The Rosary and Saint Dominic Defeat Heresy
The Rosary—as spiritual weapon against evil—has a very long and
precious history. In twelfth and thirteenth century France, a group of
heretics known as the Albigensians was destroying the minds of the
Catholic laity with its erroneous ideas. The Albigensians’ teachings
encouraged suicide, many times by self-induced starvation, because they
believed that the body was an intrinsic evil and that the soul must be
liberated from matter at all costs. However, as history often shows,
Providence raises up great Saints in times of dire crises. This time it
was no different. Saint Dominic, born of noble lineage, received the
Rosary from Our Lady in the year 1214. Our Lady gave Saint Dominic the
Rosary as a weapon to combat the awful Albigensian heresy.
The Rosary as we know it today took some time to develop. After Saint
Dominic died in the year 1221, the Rosary was almost immediately
forgotten. However, in 1464 Our Lord, Our Lady, and Saint Dominic
appeared to Blessed Alan de la Roche, a Dominican friar, after which he
preached the Rosary until his death in 1475. This tremendous apostolate
by Blessed Alan de la Roche, through the direct intercession of Our
Lady, made the Rosary a widespread devotion. The fifteen mysteries as we
know them came about through the many confraternities founded after
Blessed Alan de la Roche’s preaching, and were formalized with Pope
Saint Pius V’s encyclical, Consueverunt.
The Rosary and the Battle of Lepanto
The Battle of Lepanto was a crucial conflict between the Christians
and the Ottoman Turks, one of the greatest naval battles of all time.
The Christian lands around Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean were
constantly getting sacked by Muslim pirates, and Imperial warships were
ravaging the land. At this point in time, Pope Saint Pius V saw it
appropriate to raise a Crusade against these heathen Muslims. After
raising a Crusade, he asked every non-combatant across the whole
Christian world to pray the Rosary.
Even after this call to arms, the Christian fleet at Lepanto was
greatly outnumbered by the Ottoman Turks. The Crusaders got on their
knees and began to pray the Rosary. Soon after, the Christians and the
Muslims were immersed in a bloody battle. Thus it was that on October 7,
1571, the Christian fleet was blessed with a miraculous victory. Pope
Saint Pius V immediately dedicated the victory to Our Lady, establishing
October 7 as “The Feast of the Most Holy Rosary.
Holy Rosary Crusade of Reparation
After World War II, Austria was divided between four countries:
America, France, the United Kingdom, and Russia. At the time, Russia was
still communist. The section of Austria controlled by the communists
was the richest, and included the city of Vienna. The Viennese were
subject to the all the atrocities and tyrannies of communism. However,
in 1946, Fr. Petrus Pavlicek, after making a pilgrimage to Mariazell,
the principle Marian shrine in Austria, was told by an interior voice:
“Do as I say and there will be peace.”
To obey this inspiration of Our Lady, Fr. Pevlicek founded the Holy
Rosary Crusade of Reparation in 1947. This Crusade consisted of the
Viennese faithful coming out of their homes in order to participate in a
public Rosary procession in the streets of the city. The intentions of
the Rosary were for the end of communism in their country and in the
world. At first, the processions were miniscule, but in time they grew
to staggering proportions. In 1955, after eight years spreading the word
about the Crusade throughout Austria, the Rosary processions would
reach sizes of half a million people, about 1/10 of the Austrian
population. Finally, through the help of Our Lady, the Soviet forces
pulled out of Austria in October of 1955, leaving the country for good.
The Rosary and the Fatima Message
Between May 13 and October 13, 1917, Our Lady appeared to three
shepherd children, Jacinta, Lucia, and Francisco, at the Cova de Iria,
near Fatima, Portugal. During six visits, Our Lady communicated to them a
secret which had three parts. The first part was a vision of Hell.
During this vision, Sister Lucia said numerous souls fell into Hell like
“snowflakes.”
In the second part, Our Lady states that WWI would end, but “if
people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the
Pontificate of Pius XI. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the
consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of
reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia
will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her
errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the
Church.”
