Month of the Holy Rosary
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October 6, 2023The Month of the Holy Rosary
Article (abridged) taken from the University of Dayton
October is the Month of the Holy Rosary primarily because the liturgical feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is celebrated annually on October 7th. The feast was introduced by Pope St. Pius V to commemorate the miraculous victory of the Christian forces in the Battle of Lepanto on October 7, 1571. He attributed more to the “arms” of the Rosary than the power of cannons and the valor of the soldiers who fought there.
The Rosary 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 12th century, the “Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary” developed now substituting 150 “Hail Marys” in place of the “Our Fathers.” They were subsequently subdivided into 15 decades by the young Dominican friar, Henry Kalkar, with each decade referring to an event in the life of Jesus and Mary. The Dominican, Alanus de Rupe 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 practice of dedicating the entire month of October to the Holy Rosary developed toward the end of the last century. Pope Leo XIII strongly promoted the increase of devotion to the Blessed Mother by encouraging the constant use of the Rosary. Beginning in 1883, with Supremo Apostolatus Officio, he wrote a total of eleven encyclicals on the Rosary, ending with Diuturni Temporis in 1898.
Many other popes have contributed to help increase devotion to the Rosary by their writings. In the recent past, Pope Paul VI devoted the last section of his Apostolic Exhortation Marialis Cultus to the Angelus and the Rosary. 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 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.
