Mary, Mother of God

… October: Month of the Holy Rosary

Rev. Matthew R. Mauriello…The Mary Page.com
The month of October each year is dedicated to the Most Holy Rosary. This is primarily due to the fact that the liturgical feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated annually on October 7th. It was instituted to honor the Blessed Virgin Mary in gratitude for the protection that she gives the Church in answer to the praying of the Rosary by the faithful.

The feast was introduced by Pope St. Pius V (1504-1572) in the year 1571 to commemorate the miraculous victory of the Christian forces in the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. The pope attributed more to the “arms” of the Rosary than the power of cannons and the valor of the soldiers who fought there.

Legend tells us that the Rosary as a form of prayer was given to St. Dominic (1170- 1221) by Mary, the Mother of Our Lord, who entrusted it to him as an aid in the conflicts with the Albigensians. The Dominican pope, St. Pius V, did much to further the spread of the Rosary and it thereafter became one of the most popular devotions in Christendom. It was the same Pope St. Pius V, who in 1569 officially approved the Rosary in its present form with the Papal Bull, CONSUEVERUNT ROMANI PONTIFICES. It had been completed by the addition of the second half of the “Hail Mary” and the “Glory be to the Father” at the conclusion of each mystery.

Current scholarship traces the development of the Rosary to the High Middle Ages where it came into being in various medieval monasteries as a substitute for the Divine Office for the lay monks and devout lay persons who did not know how to read. Instead of the 150 psalms, they would pray 150 “Our Fathers” counting them on a ring of beads known as the crown or “corona.” With the growth of popularity of Marian devotion in the twelfth century, the “Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary” developed now substituting 150 “Hail Marys” in place of the “Our Fathers.”

The 150 “Hail Marys”, were subsequently subdivided into 15 decades by the young Dominican friar; Henry Kalkar (1328-1408), with each decade referring to an event in the life of Jesus and Mary. The Dominican, Alanus de Rupe (1428-1478) further divided the episodes in the history of salvation into the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. He also attributed the origin of the Rosary, then known as the “Psalter of the Blessed Virgin” to St. Dominic and thus spurred the Dominican Order to make the Apostolate of the Rosary their special concern. The Dominicans have, since then, promulgated the Rosary with notable results.

The practice of dedicating the entire month of October to the Holy Rosary developed toward the end of the last century. Pope Leo XIII (papacy: 1878-1903) strongly promoted the increase of devotion to the Blessed Mother by encouraging the constant use of the Rosary.

Beginning on September 1, 1883, with SUPREMO APOSTOLATUS OFFICIO, he wrote a total of eleven encyclicals on the Rosary , ending with DIUTURNI TEMPORIS in 1898. We are currently celebrating the centennial of these papal encyclicals.

Many other popes have contributed to help increase devotion to the Rosary by their writings. In the recent past, Pope Paul VI ( papacy: 1963-1978) devoted the last section of his Apostolic Exhortation MARIALIS CULTUS to the Angelus and the Rosary (MC 40-55). In this document, he wrote that “the Rosary retains an unaltered value and intact freshness.” (MC, 41)
The Rosary is primarily a scriptural prayer. This can be summarized by the traditional phrase used by Pope Pius XII (papacy: 1939-1958) that the Rosary is ” a compendium of the entire Gospel” (AAS 38 [1946] p. 419). The Rosary draws its mysteries from the New Testament and is centered on the great events of the Incarnation and Redemption.

John Paul II called the Rosary his favorite prayer, in which we meditate with Mary upon the mysteries which she as a mother meditated on in her heart (Lk. 2:19) (Osservatore Romano, 44; 30 Oct. 1979).
In this month of October, let us consider this beautiful prayer of the Rosary as a means that we too can use in order to draw closer to Jesus and Mary by meditating on the great mysteries of our salvation.
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The above article appeared in the Fairfield County Catholic January 1996. Reprinted with permission of the author and publisher
The Mary Page has several resources on the Rosary.
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The “54-day Rosary Novena” is an uninterrupted series of Rosaries in honor of Our Lady, revealed to the incurably sick Fortuna Agrelli by Our Lady of Pompeii at Naples in 1884. For thirteen months Fortuna Agrelli had endured dreadful sufferings and torturous cramps; she had been given up by the most celebrated physicians.

On February 16, 1884, the afflicted girl and her relatives commenced a novena of Rosaries. The Queen of the Holy Rosary favored her with an apparition on March 3rd. Mary, sitting upon a high throne, surrounded by luminous figures, held the divine Child on her lap, and in her hand a Rosary. The Virgin Mother and the holy Infant were clad in gold-embroidered garments; they were accompanied by Saints. Dominic and . Catherine of Siena. The throne was profusely decorated with flowers; the beauty of Our Lady was marvelous. Blessed Virgin said: “Child, thou has invoked me by various titles and hast always obtained favors from me. Now, since thou hast called me by that title so pleasing to me, ‘Queen of the Holy Rosary,’ I can no longer refuse the favor thou dost petition; for this name is most precious and dear to me. Make three novenas, and thou shalt obtain all.”

Once more the Queen of the Holy Rosary appeared to her and said, ” Whoever desires to obtain favors from me should make three novenas of the prayers of the Rosary, and three novenas in thanksgiving.”

