Why the rosary, why now? (I)

It’s easy for Catholics to take the rosary for granted. We tend to purchase them as souvenirs, or carry them around with us, or even wear them — but we forget the immense power that they have when we actually pray them. And that’s really too bad, because a devotion to the rosary can be the answer to so many struggles in our 21st-century world.

Our society today faces growing secularism and the disappearance of faith from the public square. We find ourselves confronting a world awash in the spread of evil and terrorism, war and violence. We are plagued by broken families, abounding distractions and a general lack of drive for holiness.

But the rosary can help. And we know this because Mary herself told us this 100 years ago in Fátima, Portugal, when she appeared six times to three shepherd children from May to October 1917. She told them repeatedly: “Recite the rosary every day to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war.” Sister Lucia dos Santos, the eldest Fatima seer whom the church just declared “venerable,” emphasized the message of Mary, who introduced herself to the children as “Our Lady of the Rosary,” throughout her long life.

We also know the great value of the rosary because it has manifested its power time and time again in the lives of men and women of faith throughout history. This, of course, isn’t because the rosary is magical; it’s because it brings us to Jesus. As the late Cardinal Francis E. George, archbishop of Chicago, said at the conclusion of the Year of the Rosary in 2003: The rosary “brings us to the heart of the Gospel.”

Gretchen R. Crowe, June 30, 2023

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