The Future Passes Through the Rosary Beads!

Gospel – Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary

I – A Providential Devotion

In modern times, devotion to the Rosary gained an ardent apostle: St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, a zealous and tireless missionary, an upright priest, a Marian theologian and founder. Among the various works he wrote as the basis of his prolific missions was The Admirable Secret of the Rosary, in which he explains, with doctrinal soundness and abundant examples, the great spiritual value of this centuries-old practice, which has produced countless conversions and miracles. In this book, the French saint states: “I beg of you to beware of thinking of the Rosary as something of little importance – as do ignorant people, and even several great but proud scholars. Far from being insignificant, the Rosary is a priceless treasure which is inspired by God.”¹ In villages that received him, and particularly in the Diocese of La Rochelle, he always founded confraternities of the Rosary: “This is a holy practice, which God, in His mercy, has set up in places where I have preached missions, in order to safeguard and increase the good brought about by the mission and to prevent further sin. Before the Rosary was established in these little towns and villages, dances and parties of debauchery went on; dissoluteness, wantonness, blasphemy, quarrels and feuds flourished; one heard nothing but evil songs and double-meaning talk. But now nothing is heard but hymns and the chant of the Our Father and Hail Mary. The only gatherings to be seen are those of twenty, thirty or a hundred or more people who, at a fixed time, sing the praises of God as religious do. There are even places where the Rosary is said in common every day, at three different times of the day. What a blessing from Heaven that is!”²

The devotion of the Rosary could well be considered a true rock of scandal, capable of separating the wheat from the chaff in the Lord’s fields

However, like any good and effective practice, the Rosary encountered serious opposition. St. Louis-Marie himself was persecuted and outraged in various dioceses still infested with the mephitic vapours of Jansenism. This devotion can well be considered a true rock of scandal, capable of separating the wheat from the chaff in the Lord’s fields: “As there are wicked people everywhere, do not expect to find that the place you live in is free of them; there will be people who avoid going to church for the Rosary, who may even make fun of it and do all they can, by what they do and say, to stop you from going. But do not give up. As those wretched people will have to be separated from God and Heaven forever, already here on earth they have to be separated from the company of Jesus and His servants.”³

Our Lady of the Rosary - Church of St. Charles Borromeo, Liverpool (England)

More than three centuries later, the Holy Church needs devotion to the Holy Rosary as never before. Indeed, today we are witnessing a horrendous and shocking spectacle: torrents of iniquity are flooding the world, putting the salvation of souls at serious risk; moreover, grave doctrinal confusion and countless scandals are distorting the sacred face of the Church, the Bride of the Lamb, leaving her almost unrecognizable. There is an urgent need to strengthen the practice of meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary in order to purify the Mystical Body of Christ of those evil members who jeopardize its integrity. Only those who finger the beads of their Rosary with authentic piety and living faith will be able to remain faithful to God, hastening the magnificent day when the Reign of Mary will dawn and Satan and his infamous henchmen will be wiped off the face of the earth.

II – Mary, Golden Link Joining Heaven and Earth

St. Gabriel, God’s ambassador to the Virgin, and St. Elizabeth, pronounced great praises to Mary, which deserve to be repeated one hundred and fifty times a day

The Gospel of the liturgical memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary brings to light the foundation of this prayer: the angelic greeting with which the Annunciation begins. St. Gabriel, God’s ambassador to the Virgin, and St. Elizabeth, a woman filled with the Holy Spirit, pronounced great praises to Mary, which deserve to be repeated one hundred and fifty times a day, in remembrance of the one hundred and fifty Psalms. After the Our Father – the princeps prayer of Christianity – the Hail Mary occupies a privileged place in Catholic piety, since God is especially glorified in Our Lady by the fact that He sanctified her to the highest degree, making her full of grace. Let us now meditate closely on this Gospel scene of unrivalled beauty.

