14- OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY.
Since Jesus was still preaching, when people recognized His greatness and power, they loved His mother: "Blessed is the womb that bore you, and blessed are the breasts that nursed you." After Jesus and Mary ascended to heaven, the Church was also enlightened and guided to know and love Mary, and the more we HAVE, the more we are GIVEN, so the Hail Mary was completed around the 11th century, recited many times and counted by strings of beads.
In the 13th century, the Albigensians attacked the Church with all kinds of tricks. Saint Dominic, thanks to his love for Mary and his ardent love and concern for the Church, was taught the Rosary by Mary. The saint made great efforts to preach and spread the Rosary and the believers responded, calling on the Virgin Mary with the Rosary, so heresy and all evils were miraculously eliminated, from then on the Rosary was closely associated with the Church, the more the Church received miraculous graces from the Rosary, the more She believed, venerated and prayed to the Virgin Mary with the Rosary.
In the 16th century, the Turkish Muslim king with his powerful army sent troops to destroy the Church. Relying on the Rosary, the Catholic army defeated the very powerful Turkish army, thanks to the Virgin Mary's miracle in the battle on October 7, 1571. Pope Gregory allowed the celebration of the Mass commemorating this day in some churches.
In 1716, again relying on the Rosary, King Charles VI defeated the Saracens, and from then on Pope Clement II ordered the whole Church to celebrate the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on October 7 every year.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the world was threatened by powers, factions, strange and evil doctrines and sinister plots that would destroy the world and the Church. Our Lady appeared to three holy children Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta in Fatima, Portugal, a total of 6 times on the 13th, from May 13, 1917 to October 13, 1917. Our Lady promised to save her children's souls and bodies, to heal the Church and the whole world if we follow her three commands:
-REPENT AND IMPROVE OUR LIFE.
-ADORATE AND MAKE REPENTANCE TO THE HEART OF OUR LADY.
-PRAY THE ROSARY.
Just as the people of Nineveh repented and escaped the wrath of God, so after the Virgin Mary appeared at Fatima, the Church also repented, venerated and made reparation to the Heart of the Virgin Mary and competed to pray the Rosary in a fervent and vibrant movement throughout the world, so the Virgin Mary intervened to save the Church and the whole world from many terrible disasters and hardships. In Portugal, where the Virgin Mary appeared, their government had previously advocated the destruction of all Catholicism, but after the Virgin Mary appeared and her advice was carried out, the whole country and its authorities repented in a very strange way: they loved and venerated, and dedicated the whole country to the Virgin Mary.
Russia and Eastern Europe escaped the Communist disaster with surprising ease after Pope John Paul II officially dedicated Russia to the Virgin Mary according to the ritual she had taught through Sister Lucia. These are typical events of the great and miraculous results of the Rosary, and there are so many miraculous graces that Our Lady has bestowed through the Rosary that cannot be counted. All those who fervently pray the Rosary clearly see the benefits of the Rosary. In fact, if those who pray to Our Lady with the Rosary do not receive obvious daily benefits, then few people will persevere in praying the Rosary. On the contrary, people are passionate about praying the Rosary more and more and with better quality, because those who pray to Our Lady with the Rosary always receive abundant graces for both body and soul.
Before and after the Fatima event, Our Lady advised many times to pray the Rosary, many messages from Our Lady through the saints about the Rosary, there were hundreds of messages from Popes instructing the use of the Rosary, along with countless calls from the Church's dignitaries, thousands of books, articles, praising and promoting the Rosary. The above is just a brief summary of the origin of the Rosary. So is the way the Church prays through Our Lady and the saints, especially the Rosary, reasonable, lawful and pleasing to God?
Jesus advised his disciples many times to pray: "Be alert and pray always", "Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you." Therefore, the Church relies on prayer, constant prayer, praying for everything, because the Church is a community of prayer, without prayer the Church cannot exist, without prayer the Church is no longer the Church.
The Church's ways of praying include the Holy Mass, Eucharistic adoration, the Stations of the Cross, the Rosary, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, Eucharistic reparation, reading the Word of God, contemplation, processions, retreats, pilgrimages, confession, fasting, abstinence from physical work, sharing... We see the Church using rituals, words of praise and thanksgiving to God, meditations, sacrifices, penance, and repentance as offerings to ask for God's salvation, to implore Him for the necessary spiritual and material graces, and to thank God for all the blessings He has given us.
But there are opinions that the way the Church prays is cumbersome, formalistic, heavy on prayers, too formulaic, using the Lord's words as an excuse: "Go into your room, close the door, and pray." Or "Do not babble like the pagans."
