It’s the Feast of Feast of the Holy Rosary, 2nd Class, with the color of White. In this episode: the meditation: “The Attitude of Those Invited to the Feast”, today’s news from the Church: “Ireland: Three Days in the Footsteps of St. Declan”, and today’s thought from the Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre.
Have feedback or questions about the DD or our other shows? podcast@sspx.org
Sources Used Today:
- “The Attitude of Those Invited to the Feast” — From the Assumption to Advent
- “Ireland: Three Days in the Footsteps of St. Declan” (FSSPX.news)
- The Spiritual Life — Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre (Angelus Press)
The Feast of the Most Holy Rosary on October 7 is famously connected with the Christian victory at Lepanto in 1571, when Pope Saint Pius V asked Catholics throughout Europe to pray the Rosary for the Christian fleet.
But that’s only one chapter in a much larger story.
For centuries, Catholics have turned to the Rosary during moments when things seemed almost hopeless.
One of the strangest examples comes from nineteenth-century Italy and a man named Bartolo Longo.
Longo had grown up Catholic but drifted badly during his university years. He became involved in occultism and eventually described himself as having been ordained a satanic priest. His life became increasingly miserable until friends helped bring him back to the Catholic faith.
Even after his conversion, though, Longo was haunted by his past.
Then one day, while walking near Pompeii, he remembered words a priest had told him: “If you seek salvation, spread the Rosary.”
So he did.
Longo spent the rest of his life promoting the Rosary, building the great Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary at Pompeii, helping orphans and the children of prisoners, and turning a place associated with ancient paganism into one of the world’s great Marian pilgrimage sites.
The former occultist eventually became Blessed Bartolo Longo.
Then there is Fatima.
In 1917, Our Lady appeared to three shepherd children in Portugal and repeatedly asked them to pray the Rosary every day. At her final apparition on October 13, she identified herself as Our Lady of the Rosary.
But perhaps one of the most remarkable modern Rosary stories comes from Hiroshima.
When the atomic bomb exploded over the city in 1945, a small community of Jesuit priests was living only several blocks from the center of the blast. Their rectory was damaged, but the priests survived. One of them, Father Hubert Schiffer, later spoke publicly about their survival and said they believed they had been protected because they were living the message of Fatima and praying the Rosary daily.
Their survival has sometimes accumulated exaggerated details in retellings, so we should be careful about turning it into a scientific proof of a miracle.
But the priests themselves knew what they believed.
They credited Our Lady.
And that’s really what makes the Rosary’s history so fascinating.
It appears in enormous historical events like Lepanto.
It appears in apparitions like Fatima.
It appears in the conversion of a former occultist at Pompeii.
And it appears much more quietly beside hospital beds, in prison cells, around family tables, and in the hands of Catholics facing things they simply don’t know how to fix.
The Rosary doesn’t promise that every battle ends the way we want.
It gives us something to do when we’ve reached the point where there is nothing left to do except place the situation in God’s hands.
One bead.
One Hail Mary.
And then another.
Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary, refuge in every trial and Mother who always leads us to Christ, pray for us.
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