As Our Lady predicted, World War II erupted and the errors of atheist
Communism spread. Our Lady added that many will be martyred and nations
will be annihilated, if people do not convert. Have people converted?
The answer is no. Can Divine punishment be avoided? It depends on the
world’s fidelity to Our Lady’s requests.
Lucia asked Our Lady during the apparitions, “Who are you and what do
you want?” Our Lady responded, “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. People must not continue to offend the Lord, Who is already so
deeply offended. They must say the Rosary.”
Therefore, Our Lady gave us a solution: the recitation of the daily
Rosary for the conversion of sinners. The Fatima message is a remedy for
our culture immersed in sin. If it were not for Our Lady’s promise that
“Finally, My Immaculate Heart will Triumph,” we would be much dismayed
and disheartened. So let us heed her requests. Let us practice the First
Saturday devotions. Let us pray the daily Rosary. By fulfilling these
requests, we will be consoling the sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of
Mary and hasten the triumph of good over evil.
Rosary Saves Man’s Life on September 11
A man from New York who had fallen away from the Catholic Church and
not gone to confession in years was met at a TFP Fatima presentation
given by America Needs Fatima Custodian, Jose Ferraz.
After the visit, the New Yorker took home a Rosary and Rosary Guide
and started praying it and going to the sacraments again. Months later,
on September 11, 2001, he was in the World Trade Center at the very
moment when the terrorist attack took place.
Seeing the fireball and smoke from the crash, the man fled his office
and tried running down the stairs to safety. However, he met a big
obstacle. The fire doors had locked and he was trapped in the stairwell,
listening to the screams of burning people who were still inside the
building, unable to escape death. It was awful—horrific. Any attempt to
pry open the fire doors with bare hands would be futile.
With Our Lady’s help, instead of panicking, he felt calm. He grabbed
his Rosary and started praying to the Blessed Mother for help. And
within minutes, firemen reached his floor, broke down the fire doors and
set him free. He ran downstairs to safety, his prayers answered thanks
to the power of the Most Holy Rosary.
The
Blessed Virgin Mary first gave the Rosary to St. Dominic of Guzman in a
vision in 1208, as he earnestly begged God for a solution to the
Albigensian heresy then aggressively infecting the south of France.
After St. Dominic began to preach the Rosary, the days of the
Albigensian error were numbered.
On
May 13, 1917, there began in Fatima, Portugal a series of apparitions
of a luminous lady to three little Portuguese shepherds, Lucia dos
Santos and Francisco and Jacinta Marto. She asked them to return to the
same spot for five consecutive months, and that in October she would
work a miracle for all to believe and reveal who she was. In every
apparition the lady asked for the daily recitation of the Rosary as a
remedy to life’s ills, and for peace in the world. On October 13, 1917, a
crowd of 70,000 people witnessed the astounding miracle of the sun, as
the fiery orb performed a fantastic dance in the sky above. The heavenly
lady then revealed her name: “I am the Lady of the Rosary”.
No
sooner had he pronounced these words, the picture came alive and
extending her hand, the heavenly Lady laid it reassuringly on the
priest’s arm, saying:
But
it was only in the year 1214, however, that Holy Mother Church received
the Rosary in its present form and according to the method we use
today. It was given to the Church by Saint Dominic who had received it
from the Blessed Virgin as a powerful means of converting the
Albigensians and other sinners.
"I
want you to know that, in this kind of warfare, the battering ram has
always been the Angelic Psalter which is the foundation stone of the New
Testament. Therefore if you want to reach these hardened souls and win
them over to God, preach my Psalter."
Alphonsus,
King of Leon and Galicia, very much wanted all his servants to honor
the Blessed Virgin by saying the Rosary. So he would hang a large rosary
on his belt and always wear it, but unfortunately never said it
himself. Nevertheless, his wearing it encouraged everyone to say the
Rosary very devoutly.
