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."
Between November 29, 1932 and January 3, 1933, in Beauraing, Belgium, the Blessed Virgin appeared to a group of five children thirty-two times. The five children came from the Voisin and Degeimbre families: Albert, Gilberte, and Fernande Voisin (ages 9, 13 and 15) and Andree and Gilberte Degeimbre (ages 14 and 9). The children saw the figure of a "lady dressed in white with clouds at her feet." The apparitions occurred above a hawthorn tree in a grotto between a local viaduct and convent. No adult could see or hear the Virgin, and most were skeptical even when the children simultaneously kneeled and recited Hail Mary.
During the course of the apparitions, the children witnessed the Blessed Virgin's "heart of gold"-- a golden heart shining through her robe, with golden rays of light emanating from within. The message of Mary during her visits focused on prayer, penance, and conversion.
January first marks the next to the last apparition of the Blessed Mary to the children. During that visit, Mary spoke to Gilberte Voisin, asking her to, "Pray always," with the emphasis on always.
Today, we ask for the intercession of the Our Lady of Beauraing’s golden heart as we pray for peace.
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