Thursday, October 7, 2010

Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary

"The traditional image of Our Lady of the Rosary portrays Mary who with one arm supports the Child Jesus and with the other is offering the Rosary Beads to St. Dominic. This important iconography shows that the Rosary is a means given by the Virgin to contemplate Jesus and, in meditating on His life, to love Him and follow Him ever more faithfully. It is this message that Our Lady has also bequeathed to us in her various apparitions. I am thinking in particular of the apparition in Fatima...Presenting herself as Our Lady of the Rosary she insistently recommended the daily recitation of the Rosary to the three little shepherd children, Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco, in order to obtain the end of the war. Let us also accept the Virgin's motherly request, pledging to recite the Rosary with Faith for peace in families, nations and throughout the world."
~Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Oct. 7, 2010

"To recite the Rosary is nothing other than to contemplate with Mary the face of Christ."
~Pope John Paul II

"The Rosary is the book of the blind, where souls see and there enact the greatest drama of love the world has ever known; it is the book of the simple, which initiates them into mysteries and knowledge more satisfying than the education of other men; it is the book of the aged, whose eyes close upon the shadow of this world, and open on the substance of the next. The power of the Rosary is beyond description."
~Archbishop Fulton Sheen

"Among all the devotions approved by the Church none has been so favored by so many miracles as the devotion of the Most Holy Rosary."
~Pope Pius IX

"The Rosary is the compendium of the entire Gospel."
~Pope Pius XII

"No one can live continually in sin and continue to say the Rosary: either they will give up sin or they will give up the Rosary."
~Bishop Hugh Doyle

"It has always been the habit of Catholics in danger and in troublous times to fly for refuge to Mary, and to seek for peace in her maternal goodness; showing that the Catholic Church has always, and with justice, put all her hope and trust in the Mother of God. And truly the Immaculate Virgin, chosen to be the Mother of God and thereby associated with Him in the work of man's salvation, has a favour and power with her Son greater than any human or angelic creature has ever obtained, or ever can gain."
~Pope Leo XIII, 1883 Encyclical on Devotion of the Rosary

"I myself have often encouraged the frequent recitation of the Rosary. From my youthful years this prayer has held an important place in my spiritual life...The Rosary has accompanied me in moments of joy and in moments of difficulty. To it I have entrusted any number of concerns; in it I have always found comfort. Twenty-four years ago, on 29 October 1978, scarcely two weeks after my election to the See of Peter, I frankly admitted: “The Rosary is my favorite prayer. A marvellous prayer!...Against the background of the words Ave Maria the principal events of the life of Jesus Christ pass before the eyes of the soul. They take shape in the complete series of the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries, and they put us in living communion with Jesus through – we might say – the heart of his Mother. At the same time our heart can embrace in the decades of the Rosary all the events that make up the lives of individuals, families, nations, the Church, and all mankind. Our personal concerns and those of our neighbour, especially those who are closest to us, who are dearest to us. Thus the simple prayer of the Rosary marks the rhythm of human life.”"
~Pope John Paul II, Apostolic Letter on the The Rosary of the Virgin Mary


Resources on the Rosary: What is the Rosary? and How to pray it, History behind the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, Lepanto - 1874 Poem by G.K. Chesterton, Apostolic Letter - The Rosary of the Virgin Mary by Pope John Paul II, 1883 Encyclical - Devotion of the Rosary by Pope Leo XIII,

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