It is customary with men of the world to balance their accounts at
the end of the year, and ascertain their profits. The Church is now
preparing to do the same. We shall soon see her solemnly numbering
her elect, taking an inventory of her holy relics, visiting the tombs
of those who sleep in the Lord, and counting the sanctuaries, both new
and old, that have been consecrated to her divine Spouse. But today's
reckoning is a more solemn one, the profits more considerable: she
opens her balance-sheet with the gain accruing to our Lady from the
mysteries which compose the cycle. Christmas, the cross, the triumph
of Jesus, these produce the holiness of us all; but before and above
all, the holiness of Mary.
The diadem which the Church thus offers
first to the august Sovereign of the world, is rightly composed of
the triple crown of these sanctifying mysteries, the causes of her
joy, of her sorrow, and of her glory. The joyful mysteries recall the
Annunciation, the Visitation, the Birth of. Jesus, Mary's
Purification, and the Finding of our Lord in the temple. The
sorrowful mysteries bring before us the Agony of our blessed Lord,
His being scourged, and crowned with thorns, the carrying of the
cross, and the Crucifixion. While, in the glorious mysteries, we
contemplate the Resurrection and Ascension of our Saviour, Pentecost,
and the Assumption and Coronation of the Mother of God. Such is
Mary's rosary; a new and fruitful vine, which began to blossom at
Gabriel's salutation, and whose fragrant garland. form a link between
earth and Heaven.
In its present form, the rosary was made known to the world by St.
Dominic at the time of the struggles with the Albigensians, that
social war of such ill-omen for the Church. The rosary was then of
more avail than armed forces against the power of satan; it is now
the Church's last resource. It would seem that, the ancient forms of
social prayer being no longer relished by theˇ people, the holy
Spirit has willed by this easy and ready summary of the liturgy to
maintain, in the isolated devotion of these unhappy times, the
essential of that life of prayer, faith, and Christian virtue, which
the public celebration of the Divine Office formerly kept up among
the nations.
Before the thirteenth century, popular piety was already
familiar with what was called the psalter of the laity, that is, the
angelical salutation repeated one hundred and fifty times; it was the
distribution of these Hail Marys into decades, each devoted to the
consideration of a particular mystery, that constituted the rosary.
Such was the divine expedient, simple as the eternal Wisdom that
conceived it, and far-reaching in its effects; for while it led
wandering man to the Queen of Mercy, it obviated ignorance which is
the food of heresy, and taught him to find once more .the paths
consecrated by the Blood of the Man-God, and by the tears of His
Mother.'
Thus speaks the great Pontiff who, in the universal sorrow of these
days, has again pointed out the means of salvation more than once
experienced by our fathers. Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclicals, has
consecrated the present month to this devotion so dear to Heaven; he
has honored our Lady in her litanies with a new title, Queen of the
most Holy Rosary; and he has given the final development to the
solemnity of this day, by raising it to the rank of a second class
feast, and by enriching it with a proper Office explaining its
permanent object. Besides all this, the feast is a memorial of
glorious victories, which do honour to the Christian name.
Soliman II, the greatest of the Sultans, taking advantage of the
confusion caused in the west by Luther, had filled the sixteenth
century with terror by his exploits. He left to his son, Selim II,
the prospect of being able at length to carry out the ambition of his
race: to subjugate Rome and Vienna, the Pope and the emperor, to the
power of the crescent. The Turkish fleet had already mastered the
greater part of the Mediterranean, andˇ was threatening Italy, when,
on October 7, 1571, it came into action, in the Gulf of Lepanto, with
the pontifical galleys supported by the fleets of Spain and Venice. It
was Sunday; throughout the world the confraternities of the rosary
were engaged in their work of intercession. Supernaturally
enlightened, Pope St. Pius V watched from the Vatican the battle
undertaken by the leader he had chosen, Don John of Austria, against
the three hundred vessels of Islam. The illustrious Pontiff, whose
life's work was now completed, did not survive to celebrate the
anniversary of the triumph; but he perpetuated the memory of it by an
annual commemoration of our Lady of Victory. His successor, Pope Gregory
XIII, altered this title to our Lady of the rosary, and appointed the
first Sunday of October for the new feast, authorizing its celebration
in those churches which possessed an altar under that invocation.
A. century and a half later, this limited concession was made
general. As Pope Innocent XI, in memory of the deliverance of Vienna by
Sobieski, had extended the feast of the most holy name of Mary to the
whole Church; so, in 1716, Pope Clement XI inscribed the feast of the
rosary on the universal calendar, in gratitude for the viotory gained
by Prince Eugene at Peterwardein, on August 5, under the auspices of
our Lady of the Snow. This victory was followed by the raising of the
siege of Corfu, and completed a year later by the taking of Belgrade.
For past articles in The Sanity of Sanctity, see Archives
Sadly, too many are unaware of the tremendous power of the heavenly weapon bestowed on St. Dominic Gusman for the specific purpose of putting down heresies. Since that time the Rosary has proven to be the ultimate artillery to turn back the enemy from Lepanto to Viena to countless other examples, a few of which Abbe Dom Prosper Gueranger treats in his short essay on the Feast of the Holy Rosary which still in his time was celebrated on the First Sunday of October, but in 1913 His Holiness Pope St. Pius X set the Double of the Second Class feast for October 7, the date of the victory at Lepanto and superseding the previous feast of Our Lady of Victory. Gueranger shows how the Church in her wisdom has mapped out the liturgical year in such perfect fashion which he explained his his marvelous fifteen volume masterpiece The Liturgical Year in Volume 14, pages 295-300. 
