The rosary in the life of the Church

Fátima, 1917

In 1917, at Fátima in Portugal, three shepherd children — Lúcia, Francisco and Jacinta — told of a Lady who appeared to them on the thirteenth of each month from May to October. At every apparition she asked one thing above all: to pray the rosary every day, for peace and the end of the war. At the last, on the 13th of October, she named herself — “I am the Lady of the Rosary” — and a great crowd reported the sun seeming to dance in the sky. The Church holds Fátima as a private revelation: believed by many, binding on none. But the call it carries is the Church’s own — pray the rosary, every day.

Our Lady with a rosary — Lourdes, 1858

Earlier still, when Mary appeared to Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes in 1858, she held a rosary in her hands; and Bernadette prayed the rosary through the apparitions. Ever since, Lourdes and the rosary belong together.

The month of October

Since Leo XIII in the 1880s, the Church has given October to the rosary — a whole month, each autumn, turned toward Mary and the mysteries of her Son; and the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary falls on the 7th, the day of Lepanto.

The graces of the rosary

The Church attaches an indulgence to the rosary: a plenary indulgence for praying five decades without interruption, meditating on the mysteries, in a church, a family or a community (under the usual conditions); otherwise a partial one. It is her quiet way of saying how much this prayer is worth.

None of this is the reason to pray it. The reason is simpler: to be with Mary, and through her, with Christ.