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‘Do whatever he tells you’ (see Jn 2:1-5). Those were the final words of Our Lady recorded in the New Testament.

GLADE PARK, Colorado (Catholic Online) - The feast dedicated to “Our Lady of the Rosary" was instituted by Pope Pius V. It was to commemorate the anniversary of the defeat of the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto on the first Sunday in October 1571. This miraculous defeat broke the back of Muslim domination of the Mediterranean and was attributed to the prayers and processions of the Rosary confraternity in Rome. The Feast was later moved to the fixed date of October 7. In fact, the entire month of October is dedicated to encouraging the praying of the Rosary and reflecting on the mysteries of the Christian faith which it memorializes.

In a few days, we will recall a miraculous event. On October 13, 1917, seventy-thousand pilgrims had found their way to Fatima as a result of the visions three children had begun receiving in the spring of 1916. The anxious crowd, bearing mixed attitudes, uncomfortably stood in ankle-deep mud; many awaited an unheard yet fathomed hope, a silent promise which had touched their craving hearts; others had arrived convinced that their lack of faith would soon be justified on finding the wet, soggy morning uneventful. This latter group would soon adopt a very different outlook on life.

Just prior to noon of that same day, the Lady "more brilliant than the sun" appeared to the three children, saying, "I am the Lady of the Rosary. I have come to warn the faithful to amend their lives and to ask pardon for their sins. They must not offend our Lord any more, for he is already too grievously offended by the sins of men. People must say the Rosary. Let them continue saying it every day."

Nearly nineteen centuries earlier, our Lord Jesus Christ sat at a wedding feast in Cana. The wine had run out, and, showing her constant concern for all, Our Lady simply turned to her Son and said, "They have no wine." Although Jesus responded, "My hour is not yet come," the Mother of our Lord, of course, knew her Son would listen to her, and, in a display of complete confidence, simply advised the servants to "Do whatever he tells you" (see Jn 2:1-5). Those were the final words of Our Lady recorded in the New Testament, which, unarguably, are an everlasting profession of what it means to be Christian.

Yet even before that day on which our Lord worked his fist miracle, the birth of the Rosary had, in a sense, already occurred in the Angelic Salutation, when Gabriel the Archangel said to Mary: "Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you" (Lk 1:28). St. Gabriel, sensing that Mary was troubled by his message, tells her she has "found favor with God" (1:30). And, upon hearing of the wondrous, unfathomable event of which she was about to partake, the sweet Virgin responded with beautiful simplicity and obedience: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word" (1:38).

The Handmaid of the Lord, the Virgin Mother of all the faithful, whose entire life is united in perfection and holiness to the Incarnate Word's mission of Salvation, returns again and again to us, exercising her office as motherly intercessor, caring for her children, directing them always and everywhere to her Son. She says of herself: "I am the Lady of the Rosary."

The word Rosary means "crown of roses." St. Louis De Montfort calls the Rosary "the mystical rose tree of Jesus and Mary in life, death, and eternity." He tells us that reciting the Rosary produces spiritual roses which will "never wilt or die, and they will be just as exquisite thousands of years from now as they are today." In regards the worth of saying the Rosary, he professes it to be a "priceless treasure which is inspired by God" (The Secret Of The Rosary, Montfort Publications, 1954).

Pope John Paul II tells us: "The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at the heart a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be said to be a compendium. . . . Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer" (Apostolic Letter On The Most Holy Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, introduction).

Our Lady of the Rosary is the image and beginning of the Church: "In the meantime the Mother of Jesus, in the glory which she possesses in body and soul in heaven, is the image and beginning of the Church as it is to be perfected in the world to come. Likewise she shines forth on earth, until the day of the Lord shall come, a sign of certain hope and comfort to the pilgrim People of God" (LG 68; cf. 2 Pet 3:10).

Soon we will return again to that day at Fatima less than a century ago, on which Our Lady of the Rosary opened her hands: the rain ceased, clouds parted, light issued forth from her delicate palms and traveled toward the sun as if penetrating the daystar itself, transforming it into a ...