The Novena consists of five decades of the Rosary each day for twenty-seven days in petition; then immediately five decades each day for twenty-seven days in thanksgiving, whether or not the request has been granted. The meditations vary from day to day. Now with the new mysteries the table is changed. On the first day meditate on the Joyful Mysteries; on the second day the Light Mysteries; on the third day the sorrowful Mysteries; on the fourth day meditate again on the glorious Mysteries; and so on throughout the fifty-four days.

A laborious Novena; but, a Novena of Love. You who are sincere will not find it too difficult, if you really wish to obtain your request

Below is a table to assist you in making the novena

novenas of PETITION

novenas of THANKSGIVING

Mary - “Mother of God” (I think that it is a good thing to go over the information listed below; even though I may have presented it several times in the past in a different way…adelamaria)

The title “Mother of God” is not found as such in the writings of the New Testament. The first known mention is that of Saint Hippolytus of Rome (d. 235). Later, Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople (428), will dispute the attribution of this title to Mary because of his views on Christology. For him, the Son of God is one thing, the son of Mary another, in the sense that he sees in Christ two Persons: one Divine (the Logos), the other human (Jesus). Consequently for Nestorius, Mary cannot be called “theotokos” (Mother of God), at least in the real sense demanded by the hypostatic union (the union of two natures, the human and the Divine, in the one Person of the Word).

The Council of Ephesus (431) defends this unicity of person in Christ and condemns Nestorius and his followers. It approves, by acclamation, the second letter of Saint Cyril to Nestorius and through this approval officially confirms the attribution to Mary of the title Mother of God. The normative decision taken at Ephesus; will be explicitly promulgated as dogma in 451 by the Council of Chalcedon.

Thus, the title of Mother of God derives from Catholic teaching on the Incarnation of the Word. Mary conceives and brings forth, in His human nature, One Who is God from all eternity. Jesus is not God by the fact that He is conceived or born of Mary (this would not be a Mystery but an absurdity because it would make Mary mother of the Divine nature). Mary is Mother of God because from her own flesh she gives to the Word a human nature like hers. And just as in ordinary human generation, the truth of the parents’ generative action is not the human nature produced but the person subsisting in this nature, so in the case of Mary: her maternal action reaches to the Person of the Word, Who by this very fact is truly her Son. Mary is “theotokos” because “the Word was made flesh” in her and through her.

Let me draw three simple theological conclusions from Mary’s Divine Motherhood:

Mary’s divine motherhood says something about Mary’s virginity:
In order that the body of Christ might be shown to be a real body, he was born of a woman; but in order that his Godhead might be made clear, he was born of a virgin.

St. Thomas Aquinas
It says something about Mary’s role in salvation.
Nor was Mary less than was befitting the Mother of Christ. When the apostles fled, she stood before the Cross and with reverent gaze beheld her son’s wounds, for she waited not for her child’s death, but the world’s salvation.
St. Ambrose
Finally, Mary’s divine motherhood says something about the role of the Church.
Born of the Father, Christ created his mother; formed as man in his mother, he glorified his Father. He, the son of Mary and the spouse of holy Church, has made the Church like to his mother, since he made it a mother for us and he kept it a virgin for himself. The Church, like Mary, has inviolate integrity and incorrupt fecundity. What Mary merited physically the Church has guarded spiritually, with the exception that Mary brought forth only one child while the Church has many children destined to be gathered into one body.
St. Augustine of Hippo
On a different level, close to our own concerns and spiritual endeavor, here is what St. Silouan had to say about Mary’s love of God:
We cannot fathom the depth of the love of the Mother of God, but this we know:
The greater the love, the greater the sufferings of the soul.
The fuller the love, the fuller the knowledge of God.
The more ardent the love, the more fervent the prayer.
The more perfect the love, the holier the life.
St. Silouan
A holy life can be many things. At the beginning of a new year it could and should mean the sanctification of time. Time is a precious commodity. It should also be a holy commodity. As someone remarked: “Twenty-five years ago, people were asking, ‘How can I get to heaven?’ Today they are asking, ‘How can I get through the day?’”

In this context, the digital clock takes on the deeper meaning of disconnectedness. Digital clocks tell us what time it is now. They don’t tell us about the past or about the future like a watch that has a face on it. It simply describes the present, right now. To that extent it becomes a metaphor for the Now Generation: no past, no future. Only now. People become what we call “digital livers.” They want it all now. They are a rootless, hurried people looking at a digital watch that gives no clue to the past or future. As someone wrote in a rather cynical poem.:

This is the age of the half-read page,
The quick hash and the mad dash.
This is the age of the bright night
And the nerves tight,
And the plane with a brief stop.
This is the age of the lamp tan in a short span,
The brain strain and the heart pain.
The catnaps till the spring snaps
And the fun is done.

A holy life marked by a true sense of the Incarnation should be inspired by the following New Year’s prayer:

Lord, you who live outside of time and reside in the imperishable moment,
We ask your blessing upon your gift of time.

Bless our calendars, those ordained lists of days, weeks and months,
Of holidays, holy days, fasts and feasts.
May they remind us of birthdays and other gift days, as they teach us
The secret that all life is meant for celebrations and contemplation.

Bless, Lord, this New Year, each of its 365 days and nights.
Bless us with happy seasons and a long life.
Grant to us, Lord, the New Year’s gift of a year of love.
And so let me conclude with this typically Irish verse:

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

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URL for this page is http://www.udayton.edu/mary//meditations/MotherofGod.html