This past Sunday at Columbus St. Patrick Church, parishioners were given blessed roses after each Mass, and those attending the noon Mass had the opportunity to march in procession around the block outside the church afterward, praying the rosary and singing hymns in honor of Our Lady.
Such are the customs surrounding Rosary Sunday, celebrated on the first Sunday of October and still commemorated at many Dominican parishes such as St. Patrick. While the liturgical feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is Oct. 7, in older liturgical books, the feast could be transferred to the first Sunday of October so that more of the faithful could take part in its celebration, eventually becoming known as “Rosary Sunday.”
Today, while the prayers and readings for the Mass are taken from the Sunday in Ordinary Time, parishes can celebrate the rosary through traditional devotional practices related to Rosary Sunday.
The blessing and giving of roses might seem to have an obvious connection to the rosary, simply because of the name. But throughout history, many miraculous cures have been attributed to touching blessed roses, leading to the custom of distributing them to the faithful around the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
Moreover, the custom of a rosary procession was a monthly practice for members of the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary, occurring on the first Sunday of each month. At St. Patrick, these traditional practices surrounding the rosary have become a staple for the first Sunday of October.
Before Rosary Sunday, members of the Madonna Garden Club prepare nearly 1,500 roses for the faithful, de-thorning each stem and placing them in vases. The roses are then blessed at the Saturday vigil Mass, and after each weekend Mass, parishioners come forward to receive a blessed rose from one of the Dominican friars.
The Rosary Procession concludes the weekend celebration, as several altar boys carry a statue of Our Lady of Fatima around the block, while a friar leads the faithful in praying the rosary. When all have returned to the church, the procession concludes with the chanting of the Litany of Loreto.
Dominicans have a special love and fondness for the rosary and have been its promoters and preachers since the beginning of the order. While legend holds that Our Lady gave the rosary to St. Dominic in an apparition, what we know today as the rosary developed over time.
Elements from the psalter (notably 150 Hail Marys corresponding to the 150 psalms), the “Angelic Salutation” prayer (which we know as the first part of the Hail Mary, and which would have been familiar to St. Dominic), and meditation on different events in the life of Christ all came together to form a simple, meditative way of contemplating the life of Christ with and through the intercession of his Mother Mary.
A 15th century Dominican, Blessed Alan de la Roche, popularized the devotion by using it as a method of preaching and by establishing the first rosary confraternities. Dominicans have continued to use the rosary as an effective means of preaching about the life of Christ, while also praying it alongside the Liturgy of the Hours.
For the Dominicans, the Rosary is structured like the Divine Office, with an opening verse similar to the opening of Lauds and Vespers (rather than the popular method of beginning with the Apostles’ Creed, an Our Father and three Hail Marys). Moreover, when Dominicans pray the rosary, they go back and forth between the sides of the choir to pray the parts of the Hail Mary, much like they do when praying the psalms.
With such great love for the rosary, the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary has been established as an official confraternity of the Dominican Order. While many local rosary confraternities arose throughout the centuries, such as the one established by Blessed Alan, Pope Leo XIII last reorganized the confraternity in 1898, entrusting it to the Dominicans.
This means that the Dominicans have oversight of the confraternity and are responsible for enrolling new members and establishing new charters of the confraternity in parishes (popularly known as “Rosary Altar Societies”).
Members of the confraternity promise to pray 15 decades of the rosary each week. Members share in the spiritual benefits of all the rosaries prayed by their fellow confraternity members, as well as participating in the good works of the Dominican Order.
For several years, the offices of the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary for the Dominican Province of St. Joseph have been located at St. Patrick, which makes the Rosary Sunday customs at the parish more meaningful.
Those interested in joining the confraternity can go to www.rosaryconfraternity.org for more information and to enroll online.
Father Paul Marich, O.P. is a parochial vicar at Columbus St. Patrick Church and is the promoter of the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary for the Dominican Province of St. Joseph.