Catholic Activity: Our Lady of the Rosary

This feast day provides the mother of the family with an opportunity to instruct her children about the origin of the rosary and its strength as a spiritual weapon. We highly recommend that you read Pope John Paul II's Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae, or "On the Most Holy Rosary." It explains even further this wonderful devotion, and introduces the optional mysteries of light, or Luminous mysteries.

DIRECTIONS

When the children see the mother decorate the altar of the Blessed Mother in the home on the seventh of October, they will ask, "What feast is today, Mother?" Then we mothers will tell our children, as soon as they are old enough to understand, the story of the apparition of the Blessed Mother to one of her sons, St. Dominic; this story shows how we can please her most: while saying ten "Ave Marias," we should meditate in our heart on the happenings of her earthly life. There are the joyful ones — the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity of our Lord, His Presentation in the Temple, and His Finding again in the Temple; there are those which tear her heart asunder in most bitter suffering her Son's agony in the Garden, His scourging at the Pillar, His crowning with thorns, His carrying the heavy cross, and His bitter end on Calvary; and there are her moments of triumph when He rose from the dead, ascended to Heaven sent the Holy Ghost, took her up to Heaven. and. finally, crowned her as Queen of Heaven. Thus the Blessed Mother — so legend tells us — taught St. Dominic how to say the rosary. On that day we wish to say it solemnly together — maybe all three, the joyful mysteries in the morning, the sorrowful after lunch, and the glorious at night. It is amazing how even very little children get the feeling for mental prayer if they are shown pictures of the appropriate mysteries while the grownups say the rosary.

Activity Source: Around the Year with the Trapp Family by Maria Augusta Trapp, Pantheon Books Inc., New York, New York, 1955