Christ the Cornerstone
Turn to Mary and embrace the rosary this month
(En Espanol)
As we begin October, the month dedicated to the Holy Rosary, I invite you to pray the Rosary every day for peace in the world. … The Rosary is one of the most powerful devotions entrusted to us by Our Lady, and in these turbulent times, it remains a sure path to peace, conversion, and deeper love of Christ. (Pope Leo XIV)
On October 7, the Church invited us to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary as Our Lady of the Rosary. The Rosary is a distinctly Marian prayer, but its focus is the life, death, resurrection and glorious Ascension of Jesus Christ into heaven.
Through Mary’s eyes, we Catholics meditate on the mysteries of our faith. The Rosary includes biblical events such as the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost. It invites us to enter into these sacred events with Mary and all the angels and saints who worship God in and through this profound, meditative prayer.
Mary is honored because she is the Mother of Jesus, Mother of the Church, and a model of faith and holiness for all missionary disciples of her Son, Jesus. The Magnificat, which is sung daily in the Church’s evening prayer, records her prophecy: “All generations will call me blessed” (Lk 1:48), and Jesus gives Mary as a mother to the beloved disciple, symbolizing her maternal relationship to us and to all believers (Jn 19:27).
The Church’s devotion to Mary is rooted in ancient Christian tradition. Mary appears in early Christian art as a woman of prayer and as an intercessor, and the Church Fathers recognized her as the “new Eve,” whose obedience cooperated with God’s plan of salvation. Veneration of Mary is not meant to distance her from Christ, but to contemplate how God worked through her humble “yes” and how she continues to guide Christians toward her Divine Son.
Pope Leo XIV is following in the footsteps of his predecessor Pope Leo XIII in his love and promotion of the Holy Rosary. Leo XIII served as pope from 1878 to 1903. During this time, he penned no less than 12 encyclicals on the Rosary. Although Pope Leo XIV has served as Successor of St. Peter for less than 18 months, he has mentioned this time-honored Marian devotion frequently, and he has requested that all who seek to follow Jesus commit to praying the Rosary daily with great fidelity and devotion.
Pope Leo is deeply grieved by the increasingly violent wars that affect so many people today, in Ukraine, in the Holy Land and in many other regions of the world. He deplores the many ways that warfare impacts families and nations, and he insists that the Rosary is a “daily antidote to the poison of noise, despair and spiritual indifference.” Our Holy Father regularly calls for a slow and deliberate praying of the Rosary “thought by thought, bead by bead,” and he emphasizes that praying the Rosary is a pathway to peace.
Last May, in his catechesis on the Second Vatican Council’s teaching in “Lumen Gentium” on the Virgin Mary as a model of the Church, Pope Leo said:
“Let us be challenged, therefore, by the sublime model who is Mary, Virgin and Mother, and let us ask Her to help us, through Her intercession, to respond to what is asked of us through Her example: Do I live my participation of the Church with humble and active faith? Do I recognize in her the community of the covenant that God has given me to respond to His infinite love? Do I feel that I am a living part of the Church, in obedience to the pastors given by God? Do I look to Mary as a model, an outstanding member and Mother of the Church, and ask Her to help me be a faithful disciple of her Son?”
And, we might add, “Do I pray the Rosary—both alone and with my family—as a way of contemplating the mysteries of faith in Jesus Christ my Redeemer?
In these turbulent times, especially during the month of October, we should take seriously the admonition of Pope Leo XIV that the Holy Rosary is “a sure path to peace, conversion, and deeper love of Christ.”
Let’s not hesitate to turn to Mary, Our Lady of the Rosary, for her guidance, encouragement and intercession in our daily lives and in times of trouble. “Mary is the mother of the whole Church,” our Holy Father says. “We can turn to her with filial confidence, in the certainty of being heard, protected and loved.”
Let’s honor our Blessed Mother by praying the Rosary as a pathway to peace, conversion and a deeper love of Christ. †