In fact, people do not read further and read carefully to understand that Jesus does not want us to be hypocritical, just to show off to be praised by the world as virtuous, because that would be without any merit. But what do we see in the Gospel of John Chapter 12, 1-8 that near the day of Jesus' suffering, at the feast in Bethany, Mary took a pound of pure nard perfume, poured it on Jesus' feet, and then wiped His feet with her hair. Judas Iscariot protested: What a waste, why not sell the bottle of perfume for three hundred denarii and give it to the poor, but Jesus said: "Leave her alone, that she may have some for the day of my burial, for the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me." Or when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the people took branches of palm trees to welcome him, spread their cloaks on the road for him and joyfully praised: "Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, peace in heaven and glory in the highest." Immediately in the crowd some of the scribes objected, asking Jesus to tell them to stop immediately, but what did Jesus say?: "I tell you, if they were silent, these stones would cry out." Then when the children shouted in the Temple: "Hosanna to the Son of David!" The scribes said to Jesus: "Do you hear what they are saying?" He replied, "Yes, but have you never read: 'I will put praise on the lips of children and infants?'" Once, when the Lord healed ten lepers at once, one of them was a Samaritan who returned to thank the Lord, the Lord was very pleased and reproached the other nine. This is evidence that the more solemn and majestic the words of praise, thanksgiving, and the rituals of the Church are, the more pleasing to the Lord, because in the past, the Jewish people only wanted Jesus to be their king, and there were such respectful rituals and beautiful words of praise, let alone the Church worshiping the Lord as the Lord of heaven and earth, no matter how solemn the Church's worship rituals are, they cannot be called worthy of the Lord's great glory.
As for the scriptures, the Church does not violate the Lord's words but does them very correctly, because let's see when the apostles asked the Lord to teach them to pray, Jesus taught them the Lord's Prayer.
The first part of the Lord's Prayer is:
-OUR FATHER, WHO ART IN HEAVEN- HALLOWED BE THY NAME- THY KINGDOM COME- THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. : This praise and blessing is very noble and pleasing to God, because He can only glorify Himself in His spiritual world, but on earth, because of the Law of "WHO HAS, MORE WILL BE GIVEN", God must wait for us to join in prayer, so that through that merit, God will glorify His name on earth. And God's will to be done in this world also requires us to ask for it, then God will GIVE. That is the most precious gift we offer to God to ask Him to grant us important graces for our souls and bodies in the following part:
-GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD: May our souls be nourished by the true Flesh and Blood of Jesus Christ, which is also the Flesh and Blood of the Trinity, by practicing the Word of God, praying the Holy Mass, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the Rosary, keeping the virtues...
-AND FORGIVE OUR TRESPASSES AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASSED AGAINST US: May God help us to forgive anyone who causes us difficulties and sorrows, big or small, so that we may be forgiven by God for our shortcomings and mistakes: "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you."
-PLEASE DO NOT LET US FALL INTO TEMPTATION: Please God, keep us from being greedy for money, greedy for fame, passionate about sex, and committing sins that displease You.
-BUT SAVE US FROM EVIL. AMEN: Please God, save us from hunger, thirst, cold, illness, accidents, robberies, wars, earthquakes, floods, droughts.
The content of the Lord's Prayer, the more we meditate on it, the more precious, noble and necessary it becomes, and only God's wisdom can create it so completely.
The form of the Lord's Prayer shows that the Church's way of praying is completely pleasing and in accordance with God's will as using rituals, words of praise, meditations, sacrifices, offerings to God, thank and beg God for help for the soul and body.
The Lord's Prayer also teaches us how to put it into writing, into a prayer to pray because:
-First, the Church's scriptures often rely on extracts from the Bible to praise and thank God. This method cannot be called lengthy compared to directly reading the Bible, because the prayers have all been studied very carefully and extracted the most important, necessary and meaningful passages in the Bible.
Second, the scriptures both praise, worship, and thank God, and also ask God to help with every single thing, every single place, every single time. This point is to follow the way Jesus did: He set an example of praying, and thanking God the Father, loudly in front of the disciples, when He and they encountered good fortune as well as hardships and challenges, when He and the apostles were happy as well as sad. Let's look carefully at the Bible to see how Jesus prayed? Did He often offer words of praise, thanksgiving, and offerings to God the Father to ask for help? And Jesus also mentioned difficulties like when He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane to ask God the Father to remove evil if possible, but He did not always recite the Lord's Prayer.
Third, the Church's scriptures plus the liturgical schedule: hour, day, week, month, season, year, so that all famlies, Parishes, Dioceses, Countries and the whole Church can unite and communicate because the Lord taught: Mt 18, 19-20: "Truly I tell you, if two of you on earth agree to ask anything, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them." So, the communion through scriptures to pray from the family, from the parish is already pleasing to God, so when we pray with rituals, ceremonies, scriptures, schedules. With the intention of communicating with the universal Church, the Saints in heaven and the souls in purgatory then how much more pleasing to God. Therefore, the Church's prayers are a hundred times more beneficial. In fact, without prayers, prayer is lost and vague, the tongue does not speak, the mind goes into long-winded babbling, so which way is more in accordance with God's will?
