Our Lady of the Rosary
A prayer you can hold in your hand. This is its day, and October is its month.
A rosary is a loop of beads, and the beads are for counting, because the prayer is long and your fingers are better at counting than your head is. While your hands keep the count, your mind is supposed to wander, on purpose, through the story of Jesus, one scene per set of ten beads, from the stable in Bethlehem to the empty tomb.
The feast has a date because of a sea battle in 1571. A pope asked all of Europe to pray the rosary for a fleet that was badly outnumbered, and when the fleet somehow won at Lepanto, he gave Mary the credit and the calendar got a new feast.
The battle gave the day its date. What kept it alive is the prayer itself, taught by mothers to children for eight hundred years, workable in the car and in the dark, sayable when you are too tired to make up words of your own. The beads remember, so you don't have to.
Our Lady of the Rosary facts for kids
- Rosary means a garland of roses, and roses are Mary's flower
- Each set of ten beads is called a decade, and each decade goes with one scene from the life of Jesus
- The feast marks the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, when all of Europe prayed the rosary at once
- October is the month of the rosary because this feast lives in it
Feast day: October 7 · Patron of the rosary
Mary, when my own words run out, count with me.