On this Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, we are pleased to offer an account of the history of the Rosary by Father Willy Raymond, C.S.C. May it inspire you and your family to gather in prayer with Mary, the Mother of God, and to encourage each other to have recourse to her for all of your needs.
Over the centuries, the Church has celebrated today’s feast under two seemingly unrelated titles: Our Lady of the Rosary and Our Lady of Victory. A glimpse into history, however, reveals not only that these titles are intimately related, but that, together, they express something of the feast’s interior logic.
Indeed, Mary is the Lady of the Rosary—the gentle Mother always attentive to the needs of her children. Yet she is, at the same time, the Woman whose offspring crushes the head of the serpent, and who zealously defends the souls for whom her Son offered His life.
A passage from the Song of Songs which commentators have long interpreted as referring to Our Lady captures this dichotomy:
Who is she that cometh forth as the morning rising, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army set in array? (see Song of Songs 6:10)
Today’s feast, officially instituted in commemoration of the 1571 Battle of Lepanto, serves as a reminder that Mary’s maternal influence is simultaneously tender and commanding, humble and formidable. Confronted with the imminent threat of an Ottoman invasion, Pope Saint Pius V called the outnumbered European fleet and all of Christian Europe to pray the Rosary. As the Christians implored Heaven for aid, a change in the direction of the winds turned the odds in their favor, and the Ottoman forces were scattered.
Pius V, who had received a vision of the victory while the battle was taking place, officially instituted the Feast of Our Lady of Victory in thanksgiving to the Blessed Mother for her protection of the European continent. The feast, now observed under the title “Our Lady of the Rosary,” remains a celebration of the maternal love that Mary shows to her children who seek her by means of this prayer. In the centuries following the 1571 victory, Christians have continued to appeal to Mary through the Rosary and have called upon her especially when the forces of destruction threatened to overwhelm the Church. As Mary showed us at Lepanto, she can, when she chooses, express the abundant love of her Heart with tremendous influence, power, and strength.
Thus the Rosary has become the prayer of soldiers and schoolchildren alike, the prayer in which both retiring mystics and busy families can enter into the safe refuge of the Heart of Mary. As she draws them more deeply into her Heart, they are swept into her own memories of her Son’s life and transformed by this contact with His love. Pope Saint John Paul II, in his apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, rightly said, “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 depths of His love.”
We hope that discovering the Rosary in all its depth and simplicity will inspire you to gather your family into the “school of Mary." There, in the same Heart to which God entrusted His Beloved Son, may she nourish, teach, and defend you with all of the power and gentleness which she has been privileged to receive from God.
