Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. – Matthew 11:29
The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is a strange day. It was originally called Our Lady of Victory, stemming from the 16th century Battle of Lepanto. Pope St. Pius V called upon Catholics to pray the Rosary for victory, which inexplicably happened. Is this feast still about a violent battle won hundreds of years ago? Is it about Mary’s intercessory power? Is it now a celebration of prayer and piety? Of course, the answer is “all of the above.” It is the fusion of seemingly quite different things that makes today such a compelling feast pointing us to our humble, victorious savior.
To see how it all fits together, consider the two petitions in the closing prayer of the Rosary: that we may imitate what [these mysteries] contain and obtain what they promise. First – what are we to imitate? The Rosary unequivocally calls us to humility. It is slow and repetitive. We chew upon the Word as we pray, which doesn’t mean arduous thinking any more than chewing on dinner does. Meekly we pray the Rosary, consuming what is given to us. Those who are quick to dismiss what they do not understand find the Rosary a rather challenging prayer. We must sit with Mary, obediently accepting the will of God and pondering the triumph of the humble Savior in our hearts. The Rosary helps us to rest in truth beyond our comprehension and become more like Christ.
In my experience, Catholics are quite comfortable focusing on the desire to imitate Christ. Being a good person isn’t a controversial desire (even if defining a “good person” is!). Expecting God to do something when we pray? Some of us have that unshakeable faith. Many of us are cautious. Yet today’s feast wouldn’t make any sense if imitating Christ were our only goal. In the face of attack, Pope St. Pius V does not seem to have been asking Christians to take a moment out of their day to ponder the Nativity. He asked them to beg for help by praying the Rosary. They expected to obtain something.
But why this prayer? One clue is perhaps in the Hail Mary itself. Think about what we repeat over and again: “blessed are you among women.” This isn’t a platitude. Only Judith, Jael, and Mary are called blessed among women in Scripture. They are each victors, striking the heads of foes delivered into their hands. Sisera came to Jael and she drove a tent peg through his head while he slept. Holofernes desired Judith, brought her into his tent, got drunk, and was decapitated by her as he slept. The New Eve shares in her son’s crushing of the serpent’s head. Our Lady of the Rosary is also Our Lady of Victory--both meek and powerful.
This is the crux of Lepanto. St. Pius attributes victory to Mary’s intercession, not to earthly might. It was a gift given more than earned. The moral of the story is plucked right from Israel’s history: without denying that men fought freely for the land, the Lord saves his anointed. God delivered his people from Egypt, led them through the desert and gave them a land. God winnowed down the troops of Gideon and led the Midianites to destroy themselves. God saved Jerusalem from the Assyrians after Hezekiah put on sackcloth and prayed. Over and over again, we see the weapons of war do not truly save. God is the one establishing justice on the earth through forces of nature and human beings, wittingly and unwittingly.
Can we have any share in this victory today? What is Lepanto to us? If we end at “imitating what [these mysteries] contain” and do not take seriously the desire to “obtain what they promise” we have missed something. Scripture is quite the story of promises! While the great promise of Christ is resurrection to an eternal home, a new heaven, and a new earth, without which our faith is entirely vain, the hunger for justice on this earth is not eliminated. Our longing for a space to inhabit and to make holy is woven into creation itself. It is behind so many Rosaries prayed--for peace in the middle east, to end abortion, for loved ones who are dying, to overcome chaos in our hectic lives, and so on. We beg and we plead for help from the humble Queen of Heaven and Earth who has inherited the earth from which she came.
We all know it, yet we can never hear it enough: if we, poor banished children of Eve, want to see goodness reign on earth, we need help. On our own, we make wrong choice after wrong choice. We love each other only when it is easy. We pray when it fits into our schedule. We are excessively confident of our own wisdom as we try to establish justice in the land. We quarrel and fight over many earthly things. Though Ecclesiastes tells us there is a time to kill and a time to heal, we have no idea which is which without the mind of Christ. We need guidance and a meek form of strength. We need intercessors.
Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Lepanto, Our Lady of Victory – these are not so different as they first appear! The mysteries of the Rosary are a story of overcoming evil with good. Pondering them, imitating them, and pleading for help are indivisible. If we claim to know Christ but insist on living independently, we know neither Him nor the Father; we are the old Adam and Eve grasping out for independence from God. The new Adam and the new Eve guide us to humble ourselves. They teach us how to be the children of a loving Father and bring us into the host of Saints, ever ready to intercede for us.
Br. Joseph Trout, OP
This reflection is adapted from one originally shared with the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Albert the Great.