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."



General Announcements: April

Posted by Jacob

Greetings, faith-filled readers! Thank you all for your continued visits to the blog, comments, and prayer requests. I was gratified to return from my travels to find an ever-increasing stream of visitors to the site, as well as many prayer requests, well-wishes, and emails. It was a nice 'welcome home!'  (The image at left is a detail from on underground church I visited during my travels!)


I would like to extend a special thanks to my brother in Christ, Nathan, who moderated comments and emails in my absence. We have all been blessed by his assistance and involvement in this project over the last month!



A few general notes:

In preparation for my trip, I had pre-written the daily posts and scheduled them to automatically appear on the blog. With one exception, this system worked very well. One post failed to appear, and the subject of that post was the seventeenth apparition of Our Lady of Lourdes. It should have been available to readers on April 7. However, it did not appear until today (but then was filed back on the April 7th date, so is now a bit "hidden" behind the posts of the past few days). If you are interested in reading the post about Our Lady of Lourdes' seventeenth visit to Saint Bernadette, you can find it here.

Secondly, given my 3 1/2 week absence, I have fallen a bit behind on my Rosary Construction-- you can see that the counter in the left-hand sidebar has "stalled" at 210! During the remainder of the month, I hope to get caught up. So far, Rosaries have been sent to missionaries in East Timor, as well as to a Catholic orphanage and school in India. If anyone knows of specific missions, groups, schools, etc., who would benefit from the donation of mission-style Rosaries, please let me know. I would be blessed to assist in whatever way I can.

Of course, if you would like to contribute to the Rosary-Construction process, you are welcome to make a donation via the PayPal link on the left-hand sidebar. No amount is too small-- it costs approximately $1 for each Rosary constructed (including materials, packaging, and shipping to those in need!)-- so even a $5 donation will sponsor the construction of 5 important prayer aids. For those of you who are unable to donate financially at this time, your continued prayers are so greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for your continued support!

As always, I will continue to pray for each of you.  Wishing you peace and blessings during this joy-filled Easter season.

In Christ,
jake

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