Marian Devotion & the Perpetual Rosary
“The nuns should love and reverence the Blessed Mary, Mother of Mercy, Queen of Apostles and Virgins . . . They should hold the rosary in special honor, since this venerable form of prayer leads to contemplation of the mysteries of salvation in which the Virgin is intimately joined to the work of her Son.”
As Dominicans we share a heritage of love and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and have a very special devotion to the Most Holy Rosary.
According to tradition, Our Lady herself gave the Rosary to St. Dominic as a powerful spiritual weapon to win souls in his work of preaching Jesus Christ. Our Order has always been under her patronage in a special way.
Our own community springs from the Dominican Sisters of the Perpetual Rosary, which were founded in 19th century France specifically to form a Guard of Honor for Our Lady by praying the Perpetual Rosary. Totally consecrated to Jesus through Mary, we continue to live and cherish our Perpetual Rosary charism today.
The Practice of the Perpetual Rosary
What does this mean in practice? Every hour of the day, and ideally of the night as well, a Sister is at her Hour of Guard praying the Rosary at the foot of the statue of Our Lady, before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. As we meditate on the mysteries of Jesus in union with Mary, we unite praise of God and intercession for the needs of the world. Remembering that we are “Preaching Sisters,” during our Hours of Guard we offer our ardent supplications to draw down many graces upon the Church, upon sinners, upon the intentions entrusted to our prayers, and upon the many grave needs of the world.
Just as the liturgical year makes all the mysteries of Jesus’ life present to our souls, shaping us into His image, so the Rosary brings us daily into saving contact with those same mysteries. No one was (or is) closer to Jesus than Mary, His Mother. Through the Rosary we gaze at Him with her eyes, and are shaped into His image by her hands. Our Hour of Guard is one of our most treasured hours each day.
“For us, the privileged children of Mary, our portion is to form the court of this amiable Queen of Heaven . . . Day by day, and night after night, always, ever, Mary sees us at her feet, happy and eager to honor and bless her and intercede with her for the whole human race.”
“These nuns pray the Perpetual Rosary – one shares her reflections”
“It is a great happiness to be able to fulfill our heavenly functions as Mary’s Guards of Honor at the foot of the Tabernacle. We thus study all the mysteries of Jesus under the veil of the Host which contains them. What a source of joy to be able by this sweet industry, to cause the gift which Jesus had made of His merits to fructify by placing them into our hands, so to speak, through the Holy Eucharist!”
The Spirit of the Perpetual Rosary
“Privileged children of the Queen of the Rosary as we are, our entire life is passed in the blessed atmosphere of the mysteries of Jesus and Mary.”
The spirit of the Perpetual Rosary does not stop at the end of our Hour of Guard, however. It extends through all aspects of our life, so that Our Lady becomes, as one spiritual writer said, a mysterious mileux in which we live, the very atmosphere we breathe.
We take the Aves with us as we go about our day, “making use of these adorable mysteries to keep ourselves in recollection during the hours of work,” as our Custom Book says. In one day we sometimes glance over all the mysteries in spirit; at other times we take but one mystery for the day, or the week or month, according to our interior attractions—”but unless through some special indication of grace, we should never disregard so easy and consoling a means of uniting ourselves to Our Lord and to the Blessed Virgin.”
Total Consecration to Jesus Through Mary
By St. Louis Marie de Montfort’s Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary, which we live as a community, we put this spirit of devotion intimately into effect in our lives. This saint teaches us to surrender all that we are and have to Our Lady, living for, through, with, and in her, so that we may more surely give everything to Him. Since Jesus gave Himself to Our Lady at the Incarnation, and let His human nature be formed by her, we too give ourselves to her in order to be formed more perfectly into His image.
“When will that happy time come,” asks St. Louis Marie, “that age of Mary, when many souls, chosen by Mary and given her by the most High God, will hide themselves completely in the depths of her soul, becoming living copies of her, loving and glorifying Jesus? That day will dawn only when the devotion I teach is understood and put into practice. Ut adveniat regnum tuum, adveniat regnum Mariae: “Lord, that your kingdom may come, may the reign of Mary come!” (True Devotion, para. 217)
“It is indeed our desire that we should so well reproduce in ourselves the virtues and dispositions of this ever Blessed Virgin that, our lives being wholly in accordance with her example, we might become, to Jesus, so many ‘other Marys.’”
