Genesis 2:18-24 / Hebrews 2:9-11 / Mark 10:2-16
The month of October can be called a “spiritual” month, and it is spiritually inspiring as well as spiritually exciting.
October began with the feast of St. Therese “The Little Flower” who taught us the spirituality of doing little things with great love.
Following that, is the feast of the Guardian Angels, and it is comforting to know that each of us have a “PA” – Personal Angel, to light and guard, to rule and guide us.
And then towards the end of the month is the feast of one of our favourite saints, St. Jude, the Patron Saint of desperate cases.
But besides being dotted with the feast days of great saints, the month of October has a special dedication. The Church dedicates the month of October to Our Lady under the title of “Our Lady of the Rosary”.
Today is the 7th October, and if it is not a Sunday, it would be celebrated as the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
This feast has its origins in the year 1571, when on this day, the small and outnumbered Christian fleet defeated the mighty Ottoman armada at the Gulf of Lepanto, thus stopping the invasion of Europe by the Ottoman empire.
That victory was dubbed as miraculous and credited to the intercession of Our Lady, as the Pope at that time, Pope Pius V, called for a Rosary Crusade to help the Christian fleet. It was said that the Christian soldiers fought with swords on one hand and rosaries on the other.
Hence the 7th October was dedicated to Our Lady and later it became the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and then later the whole month of October became known as the Rosary Month.
It is obvious that the Church is telling us something about the power of the prayer of the Rosary. It is simple enough even for children to pray it, and at the same time, it has the depth for those who wish to deepen their spiritual life.
But as much as the Rosary is a simple prayer, at the same time, it is also one of the most difficult prayers. We cannot assume that simple equates to easy. In fact simple can be difficult and challenging.
For those of us who have prayed the Rosary, we know how difficult and challenging it can be. The simplicity can turn into monotony and a lethargy, and we begin to think that nothing is happening and we can find it boring.
But the monotony of the Rosary has a calming effect and gives our tired hearts and minds the peace and rest that we long for.
At the same time, the prayer is also slowly etched and seared into our hearts. For those of us who have prayed the Rosary long enough, we can already pray it by heart. Yes, the Rosary is already etched and seared into our hearts.
A priest was sharing his vocation story. As a cradle-Catholic, he went through Catechism classes and all that, but dropped out of Church in the late teens and early 20s. (it’s the usual case with cradle-Catholics)
He went on the wild side and was having a time of his life when he “hit the wall” and everything started to crumble with one setback after another.
Feeling lost and afraid, he decided to go back to the religion of his childhood days, and he went to a church and tried to pray. But he was just too tired and disappointed to pray.
Then he heard the Rosary being prayed and then he remembered those early years when his family prayed the Rosary every evening and he was surprised that he could still remember the prayers. Well, it was the beginnings of the stirrings that led him eventually to the priesthood.
But that was because the Rosary was already etched and seared into his heart during his childhood days.
That’s why it is so necessary to teach our children and our youth to pray the Rosary (whether they like it or not!) We must give them the means of prayer, so that in the time of crisis, they will know how to go back to God.
Some have argued that teaching young children to rattle off the prayers is nonsensical and meaningless. Well, besides the etching and searing effect of the Rosary prayer, there is another spiritual effect.
In Psalm 8, there is this verse: Your majesty is praised above the heavens; on the lips of children and of babes, You have found praise to foil Your enemy, and to silence the foe and the rebel.
Yes, the prayers of children and of babes are heard by God, and brings about blessings and protection for us when we teach them to pray the Rosary.
As Jesus said in the gospel, it is to the little children that the kingdom of God belongs.
Well, the Rosary brought about a miraculous victory in 1571; it will also do the same for us now. Not just only for us, but also for the Church and for the world.
Well, we know that the Church and the world are in quite a messy state.
That is why Pope Francis is calling for a “Special Prayer Campaign for the Church” for the whole month of October, with a great emphasis on the prayer of the Rosary.
He is calling on us to pray for the protection of the Church from the attacks of the devil, as well as for forgiveness and healing for the sins of the Church and to fight abuse.
And we also need to pray for the sanctity of marriages and for the unity of families. As Jesus said in the gospel, we need to go back to “the beginning”.
Yes, we need to go back to the beginning, back to our faith origins, and begin to pray, especially the Rosary, whether as an individual, as a family or as a community.
As Pope Francis said: This is our power; not to dominate or to cry out more loudly according to the logic of this world, but rather to exercise the gentle power of prayer.
Yes, let us begin to pray, let us pray the Rosary, and God’s protection and blessings will be upon us.