A Sermon on the Holy Rosary (Part 1)

The foolish things of the world hath God chosen, that he may confound the wise, and the weak things of the world has God chosen, that he may confound the strong, and the mean things of the world, and the things that are conteptable, hath God chosen, and things that are not, that he might destroy the things that are- 1 Cor 1:27

How different are the ways of God from the ways of man!  If man wishes to perform a great action, he has recorse to great and important means to accomplish it; but if God wills to perform anything unusually grand or sublime, he makes use of small and apparently contemptible instruments.  He used the rod of Moses to effect his great miracles, and help to deliver the Israelites from slavery.  He chose a shepherd boy to slay a mighty enemy of the same chosen people with a sling and a pebble taken from a brook.   He bade Gideon to select three hundred warriors out of thirty-two thousand to confound the cruel power of the Midianites.  He chose the cross, the once accrsed tree and sign of ignominy, toi be the means of our redemption.  And to convert the universe, he sent forth twelve poor, unlearned fishermen.

The present festival, my beloved brethren, commemorates, also, an object small and contemptible in itself, which God has chosen for the performance of great things- THE HOLY ROSARY.

I.  It has been an instrument in the hands of God in destroying infidelity and heresy outside the Church.

II.  It has been a blessed means of eradicating impiety, and of effecting many miraculous results within the pale of the Church itself.

What has it done, you ask, for those outside the Church?

a.  To form an idea of what it has done, we must go back, my brethren, several hundred years, even to the time of great St Dominic.  He was not, however, the inventor of the beads; they were in existence before his time, and were used by the pious hermit in the desert and by the monk in the cloister; but until St Dominic’s day, the Rosary was a comparatively unknown to the great mass of Catholics.

b.  Up to the twelth century of the Christian era, many heresies sprung up, causing ruin and havoc in the Church.  The immaculate spouse of Christ sat as one in desolation and mourning.  Every day, she saw her children snatched from her bosom, infected with the plague-spot of heresy.  There were thousands who still dared call themselves Catholics, but who were as rotten as branches, fit only to be cut off from the tree of life and cast into the fire.  St Bernard, and other zealous servants of God, bewailed the fatal schisms and scandals of their time, but still the evil went on increasing.  The heresy of the Albigensians had carried along with it whole nations, with their sovereigns and rulers.  Jesus Christ had been taken from his altar, and the idol Baal set thereon.  The statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary had been trodden under foot by those who denied her glorious title the Mother of God, her spotless virginity, and all those other wonderful priveliges conferred on her by the Almighty.  But the time came when God had pity on his Church.  The great St Dominic had deplored the spread of evil, but found himself powerless to cope with it, until one day, inspired by the Holy Spirit, he contemplated the string of beads he was accustomed to use, and cried out: “Behold the means by which the enemies of God are overcome!”  He meditated long on this incident, and the result was he went forth conquering and a conqueror.  His followers journeyed through Europe by his direction, and, passing from nation to nation, everywhere recommended the use of the Rosary to the people, instructing them how to practice that beautiful devotion.  Blessed be the powerful intercession of the Mother of God!- the Church began to triumph.

It was no uncommon sight in those days, to see thousands casting themselves at the feet of the saint, and asking to be reinstated in their priveliges as Christians.  We are told that he would sometimes leave in their lands tens of thousands of Rosaries, enjoining them to practice that beautiful devotion to the end, that heresy might be destroyed from the face of God’s earth.

c.  The age of St Dominic passed away, my beloved brethren, but not the devotion to the Rosary.  In the year 1571, when Christendom was threatened by the infidel, the holy Pope, Pius V., prayed fervently upon his beads, that the enemies of God might be scattered, and at the same moment the unbelieving host was destroyed at Lepanto, not so much by man as by God.  Nearly two hundred years after, another holy Pontiff, Clement XII., caused the festival of the Rosary to be celebrated in all parts of the world, to commemorate the victory gained by the comparatively small army under Prince Eugene of Savoy, over the forces of the Mahomedans, thus sanctioning what was then believed, that the triumph was due to the prayers of the Rosary Confraternity at Rome.In our own times, my beloved, you have all been witnesses of the extraordinary devotion of our illustrious Pontiff, Leo XIII., to the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, inasmuch as he has added to her litany the invocation: “Queen of the Most Holy Rosary, pray for us!”  and has counseled, for the past two years, the devout recital of the beads by all the faithful, not only on the Festival of the Rosary, but on every day of the month of October, hoping thereby again to defeat the enemies of the Church.  Ah! yes, my brethren, God makes use of little things to accomplish great ends.

How many would be outside the true fold, this day, were it not for the devout Catholics who have prayed fervently year after year, reciting the beads for the conversion of unbelievers!  The Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been called “the increase of Christians,” because it has been so efficacious in bringing back the wandering sheep of the fold to the feet of the Good Shepherd.  Pope after pope, bishop after bishop, have united in sanctioning this beautiful devotion, which is at once so simple and so holy; and thus one of the smallest of things has become one of the greatest instruments of God for the conversion of heretics to the true faith. – Taken from NEW AND OLD SERMONS: A MONTHLY REPERTORY OF CATHOLIC PULPIT ELOQUENCE, compiled by Augustine Wirth O.S.B.   The work is in the public domain.