Global Rosary During October

French laywomen have started an international project to pray the Rosary by turns in French, then English, then in Spanish during this month of October, the month of the Holy Rosary. Prayers will go up for an answer to the terrible distress of our times, just as they did before the famous Battle of Lepanto to save Christendom back in October of 1571. Read about how to participate here.

A Lesson from Madrid

Centuries ago, when the Moors were driven out of Spain, the Christians in Madrid set to work restoring the church of Santa Maria. But the ancient statue of Mary and Jesus that once decorated the church could not be found. The citizens organized a procession around the city to ask God to help them find the statue. And help them He did. 

At one point as the crowd passed a wall, it began to crumble. Lo and behold, behind it was hidden the statue that they sought. Not only was it intact, but two lamps, installed in the cavity by those who walled in the statue, were still burning. 

Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira writes of this miracle:

Notice how they put lighted lamps near the statue before walling her up. This gesture is very beautiful since it shows they did not want to wall up the statue without a tribute. Those lamps represented their hopes that the statue would be venerated once again. Thus, the walled-up place was like a little chapel.

A miracle confirmed their hopes. This most beautiful miracle of confidence consisted of the lamps that burned for 300 years. They continued to burn when the statue was found in the wall. It is a miracle as great as the multiplication of loaves in the Gospel. Its marvelous message is that one can expect such things from Our Lady. Although things may appear defeated and crushed, something irreversibly victorious remains in them.

These are encouraging words for the difficult days we find ourselves in. Trust Mary. She will not be defeated.

_______

From "The Miracle of Our Lady of Almudena Teaches Us Confidence," at the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property.

Is My Prayer Good Enough?

Have you sometimes felt that your personal prayers might not be lofty enough, pious enough, to send up to Jesus and Mary? In the compact prayer book Blessed Be God (1925), the authors address this hesitation in their opening chapter on "How to Pray":

People often find it difficult to pray because they have an exaggerated notion of prayer, not really understanding what it means and erroneously believing that it consists in very lofty thoughts, which must be expressed in correspondingly elevated words and sentences; whereas the very opposite is the truth. How simple are the Our Father and the Hail Mary! How unaffected the thoughts and words of the centurion, the leper, the blind man, and others mentioned in the Gospel, who sought help from our Lord and were heard!

 Neither is it necessary for a prayer to be long to be perfect; it need not be said in any particular place or at any special time; nor need it be said kneeling or standing. We may turn our hearts to God at all times, in all places, and in any posture of body, whether we be in the street or in the church, at home or abroad; and this is not only prayer, but devout prayer. 

_________
From Blessed Be God: A Complete Catholic Prayer Book by Very Rev. Charles J. Callan, O.P., S.T.M., and Very Rev. John A. McHugh, O.P., S.T.M., published by P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1925.

Pictured: Innocence by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.