In his biography of St. Dominic, the famous French Dominican Henri-Dominique Lacordaire writes of the Rosary: when Our Lady heard “Hail, Mary,” for the first time from the angel Gabriel’s lips, “she immediately conceived in her purest womb the Word of God, and now, each time that human lips repeat to her these words that signaled her maternity, her inmost being is moved at the memory of a moment that had no likeness either in heaven or on earth, and all eternity is filled with her joy at the recollection.”

Lacordaire captures the relational aspect of the Rosary; far from being an exercise in mindless repetition, it is an intimate communing with Our Lady and her Son. St. Luke tells us that Mary pondered “all these things” in her heart (2:19): all the words and deeds of Christ, beginning with His very first words as a child, through “Behold your son,” and on to, “I am with you always.” Each “Hail, Mary,” recalls the Incarnation and therefore every mystery of the Word’s human life inaugurated at that angelic word; each “Hail, Mary,” invites us to ponder those mysteries with Our Lady.

For centuries, Dominicans have promoted the Rosary with particular ardor. In October of 1571, Pope St. Pius V, a Dominican, entrusted to Our Lady of the Rosary the fate of Christian forces vastly outnumbered by their Turkish adversaries in the Battle of Lepanto. At the news of their miraculous victory, he instituted the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on Oct. 7, which has given October its devotional association with the Holy Rosary.

The traditional Dominican habit includes a 15-decade rosary, hung from the belt on one’s left side. Our students love to learn the reason for its placement: just as knights of old wore their swords on the left, where they could draw them at a moment’s notice, so we place our spiritual weapon, the Rosary, on our left, ready to wield it against temptation and sin. Through the Rosary, we fold the joys and sufferings of those around us into those experienced by Christ, where they find their meaning. And we are transformed as we pray: “In the spiritual journey of the Rosary,” St. John Paul II explains, “based on the constant contemplation — in Mary’s company — of the face of Christ, [the] demanding ideal of being conformed to him is pursued through an association which could be described in terms of friendship” (Rosarium Virginis Mariae §15).

Servant of God Fr. Patrick Peyton, modern-day apostle of the Rosary, used to beg families to say the Rosary together: “The family that prays together stays together.” Try, during this month of the Rosary, to begin the practice of praying it with your family, even if only a decade daily at first. And let us certainly pray it for our families, for our country, for our world. If we ask her, Our Lady, full of grace, will help us to enter into it attentively and fruitfully.

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Sr. Maria Veritas Marks is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.