QUEEN OF THE MOST HOLY ROSARY

(1) MARY, your Holy Rosary is very important in my spiritual life. As a devotion of the Church it imprints a particular Catholic character upon my soul by constantly recalling to me the remembrance of Jesus and you. It expresses the three great phases in the work of our redemption—joy, sorrow, and glory. By saying the Rosary I desire to show my gratitude and love to Jesus and you, to praise God for the benefits of the Incarnation, to make reparation for the sins of the world, and to obtain grace and assistance for my soul and for all mankind.

According to your promises to your favorite children, the Rosary is a guarantee of your special protection and great graces, a happy death and eternal salvation. By the daily recitation of the Rosary may my own devotion to you grow more ardent, more earnest. Let no work prevent me from saying my beads. May my soul find rest, strength and refreshment in the joys, the sorrows, and the glories of my divine Lord, and you, His loving Mother. The fifteen mysteries form your crown. Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, may my Rosary lead me, crowned with an everlasting crown of glory, to your feet.

(2) MARY, through the prayer of the Rosary untold blessings have been showered down upon mankind throughout the ages. Through the Rosary today as in the past times of peril that have threatened civilization, you have again come to save mankind from the evils that overwhelm us.

But make your Rosary most salutary in bringing back homelife to its full splendor, by raising the family to a higher family circle where God is Father and you are Mother and we are all children of God. May the Rosary strengthen the unity of family life, so easily weakened by the modern way of living, and keep it from worldliness, and be a source of great blessing, the greatest of which is peace founded on love.

(3) MARY, in your apparitions you expressed a desire that we pray the Rosary. At Lourdes you appeared eighteen times and invited Bernadette to recite the Rosary with you. In each of the six apparitions at Fatima, you insisted on the recitation of the Rosary. You made your appearances with the Rosary in your hands and said, "I am the Lady of the Rosary, and I have come to warn the faithful to amend their lives and ask pardon for their sins. They must not continue to offend Our Lord who already is so deeply offended. They must say the Rosary."

You made known your Great Promise when you showed your Immaculate Heart to Lucy, the little shepherd girl of Fatima, and said, "I promise to assist at the hour of death with the graces necessary for salvation all those who on the first Saturday of five consecutive months go to confession and receive Holy Communion, say the Rosary and spend a quarter of an hour in meditation on the fifteen mysteries of the Rosary with the object of making reparation to me."

Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, you have been pleased to come to Lourdes and to Fatima to reveal to us the treasures of graces hidden in the recitation of the Rosary. Inspire our hearts with a sincere love of this devotion, in order that by meditating on the Mysteries of our Redemption that are recalled in it, we may gather its fruits and obtain blessings for soul and body, peace for the world, freedom for the Church, the conversion of sinners, and the salvation of our souls.

O God, Whose only-begotten Son by His life, death and Resurrection obtained for us the rewards of eternal salvation, grant, we beg of You, that meditating upon these mysteries in the most holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, we may both imitate what they contain, and obtain what they promise. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. (Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, Oct. 7)