WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Thousands of Marian devotees attended the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C., packing the upper church and filling the crypt with hours-long lines for confession.
With nearly twenty Dominican priests hearing confessions, the Order of Preachers—to whom the Church has entrusted in a special way the promotion of the Rosary—led an estimated 3,100 pilgrims from all over the country in deepening their understanding and appreciation of the Rosary with a pilgrimage to the nation’s largest church and Marian shrine.
The pilgrimage took place on Saturday, September 30 and included Eucharistic Adoration, Mass, confessions, several conferences on the Rosary, and the recitation of the traditional fifteen decades.
Fr. Patrick Briscoe, O.P., one of the organizers of the event, told LifeSiteNews that the pilgrimage was a response to the national eucharistic revival effort of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference. Fr. Patrick said the Dominicans wanted to promote a renewal of eucharistic devotion in a way that incorporated the charism of their religious order. For this reason, the pilgrimage combined the public recitation of and preaching on the Rosary together with 3 hours of Eucharistic Adoration, which served as the heart of the day’s events.
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Speakers included the General Promoter of the Rosary for the Dominicans, Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P., from the UK, who spoke about the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary, and Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P., a well-known podcast presenter on theological questions.
Commenting on the success and evident graces of the pilgrimage, Fr. Lew said, “What we have witnessed here today is surely a wonderful sign of people united in prayer, the children of Mary, calling upon Our Lady’s help.”
Proposing the Rosary as a contemplation of the mysteries of Christ in union with Mary, Fr. Pine said this simple Marian devotion has the power to make a contemplative of any Christian.
“What exactly is it about the Rosary?” Pine asked. “We know that it’s a … hallmark of a healthy devotional life. It’s one of those devotions which the Church proposes to all of her adherents as proven to build up the spiritual life.”
“What is it about the Rosary? It has a way of … ensnaring us,” he continued. “But what we come to discover is that in being ensnared, we are saved. The Rosary has a way of making people sane. It has a way of making people good. It has a way of making people holy.”
“I think in part it’s because the Rosary is a kind of summary of the evangelical life. … The Rosary imparts to us a kind of contemplative posture, a contemplative stance towards the mysteries in union with Mary.”
“All Christians are called to be contemplatives. … The only prerequisite for the contemplative life, the only prerequisite for Christian contemplation, is the life of grace. … Because with grace comes charity, and with charity comes wisdom.”
“By charity we permit God to impress divine things into our very mind and hearts. It gives us a kind of sympathy with the divine mind,” Pine said. “Heaven is contemplative. In heaven we’re meant to gaze on the face of God, day and night without ceasing.”
“The disposition of the Rosary is the disposition of a contemplative,” the priest continued. “The Rosary seeks to grow in us what one author called ‘a great and unconquerable heart, which no ingratitude can close and no indifference can tire, a heart tormented by the glory of Christ, pierced by His love with a wound that will not heal until heaven’.”
Pine explained that in the Rosary the Christian takes up the dispositions of Mary toward her Son in the mysteries of His earthly life.
“Certainly, among all creatures who have dwelt upon the earth, Mary is highest in the order of grace after the grace of her Son,” he continued. “But Mary’s not just the highest creature, but the one…who enjoys the most intimate union with her Son and, as a result of which, the one who has greatest sympathy with the mysteries of her Son.”
“This, ultimately, is how the Lord’s life is transmitted: in intimacy of union and sympathy of love,” Pine declared.
“The Gospel is fire, and it burns. And Our Lady sees that consuming fire, and she does not shy away from it. Rather, she goes to its heart, she goes to its depth and takes as her mantle bluest flame at the core… She has clothed herself with Gospel fire.”
“In the most holy Rosary, we take up our contemplative stance before the mysteries of Christ in union with the Blessed Virgin Mary. We share her sympathy; we share her gaze. She helps us to see joy, to see light, to see sorrow, and to see glory. Though perhaps dulled by our experience or weighed down by our sin, we can be renewed by her encouragement as we are redeemed by her Son.”
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Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P, the Promoter General of the Rosary for the Dominicans, spoke about the graces available to those who are members of the Confraternity of the Rosary.
“Although we can, and we do, and we should pray the rosary alone, and this, of course, has great merit, nevertheless, when we pray as a member of the Rosary Confraternity, then our prayers are united with countless others, and so our prayers become all the more powerful and call down a waterfall, a torrent of graces. As St. John Marie Vianney said, ‘If anyone has the happiness of being in the Confraternity of the Rosary, he has in all corners of the world brothers and sisters who pray for him.’ How very precious that is!”
“The Rosary, devoutly recited, is an act of faith and of love, an act of hope, an act which unites us more perfectly with Christ through Mary.”
Lew emphasized that underlying the recitation of the prayers is meditation upon the mysteries of the life of Jesus and Mary, and that it is this mediation that most of all effects the work of grace in the soul.
“St. Louis Marie de Montfort, that great 18th century promoter of the Rosary Confraternity, said that in our time, these present times, it is our hearts that must be changed,” Lew said. “And according to the revelation of Our Lord to him, the Lord said to him that the changing of hearts will be accomplished only by the Rosary proclaimed, explained, preached, and recommended everywhere.”
“But for hearts to be changed, there must then be a genuine spiritual communion, that is, a true act of faith and of charity that is made in praying the rosary,” Lew continued. “If our hearts are to be changed, if we are to deepen our communion of love with Christ and one another, if we are to be filled with steadfast faith and that kind of charity that can move mountains, so our prayer must be spiritually fruitful too.”
“As such, the Rosary Confraternity and countless popes through the ages have stressed that the soul of the Rosary consists in meditation on the mysteries of salvation, a mental prayer as we contemplate the mysteries of Our Lord’s love for us and what He has done for us.”
Lew explained that membership in the Rosary Confraternity involves a commitment to praying fifteen decades of the Rosary each week. Those who join the confraternity participate in the merits and graces of the confraternity and the entire Dominican Order and can obtain special indulgences on certain liturgical feasts that commemorate various mysteries of the Rosary. Any member of the Catholic laity as well as any priest or religious may enroll in the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary here.
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