October 7th was the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. Last year I wrote up a detailed post on the history of the feast day, how it was originally called the Feast of Our Lady of Victory and linked to the Battle of Lepanto. Read that post because it was very informative.
I know it’s a few weeks late but I took the pictures and I want to post them. The pastor at our parish, Fr. Eugene, loves sacramental and seems to have an affinity for statues and relics. When the feast day of a particular saint comes around, Fr. Eugene will set up a statue of that saint off to the left side of the altar decorated with flowers. Now this year for Our Lady of the Rosary he set up a small statue of the Blessed Mother handing St. Dominic a rosary.
Before I get to the pictures, let me tell of the legend of how we got the rosary. In 1208, it was held that St. Dominic prayed to the Virgin Mary for help in overcoming the Albigensian heresy in southern France and she in a vision gave him the rosary. From John Roskoski at Catholic365:
It was during this time
that the tradition of the Rosary comes to us. The form in which it has come
down to us will best be stated in the words of P. Corneluis de Snecka, a
disciple of the French Dominican Alan de la Roche:
We read that at the time
when he was preaching to the Albigenses, St. Dominic at first obtained but
scanty success: and that one day, complaining of this in pious prayer to our
Blessed Lady, she deigned to reply to him, saying: ’Wonder not that you have
obtained so little fruit by your labors, you have spent them on barren soil,
not yet watered with the dew of Divine grace. When God willed to renew the face
of the earth, He began by sending down on it the fertilizing rain of the
Angelic Salutation. Therefore, preach my Psalter composed of 150 Angelic
Salutations and 15 Our Fathers, and you will obtain an abundant harvest.’
The place of the revelation was the church of Prouille and the time was 1208. The claim of place and time are most strongly supported by the tradition of the Dominican Order. Pope Leo XIII affirmed over and over the Dominican origin of the Rosary and in a letter to the Bishop of Carcassone (1889), he accepts the tradition of Prouille as the place where the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to St. Dominic, revealing this devotion. The tradition that Mary first revealed the Rosary devotion to St. Dominic is supported by 13 popes. St. Dominic went into the villages of the heretics, gathered the people, and preached to them the mysteries of salvation – the Incarnation, the Redemption, Eternal Life. As the Holy Virgin had taught him to do, he distinguished the different kinds of mysteries and after each short instruction he had ten Hail Marys recited. St. Dominic found great success in this new devotion, bringing about the conversion of the Albigensians.
Well, it is a disputed story, but we Dominicans believe it.
Here
is a picture of the statue at my parish, St. Rita’s Church in Staten Island, NY,
and then a zoomed in picture.
Afterwards I asked Fr. Eugene where that statue was normally placed. I had never seen it before. He said it was in his office. I found that strange. Fr. Eugene is a Lay Carmelite. Why would he have a statue f St. Dominic in his office? Then I remembered. St. Rita many years back had a chapter of Dominican Sisters at the parish, teaching at the parish school.
Well,
it made my Dominican heart jump for joy when I saw it at Mass.
