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."
We continue our celebration of
Mary’s month of May with a hymn, “
O Mary, We Crown Thee.” During May, many parishes crown their statues of Our Blessed Mother with flower garlands. These ceremonies symbolize our love and thanks for the Blessed Virgin’s heart, the love she lavishes upon us, and the grace of God which is mediated through her. Under her gaze, our hearts and lives bloom like the flowers we present to her, filled with the Holy Spirit, guiding us to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
O Mary, we crown thee
With blossoms today
Queen of the Angels
Queen of the May.
Bring flowers of the fairest
From garden and woodland
And hillside and dale.
Our full hearts are swelling
Our glad voices telling
The praise of the loveliest
Rose of the vale.
We honor and praise thee
Please pray that our hearts
Will forever be thine.
In joy and in sorrow
From thee may we borrow
A faith that is trusting
In Jesus thy Son.
(from the 1938 Saint Basil Hymnal)
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