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Our love for the Virgin has a channel: the Marian devotions: the scapular of Carmen, the Angelus, the three Hail Marys, visits to her sanctuaries, etc. But among all these devotions, there is one that is the main one: the Holy Rosary. The Rosary is the Virgin’s favorite prayer, a request that always reaches her Mother’s Heart, and she always answers us with great generosity.
The Virgin of the Rosary is on October 7. It is such an important celebration that we propose extending it to the entire month. All of October is the month of the prayer of the Rosary, just as all of May is the month of the Virgin Mary.
The importance of this prayer is demonstrated by the request that it be recited for centuries by Popes and bishops. But mainly because it is the Virgin Mary herself who has asked us to pray for it. She especially told us this during the apparitions of Lourdes and Fatima.
The Virgin appeared to the three shepherd children at Fatima when they had finished praying the Rosary with great affection. She held a magnificent Rosary in her right hand. And she did not fail to recommend this prayer to her beloved children.
Already in her first apparition, she promised Francis eternal salvation and reminded him to pray the Rosary. During this and subsequent visits, Our Lady recommended this daily prayer. They made an effort to introduce this custom into their homes and spread it throughout the world. Every time Lucia raised the requests for grace requested by those present to the Vision, the answer was always the same: that grace would be granted if the person concerned prayed the Rosary well.
The painter Albrecht Dürer has a painting depicting many important people. The Pope is kneeling to the left of the Christ Child and the German Emperor to his right. Several rich merchants are crowded around, eager to have a place in the scene. The artist himself is painting himself under a tree. It is an altar painting, intended for the church of the German merchants in Venice and made in 1506. It shows Jesus on the lap of his mother, Mary, handing out garlands of roses. They are celebrating a religious ceremony called the Rite of the Rosary, in which each person receives a garland of roses to show that the Church loves everyone, rich or poor. With the Rosary we give roses to our Mother, and She, who obtains everything she asks for, gives them back to us multiplied.
Pope St. John XXIII said, when someone explained that he was very distracted when praying, that the worst Rosary is the one that is not prayed.
Addressing our Mother in this way is a great manifestation of love, as St. Josemaría Escrivá explained in the Holy Rosary, a book he wrote in one sitting, and in which he explains many details to show our affection for the Virgin Mary: “But in the Rosary… we always say the same thing! Always the same thing? And don’t those who love each other always say the same thing?… Isn’t there a monotony in your Rosary, because instead of pronouncing words like a man, you make sounds like an animal, your thoughts being far from God?”
