The Healing Journey

October 7, 2024

“The Most Holy Virgin in these last times in which we live has given a new efficacy to the recitation of the Rosary to such an extent that there is no problem, no matter how difficult it is, whether temporal or above all spiritual, in the personal life of each one of us, of our families…that cannot be solved by the Rosary. There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.”
― Sister Lucia dos Santos of Fatima

The Rosary, one of the most cherished Catholic devotions, helps us meditate on the mysteries of salvation and has been called “a compendium of the Gospel.” Pope Leo XIII, who was well-known for his love of the Blessed Virgin, wrote 12 encyclicals about the Rosary because he believed it could cure the world’s problems and help everyone who is confronting the grave problems of life, including the loss of a loved one.

While observing the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary during the COVID pandemic in 2020, Pope Francis urged Catholics to always carry a Rosary with them and said, “I invite everyone to rediscover, especially during this month of October dedicated to the Rosary, the beauty of the prayer which has nourished the faith of the Christian people through the centuries …. The recitation of the Rosary is the most beautiful prayer we can offer to the Virgin Mary; it is a contemplation on the stages of the life of Jesus the Savior with his Mother Mary and is a weapon that protects us from evils and temptations.”

The Blessed Virgin, herself, has urged us to recite the Rosary in her apparitions at Lourdes and Fatima, where she identified herself by the title “Our Lady of the Rosary” and told thousands who had gathered for her final apparition on October 13, 1917: “I am the Lady of the Rosary. I have come to warn the faithful to amend their lives and ask for pardon for their sins. They must not offend Our Lord anymore, for He is already too grievously offended by the sins of men. People must say the Rosary. Let them continue saying it every day.”

Today’s feast commemorates the Battle of Lepanto. The night before this naval battle that would determine the future of Christian Europe, sailors knelt in prayer to the Blessed Mother in union with the faithful throughout Christendom. Together, they prayed the Rosary and asked for her intercession in the battle they would face against the Ottoman Turks.

On October 7, 1571, the alliance of warships from Catholic states confronted the Islamic empire of the Ottomans off the western coast of Greece. After four hours of battle involving 400 warships, the much smaller fleet of the Holy League was victorious. Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

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