As for our respect, love, trust, and prayers to the Virgin Mary and the saints, they are not wrong, not contrary to the religion, they do not obscure the image of God, but are very pleasing to Him, because all prayers to the Virgin Mary and the saints are directed to God, relying on the Virgin Mary and the saints to intercede for us through their merits. And because God rewards the Virgin Mary and the saints with power and titles in heaven, God Himself wants us to receive benefits through relying on the Virgin Mary and the saints to glorify them. Prayers to the Virgin Mary and the saints, just like the way Jesus taught in the Our Father, consist of two parts: The first part is to praise and glorify the merits of the Virgin Mary or the saints, as an offering to ask the Virgin Mary or the saints to intercede for God's graces for us in the latter part of each prayer.
-As for the Rosary.
The Rosary also has the same character and purpose as above, which is to use rituals, words of praise and blessing to God and the Virgin Mary, sacrifices, penance, and reparation, as offerings to God and the Virgin Mary to ask for help for body and soul. Because the Rosary includes:
-The meditations: are prayers to contemplate the mysteries of Jesus' salvation and the very important participation of the Virgin Mary, so that we can respect, thank, praise and imitate them, and make offerings to God and the Virgin Mary.
-The Lord's Prayer: As mentioned above, it is a very precious and noble prayer taught by Jesus himself, to praise, glorify, thank and implore God's grace.
-The Hail Mary: is recited ten times after each meditation and the Lord's Prayer. The Hail Mary was completed around the 11th century. It is the merit of the Church for having sincerely trusted in the Virgin Mary, so she gave it to us. The Hail Mary's invocation is a blessing and praise to the Virgin Mary, taken from the Bible, the words of the Angel Gabriel: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you" and is combined with the blessing of Saint Elizabeth: "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb." Those two verses of Scripture form a blessing of praise to our Blessed Mother. It is an extremely precious blessing, which no other gift in the world can compare to. Each of those blessings, when we recite them with devotion, becomes a sacred flower as an offering to Our Lady to ask for her help and protection.
The second part of the Hail Mary: The first verse is both a blessing and a prayer of ours in the name of Mary, Mother of God: "Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen." to ask Our Lady to use her merits as Mother of God to intercede for us from our physical and spiritual sufferings, and the more important grace is to help us at the hour of our death.
- Glory Be: Prayer of praise, blessing and adoration to the Trinity: "Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.": We pray for God to glorify His name on earth, because God has the absolute power to glorify His name in heaven, and on earth, because of the Law of "WHO HAS, MORE WILL BE GIVEN", we must praise and pray, so that through that merit God will glorify His name on earth. The extremely noble praise and prayer of the Glory Be is often combined with the Our Father and the Hail Mary, forming a precious offering to implore God's grace.
- Finally, the Fatima prayer, the prayer taught by the Virgin Mary to the three children when she appeared at Fatima: "O Jesus, forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of God's mercy." This prayer is extremely urgent, it is the greatest concern of Our Lady for her children.
Just very simply in the form of twenty prayers of contemplation, after each prayer of contemplation is an Our Father, ten Hail Marys, a Glory Be, and finally the Fatima prayer that the Rosary becomes a very effective form and means to ask for God's grace. These are words of praise and blessing, meditations for repentance, virtuous actions, mortification of the flesh. They are offerings to God and the Virgin Mary to ask for help.
As one of the ways of praying of the Church, the Rosary has many advantages:
- The Rosary was taught by the Virgin Mary and promised to help all those who call upon her, to help families, villages, regions, the whole Church and the whole world.
- The effectiveness of the Rosary is very obvious, many hardships that seem incurable even though we have plenty of talent and money, but when we call upon the Virgin Mary with the Rosary, we are miraculously saved.
-Anyone who diligently prays the Rosary will receive extraordinary blessings, be protected from all worries and fears such as storms, fires, floods, earthquakes, robberies, chaos...
-The Rosary helps us to get rid of the worries of every day of our lives.
-The Rosary helps us to recognize the mistakes in life as well as our bad habits, so that we can cultivate our character and virtues.
-The Rosary can be recited anywhere: at church, chapel, at home, when waking up, on the road, at work, at rest, before bedtime, in bed...
-The Rosary can be recited together, individually, in turns, during processions, during Eucharistic adoration...
-The Rosary can be used to pray for any purpose: praying for health, peace, obedient children living the faith, for husbands not indulge in drugs and alcohol, for wifes not gamble. Pray for a healthy society, for sinners to repent, for people to know God, for souls in purgatory.
-The Rosary is an extremely convenient means to atone for sins, to make up for the abundance of life; to have leisure and prosperity in life, and to make it our capital in Heaven.
Let's look clearly at the form and content of the Rosary to see that we respect, trust and rely on the Virgin Mary so that she can help, protect and lead us to God. Those who pray the Rosary are worshiping, praising, thanking and praying for God's grace with the Virgin Mary.
2003
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