Sunday, October 07, 2007 Our lady of the rosary By Jenara Regis Newman
IT is the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary today and many devotees to Our Lady will be flocking to the various parishes and chapels dedicated to her.
According to Louie Nacorda, this Marian devotion was started by a Dominican brother, Alan Roche, and was then adopted by the whole Dominican community.
In the past century, the propagation of the Holy Rosary was intensified, first by Our Lady herself in her Fatima apparitions when she exhorted the Catholic community to pray the rosary for peace. Later on in the century, Father Patrick Peyton went worldwide propagating the devotion, with the slogan “A family that prays together stays together.”
Louie, a devotee of the rosary, recalls that at first he was mechanical in praying it, but when he learned to know what he really means and what “we can get out of it.” His devotion grew and in fact propagates it among family and close friends.
His family prays together one of the three mysteries (Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious) of the rosary every Saturday, and usually the Joyful Mysteries with the litany on the first Saturday of the month in honor of our Lady of Fatima whose complete title is “Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima.” As a devotee of the rosary, for the whole month of October, he prays the original three mysteries of the Rosary daily and attended on Oct. 4 the first centenary of the La Naval de Manila’s Canonical Coronation at the Santo Domingo church in Quezon City, which is the national shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary.
For Raki Vega, a Marian devotee more especially to Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, praying the rosary has been a must in the midst of the glamour and glitz of show business. When in Cebu, she makes it a point, in her words, “to pray it with family whenever we’re together. Praying the rosary is a good spiritual exercise… I have learned that the more we get into praying the rosary, the more we enter into a contemplative lifestyle and attitude that help us see everything in proper perspective. When we are deeply rooted in our center and focused on what is really essential in life through a broadened perspective, then we are able to remove all the clutter and noise that tend to occupy our minds, our hearts, our very being that tend to drain us of all energy that should have been wisely spent and conservatively utilized.”
Our Lady of the Rosary of Manaoag has a special place in Edna Toral’s heart.
She it was who spearheaded the construction of the Rosary Center in Carmen. She is national coordinator of the propagation of Our Lady of Manaoag and to date, has been instrumental in enthroning Our Lady in 59 churches and chapels all over the Philippines. She urges people to make the rosary a part of themselves, to hold on to it “when you’re troubled, afraid, in fear of illness, of things to come, hold on to the rosary and there you’ll find solace and joy,” even when you’re not actually praying it. At the Rosary Center, there are larger than life depictions of the four mysteries of the Rosary (Pope John Paul II added the Mysteries of Light on Oct. 16, 2002) to help the devotee in meditating on the mysteries while praying the rosary.
When Edna envisioned and started in the Center, she did not know how she was going to finish it. But with her trust in Our Lady, and with Our Lady’s help, the Center has become a reality, a material symbol of what the Lady can do, if you trust in her and pray the Rosary.