When Heaven knocked on the door of time

The power of God burst into the peaceful stability of the city of Nazareth in the person of St. Gabriel, the Archangel who represents the invincible divine force. We can imagine the noble and impeccable posture with which this pure spirit arrayed himself to meet his Queen, the most exalted and humble of creatures. What light and charm, combined with supreme virility, he had to display in order to represent to Mary the Sun of Justice that was about to descend on the world through her! Our Lady, for her part, in her abyss of unpretentiousness, had never considered being chosen by Providence for such a high task. This is shown by the fact that She was most probably living under the same roof as St. Joseph, in perfect chastity, because although the English translation refers to a Virgin who was betrothed, it is known that they had already made the marriage contract. The righteous Joseph, a pure and just man, was the heir to the Davidic crown, which would therefore fall to him if the monarchy were restored. Just like his Bride, he did not realize that the kingship would be transferred through him to the Son of God himself, who would soon also become his Son. Mary and Joseph were the sacrosanct doors at which the Eternal One came knocking, to penetrate time and become our Brother. A more significant and sublime moment cannot be imagined: the Only-begotten of the Father wanted to turn earth into Heaven, establishing His dwelling place among us.

Archetype of maturity for today’s youth

Mary was fifteen or sixteen years old when She was entrusted with the most important mission in history. She was an enchanting, beautiful, luminous and pure maiden, but at the same time a monument of seriousness and elevation of spirit, which made her worthy of the gift of being the Mother of God. What a distance between Our Lady’s sublime maturity and the calamitous frivolity of today’s youth! The path trodden by Our Lady was one of continuous ascent in holiness, through her docility to the action of grace that enlightened her intelligence and moved her will, fully ordering her most chaste senses. On the contrary, the road that the contemporary world offers young people is one of bestialization, favouring manifestations of an exacerbated sensibility that darkens the understanding and dulls the heart, making it numb to any motion of the Holy Spirit.

“Annunciation”, by Fra Angelico - Diocesan Museum, Cortona (Italy)

It is therefore necessary to promote among children and adolescents the figure of the young Mary as a model and guide. Only if they follow this shining Morning Star will they be able to resist the vagaries of chaos and impurity that threaten to banish dignity and beauty from the earth.

Accustomed to angelic company

Still in the same Gospel passage, St. Gabriel addresses Our Lady by calling her “full of grace”, an expression that could be more accurately translated as “made grace” or “graced”, that is, one who has been transformed completely and forever by God’s grace. Just as fire set to combustible material turns it into flames, so grace set Mary’s Immaculate Heart on fire, uniting it fully to God.

Far from having her lucidity clouded or being frightened by the presence of the Angel, Mary began to reflect upon the meaning of those mysterious praises

On hearing the angelic salutation, the Most Pure Virgin was troubled. Humility is the daughter of the fear of God, a gift that leads man to be fully aware of his nothingness in the face of the Creator’s greatness. As a result, when She heard praise of which She did not feel worthy, She experienced the modesty of the poor in spirit, who blush when exalted, and this was the reason for her perturbation. Therefore, far from having her lucidity clouded or being frightened by the presence of the Angel, Mary began to reflect, with the loftiest wisdom, on the meaning of those mysterious praises.

The promise of royalty

The Virgin Mary shone in God’s eyes, adorned with every virtue and without a shadow of blemish, and for this reason She found favour before Him and would conceive in her womb Jesus, who would be both Son of the Most High and her Son, true God and true Man, the awaited Messiah, descendant of David. An important detail is the way St. Gabriel describes Our Lord’s kingship: “He will reign forever.” It is a kind of alliance between the divine empire, which is indelible, and the temporal kingdom of Judah, which becomes somehow eternalized in the person of the Incarnate Word. Our Lady undoubtedly kept the words of the Archangel in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19) and, meditating upon them for hours on end, She pierced the veils of this marvelous mystery with wise insight. Her humble reservations about the praise She had received ceased completely once God’s will was made explicit. How could She refuse the call from on high? If God wanted her as His Mother, how could She doubt His providence and care? However, one essential point remained to be clarified.

Ever Virgin