Twice a year, in May and October, we pay special honor  to the Blessed Virgin Mary. In most years we celebrate on Oct. 7, the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, both as a private devotion and as public prayer.

The rosary is part of the life of practicing Catholics, and has been for almost 1,000 years, and for the latter half of that millennium has been a significant factor in our Catholic lives.

The servant of God, Father Patrick Peyton, the 20th century “Rosary Priest,” wrote once that the rosary is not only a set of prayers to be recited almost by rote, but it is rather a series of meditations to be dwelt on, to be reflected on in the mind, and to be used in daily life. “To say the rosary well demands that it show results, that those who have prayed their beads get up from their knees and live different lives,” said Father Peyton at one point.

Unlikely as it seems, the rosary comes out of the movement or practice of the desert fathers seeking to organize their arduous prayer life. Those monks and hermits notched sticks to count the psalms they recited.

Since there are 150 psalms, these were divided into three groups of 50. The ordinary faithful, who were illiterate, knotted cords in three groups of 50 knots for the times they said the Our Father, which they said in place of the psalms. As time went on they used those cords to count the number of times they recited the Hail Mary as a sort of Marian psalter in the 14th century.

St. Dominic and his religious family did not invent the rosary, but they certainly organized it as a devotion and became its promoters and defenders through the last several centuries.

In the 15th century, the Hail Holy Queen and the Apostles Creed were added to the Our Father and the Hail Mary, and by the end of that century the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries were used in the rosary recitation.

Blessed Alan de Rupe promoted the community saying of the rosary towards the end of the 15th century. Pope St. Pius V, on Oct. 7, 1571, established a commemoration in honor of the rosary on that date because of the assistance of the rosary in securing victory over the Turks at Lepanto, and two years later Pope Gregory XIII established the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary on that date.

Pope Leo XIII, 1878-1903, wrote 12 encyclical letters teaching that by saying the rosary one could most effectively reach Mary and, through her intercession, her son Jesus Christ. Pope Pius XII promoted the family rosary.

Popes John XXIII and Paul V continued to expand the teaching of their predecessors. Pope John XXIII taught that the rosary was the universal prayer for all the baptized and that the rosary must have a three-fold purpose: mystical contemplation, intimate reflection, and pious intention. Pope Paul VI directed our intention to the importance of the Mysteries of the Rosary, without which the prayers remain an empty shell.

In October of 2002, Pope John Paul II, in his Apostolic Letter “Rosarium Virginis Mariae,” declared a Year of the Rosary. He suggested that to the traditional 15 Mysteries of the Rosary could be added the Luminous Mysteries, or the mysteries of the public life of Christ: the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, the Wedding Feast at Cana, the Proclamation of the Kingdom of God, the Transfiguration, and the Institution of the Eucharist.

On Oct. 7, Pope Benedict XVI said, “I would like to invite everyone to cherish the rosary during the forthcoming Year of Faith. With the rosary, in fact, we allow ourselves to be guided by Mary, the model of faith, in meditating upon the mysteries of Christ, and day after day we are helped to assimilate the Gospel so that it can shape our lives. …  I invite people to pray the rosary individually, in the family and in the community, placing themselves in the school of Mary who leads us to Christ, the living center of our faith.”

Given the popularity of this devotion over the last several centuries and the favors received through these prayers of our people, it almost goes without saying we should, in this month of October, reassess the place of this important prayer in our lives and decide to say the rosary more frequently, even daily, for our own intentions and for the good of the Church universal.

If the daily rosary is part of our piety we can be sure the Blessed Mother of God will intercede with her Divine Son for us and for our spiritual welfare.