Our Lady of the Rosary – Readings

Commentary on Acts 1:12-14; Luke 1:26-38

The Gospel reading from Luke is the account of the Annunciation, when Mary of Nazareth is asked by the Angel Gabriel to become the Mother of a child who will be the Son of God. Mary is quite taken aback by this request which she cannot reconcile with her present status. She is betrothed, that is, fully committed in marriage to Joseph, but they are not yet married and have not begun to live together. The angel assures Mary that the conception will take place by a special intervention through the Spirit of God.

Mary still does not fully understand, but putting her trust completely in the words of God’s Messenger, she accepts totally and unconditionally to the request:

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.

And at that very moment, the awesome happening we call the Incarnation, the ‘en-flesh-ment’ of the Son of God took place in the womb of Mary. Nothing would ever be the same again in the history of the world.

The First Reading, from the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, shows the disciples of Jesus returning to Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives after the Ascension. They went to the Upper Room where they had gathered with Jesus on the night before his Passion. All the Apostles are there with the obvious exception of Judas, who, overcome with guilt, had taken his own life.

But also among them were a number of women who had been companions of Jesus and among them was Mary. She would be with them, too, when the power of the Spirit of Jesus would come down on them giving them their mission to continue the work that Jesus had begun, the work of establishing the Kingdom of God on earth.

Today’s celebration invites all of us to meditate and pray on the events in Jesus’ life, following the example of Mary who was so specially involved with all of these events through her unique participation in the bringing the Son of God to live and work among us as one of us. We will identity with the Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious and Light mysteries of his life, which is the Source of our own life.

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Our Lady of the Rosary

Our Lady of the Rosary is a title of the Virgin Mary related to the prayer of the Rosary, whose origin has been attributed to an apparition of Our Lady to St Dominic in 1208 in the monastery church at Prouille, near Carcasonne in the south of France.

Pope Pius V instituted the feast of “Our Lady of Victory” to commemorate the naval victory of Don John of Austria over the Turkish fleet at Lepanto on 7 October, 1571, the first Sunday of the month. The victory was attributed to the help of the Mother of God, because a rosary procession had been offered on that day in St Peter’s Square in Rome for the success of the League in preventing Muslim forces from overrunning Western Europe. Two years later, at the request of the Dominican Order, Pope Gregory XIII, in 1573, allowed this feast to be kept in all churches which possessed an altar dedicated to the Holy Rosary. In 1671, the observance of the feast was extended by Pope Clement X to the whole of Spain.

Somewhat later, Pope Clement XII, following the victory over the Turks gained by Prince Eugene on 6 August, 1716 (the feast of our Lady of the Snows), at Peterwardein in Hungary, decreed that the Feast of the Rosary be celebrated by the whole Church on the first Sunday in October.

Pope Pius X changed the date to 7 October, and in 1969, Pope Paul VI changed the name of the feast to “Our Lady of the Rosary”. Today’s celebration invites all of us to meditate often on the mysteries of Jesus’ life.

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