Why pray the Rosary every day for a year?
Each time the Blessed Virgin has appeared-- whether it be to Saint Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes; to Lucia, Jacinta, and Francisco at Fatima; or to Mariette Beco at Banneux-- she has asserted the importance, saving grace, and power of praying the Holy Rosary on a daily basis. Based upon her words, the Rosary is penance and conversion for sinners, a pathway to peace, an end to war, and a powerful act of faith in Jesus Christ. Pope Paul VI presented the Rosary as a powerful means to reach Christ "not merely with Mary but indeed, insofar as this is possible to us, in the same way as Mary, who is certainly the one who thought about Him more than anyone else has ever done."
To show us how this is done, perhaps no one has been more eloquent than the great Cardinal Newman, who wrote: "The great power of the Rosary consists in the fact that it translates the Creed into Prayer. Of course, the Creed is already in a certain sense a prayer and a great act of homage towards God, but the Rosary brings us to meditate again on the great truth of His life and death, and brings this truth close to our hearts. Even Christians, although they know God, usually fear rather than love Him. The strength of the Rosary lies in the particular manner in which it considers these mysteries, since all our thinking about Christ is intertwined with the thought of His Mother, in the relations between Mother and Son; the Holy Family is presented to us, the home in which God lived His infinite love."
As Mary said at Fatima, "Jesus wants to use you to make Me known and loved. He wishes to establish the devotion to My Immaculate Heart throughout the world. I promise salvation to whoever embraces it; these souls will be dear to God, like flowers put by Me to adorn his throne."
Beginning on June 12, 1973, the Blessed Mother gave three Messages to Sister Agnes Katsuko Sasagawa in Akita, Japan through a carved wooden statue of Mary. The statue, bathed in a brilliant light, would “come alive” and speak with a “voice of indescribable beauty.” I’ll talk about these messages in June, on the anniversary of their delivery.
Beginning thirty-five years ago today, January 4, 1975, the statue of the Blessed Virgin from which this indescribable voice came from, wept 101 times over the course of several years (last recorded occurrence was September 15, 1981 on the Feast of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows). The status was also observed to “perspire abundantly” with the perspiration sending out a sweet perfume, witnessed by hundreds of people. Lastly, the right palm of the statue bled from a wound that had the form of a cross—an identical wound that developed on Sister Agnes’ right hand.
These miraculous events were witnessed by hundreds and scientific analysis revealed the blood, tears, and perspiration from the statue were human. Several miraculous cures are on record, including recovery from terminal brain cancer and the complete cure of Sister Agnes’ total deafness.
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