The Spiritual Weapon!

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary

Acts 1:12-14; Lk 1:26-38

The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary highlights the rosary as the weapon to fight our spiritual warfare. 

How is the rosary our spiritual weapon? Or what makes the rosary our spiritual weapon?

Praying the rosary becomes our spiritual weapon because it helps us remember the Gospel truth of our redemption and stay close to it always. Thus, whenever we repeat ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary,’ we remind ourselves of God’s providence and Mary’s example for our lives. Here, we can reflect on the rosary as our spiritual weapon in three ways. 

Heart of the Gospel: When we pray the rosary, we discover that the Gospels are the origin and center of it thanks to the fact that the words with which we pray the rosary come directly from the Gospels. To put things in perspective, we know that Jesus himself taught us the ‘Our Father’ prayer. If we begin the rosary with the prayer taught by Christ himself, the words used in the ‘Hail Mary’ come from the mouth of the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation and from Elizabeth at the Visitation. Here, we must remember that angel Gabriel spoke as God’s messenger, while Elizabeth spoke under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus, by praying the rosary, we stay close to the Gospel truth of our redemption. Also, praying the rosary is a beautiful way of reminding ourselves of the sacrifices of Christ and his mother for us. 

Heart of Mary: Praying the rosary means uniting ourselves with the heart of Mary, who chose to accompany her son in all sincerity and faithfulness. Hence, the rosary is the prayer that reflects the heart of Mary. For this reason, while praying the rosary, we look at the Redeemer through the eyes of the one who saw him most and through the heart of someone who loved him most. When we look at the Lord through the eyes of his Holy Mother, we begin to resemble her and inherit her attitude toward discipleship. It is no wonder that when we are faithful to praying the rosary, we, like our Holy Mother, grow in our faith and virtues that please God. 

Heart of Our Faith: It is because the rosary is a reflection of the Gospel message and the heart of Mary, it also becomes the heart of our faith. Thus, holding on to the rosary beads is like holding on to the hands of the Holy Mother to accompany the Lord through various stages of his life. It is because praying the rosary gives us the impetus to follow the Lord through the example of his most faithful disciple – Mary, the saints have always insisted on the power of the rosary to transform the one who prays. St. Francis de Sales said, ‘I advise you as earnestly as I can, and even adjure you not to allow a single day to pass without reciting the Rosary, which is most pleasing to God and the Blessed Virgin Mary.’

The goal of Christian life is to grow in faith and become a better disciple of the Lord.

The rosary helps us attain both, because in praying the rosary, we go ‘To Jesus, through Mary.’

Let us pray that we may always rely on the power of the rosary to protect us from evil and to guide us to salvation. 

Fr. Dhinakaran Savariyar