The Feast of the Holy Rosary


Today is the Feast of the Holy Rosary. This feast was established in 1573 by St. Pius V, a Dominican pope who had great personal devotion to the prayer. He instituted the feast in thanksgiving for the Christian victory over the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto. Because the feast falls in October, the entire month is dedicated to honoring Mary with the rosary.

To learn more about the great victory of Our Lady at the Battle of Lepanto go here.To learn more about more about Pope St. Pius V, who instituted the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, go here.

Quotes from Pope John Paul II on the Rosary taken from his Apostolic Letter ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE, October 16, 2002:

"The Rosary, precisely because it starts with Mary's own experience, is an exquisitely contemplative prayer."

"The Rosary is one of the traditional paths of Christian prayer directed to the contemplation of Christ's face. Pope Paul VI described it in these words: “As a Gospel prayer, centred on the mystery of the redemptive Incarnation, the Rosary is a prayer with a clearly Christological orientation..."

"Meditation on the mysteries of Christ is proposed in the Rosary by means of a method designed to assist in their assimilation. It is a method based on repetition. This applies above all to the Hail Mary, repeated ten times in each mystery. If this repetition is considered superficially, there could be a temptation to see the Rosary as a dry and boring exercise. It is quite another thing, however, when the Rosary is thought of as an outpouring of that love which tirelessly returns to the person loved with expressions similar in their content but ever fresh in terms of the feeling pervading them."
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