A mother’s love is a special kind of love. It is a bond that transcends time and distance. No matter how much her children change as they grow up, they will always be her babies and she will always care for them. The Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mater Ecclesiae and she loves and cares for the Church as a most perfect mother.
As the mother of the Incarnation, Mary is the mother of all who enter into the Body of Christ and she is united to that Body by the bonds of motherly love. Pope Pius XI wrote that “by the very fact that she brought forth the Redeemer of the human race, she is also in a manner the most tender mother of us all, whom Christ our Lord deigned to have as His brothers” (Lux Veritatis, Dec. 25, 1931). She was present when the Church was born from Christ’s side on the cross and she was at the center of the Cenacle when the Holy Spirit breathed life into the infant Church. By her Assumption, she abides with her Son in the glory of the new and perfect upper room of Heaven, interceding for her children.
Praying the Rosary joins us to Mary’s motherly love. Last October Fr. James Brent, O.P., in his homily for the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage, called the Rosary our link to that upper room. It is a chain uniting us to the dwelling place of the Most High, tying us to Mary’s perfect prayer to her Son, drawing us to our heavenly mother.
What mother doesn’t love to receive a call from her children? In the same way that speaking with our mother increases the mutual love we share with her, praying the Rosary binds us more securely in love with Mary. As we meditate on its mysteries and place Mary’s name upon our lips and hearts, we unite ourselves to the most loving mother of the Church. The more frequently we pray the Holy Rosary, the more intimately we unite ourselves to her love.
But the Rosary does not unite us only to the Body of Christ in Heaven. As we recite the Hail Marys and contemplate the mysteries, we are also united to the Body of Christ on Earth. “The family that prays together stays together,” and not natural families alone. Those of us who devote ourselves to Mary through the Rosary are united to each other by our shared devotion, our common patroness, and the faith we have in the Rosary to connect us to our mother, Mary. Everyone who prays this prayer is bound together, sheltered under Mary’s mantle.
The Dominican Bl. Alan de la Roche recognized the power of the Rosary to unite the faithful together and established the first Rosary Confraternity in 1474. Thousands of Confraternity chapters now exist across the globe, continuing to bind members together under Mary’s patronage. The Rosary Confraternity consists of faithful men and women who unite themselves in a commitment to pray fifteen decades of the Rosary each week for the members of the Confraternity. By their enrollment, members (called Rosarians) receive great spiritual advantages, so many that listing them all would put this article outside my word limit.
But the greatest spiritual benefit of the Confraternity is the bond of charity that unites members of the Confraternity. Praying the Rosary for the members of the Confraternity raises our prayer to an act of charity and unites us in deeper love for each other, the Blessed Mother, and her Son. These holy ties that bind us together are sweet and light and they draw us ever closer to our loving mother in Heaven.
If you live within the Province of St. Joseph, you can enroll in the confraternity online here. Those outside the Province of St. Joseph can enroll here (Province of the Holy Name), here (Province of St. Martin de Porres), or here (Province of St. Albert).
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Image: Paolo Veronese, Madonna del Rosario con san Domenico e devoti (public domain)
