The Catholic Defender: I promise salvation to those who embrace the Rosary

“And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

In the apparitions of Fatima, Our Lady asked the three shepherd children for the daily recitation of the Holy Rosary. What treasures does this devotion contain that makes it so pleasing to the Blessed Virgin?

St. Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort teaches that “Our Lady’s Psalter or the Rosary made up of the Our Father and Hail Mary is the direct work of the Most Blessed Trinity.

first, to honour the three persons of the Blessed Trinity;

second, to honour the life, death and glory of Jesus Christ;

third, to imitate the Church triumphant, to help the members of the Church militant, and to bring relief to the Church suffering;

fourth, to imitate the three groups into which the psalms are divided,

fifth, to give us graces in abundance during life, peace at death, and glory in eternity.”

the three groups

the first being for the purgative life,

the second for the illuminative life, and the

third for the unitive life;

the revelation that the Virgin herself made to Blessed Alan de la Roche: “after the holy sacrifice of the Mass, which is the first and most living memorial of our Lord’s passion, there was indeed no more excellent devotion or one of greater merit than that of the Rosary, which is like a second memorial and representation of the life and passion of Jesus Christ.”

Some examples of the Blessed who never abandoned the recitation of the Rosary, finding in it the strength for their virtue:

St. Francis de Sales,

St. Charles Borromeo,

St. Thomas of Villanova,

St. Ignatius of Loyola,

St. Francis of Borgia,

St. Teresa of Jesus and

St. Philip Neri among others.

Pius V, the Pope of the Rosary, who instituted on October 7 the feast of Our Lady of Victory in thanksgiving for the intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Battle of Lepanto; his successor, Gregory XII, dedicated the same day to Our Lady of the Rosary.