Today's Rosary | Holy Rosary University

Friends of the Rosary: Arrogance and pride are our first sins. They led us to the original sin through the disobedience of Adam and Eve. In many ways, we continue in the same manner. Many behave like little gods, deciding what is right and wrong. Consider this week’s reading (Matthew 20:1-16) where laborers hired by a landowner demanded to be paid more money than those who worked fewer hours. The...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, August 24th, is the Feast of the apostle St. Bartholomew, also known as Nathaniel. He was a doctor in Jewish law and a seeker of the truth. As a close friend of St. Philip the Apostle, he had the opportunity to see Christ. He recognized the Savior immediately as the Son of God. On that initial meeting, Jesus uttered the glorious compliment: "Behold, an Israelite...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Rose of Lima (1586-1617), the first canonized saint in the Americas. Inspired by the example of St. Catherine of Siena, Rose became a Dominican lay tertiary and devoted herself to works of active charity while living a life of extreme austerity. Hers was a life heroic in virtue and penance. Through the practice of pen...

Friends of the Rosary: Eight days after celebrating Mary's Assumption into Heaven, we commemorate the Memorial of the Queenship of Mary. This feast is a prolongation of the celebration of the Assumption. Down through centuries, Popes, Doctors, and Fathers of the Church have given authoritative expression to the truth of the Queenship of the Holy Virgin. This title is applied to the Mother of G...

Friends of the Rosary: Following yesterday’s story of the pagan Canaanite woman (Mt 15:21-28), who was granted the cure for her daughter because of her deep faith, we continue reflecting on the mystery and power of prayer. Very often our specific requests to God are not for our good. In that case, the eternal God might not grant what would result in our disadvantage. However, if our prayer is sinc...

Friends of the Rosary: In today’s Sunday reading (Mt 15:21-28), we see the Canaanite woman as a model of deep-seated faith and trust in Christ’s power and goodness. The Canaanite woman sees God in Jesus Christ (“Lord, Son of David’) and asks for a miracle. She opens herself to Him, insists on the Lordship of Jesus, and her daughter is healed from that hour. “O woman, great is your faith. Let it be...

Friends of the Rosary: On August 19th, 1917, the Virgen Mary appeared at Valinhos, distant about half a mile from the Village of Aljustrel and from the Cova de Iria, in Fatima. That was the fourth apparition. On August 13th, the three shepherds were arrested by the Administrator of Ourém, the district in which Fátima was located. This Administrator or Mayor, Artur Santos, was an apostate Catholic...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, Jesus Christ speaks in the Gospel of Matthew (Mt 19:3-12) about the mystery and sacrament of marriage. The reading couldn't be more relevant, considering the attempts of evildoers and their collaborators to destroy Christian lawful marriages and families. ”From the beginning, the Creator made them male and female and said: For this reason, a man shall leave his fa...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, along with the Irish people, we commemorate the Memorial of Our Lady of Knock. We celebrate the apparition of Our Lady , St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, the Lamb, and a Cross on an altar on the wall of the parish church in the village of Knock in County Mayo in Ireland, on August 21, 1879. The apparition was described as follows: "Our Lady was wearing a larg...

Friends of the Rosary: Heaven and Earth are two dimensions united by the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ. In Our Lord, everything visible and invisible meet. As St. John wrote in his first letter: "We are from God." "Love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God." "God sent His only Son into the world so that we might live through Him."...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, the Catholic Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Holy Day of Obligation. In 1950, Pope Pius XII defined the dogma of the Assumption in these words: "The Immaculate Mother of God, the ever-virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heaven." This belief, dated back to...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, the Memorial of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe (1894-1941), Polish priest and martyr, is celebrated by the Universal Church. Maximilian Mary Kolbe founded the Militia of the Immaculate Mary , a movement of Marian consecration that undertook an intense apostolic mission in Europe and Asia. The friars of the Militia of the Immaculate Mary utilized modern printing and adminis...

Friends of the Rosary: Christ Jesus sent His disciples to the lake knowing that they would meet a dangerous storm, as we read today in the Gospel (St. Matthew 14:22-33). He wanted to strengthen their faith and prove his trust and confidence in Christ. He intended to come to them at the right moment, working two miracles — walking on the water and calming the storm. They ended up declaring that Jes...

Friends of the Rosary: With faith, nothing is impossible. Our problem lies in our lack of faith. Christ Jesus conveyed this message to His disciples when they struggled to expel a demon from a possessed boy, as recounted in today's Gospel of Matthew (Mt 17:14-20). He stated: "Amen, I say to you if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here...

Friends of the Rosary: Let’s reflect for a second even from a contemporary perspective what Saint Lawrence presented as the  “treasures of the Church”  to Emperor Valerian when he was summoned before the executioners. He showed up with a handful of crippled, poor, and sick men, and when questioned, replied that ‘These are the true wealth of the Church.’ (He was immediately sent to his death, being...

Friends of the Rosary: Having died a martyr for Christ, St. Lawrence is the patron of deacons, chefs, and firefighters. Around the time of his feast day, the night sky is lit with bright lights, wrote Vatican News. The phenomenon is related to the passing of a meteorite swarm left by a comet. For folk tradition, these lights are “falling stars” , tears St. Lawrence shed during his martyrdom. The t...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, the Universal Church celebrates the Memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (1891-1942), also known as St. Edith Stein. She was born of Jewish parents in 1891 in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland), becoming an influential and brilliant philosopher following her extensive studies at major German universities. Edith Stein was captivated by reading the autobiography of...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, we celebrate the Memorial Day of St. Dominic of Guzman (1170-1221), who received the Holy Rosary from the Virgin Mary as a means to combat the destructive heresy of the Albigensian in the twelve century. He crushed the heresy and led many souls to piety and to religious life. The Spaniard priest St. Dominic also founded the Order of Preachers —the Dominicans — in the...

Friends of the Rosary: The Transfiguration of the Lord — that we celebrated yesterday — is one of the proofs of the divinity of Jesus Christ. This event also shows us what we can be as a reflection of His love: saints. We will all be transformed into the light of Christ for eternity. As the Transfiguration points forward to the sufferings Jesus is about to experience, it is meant to strengthen our...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, August 6th is the Feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord. This commemoration anticipates the glory of heaven, where we shall see God face to face. Three witnesses chosen by Jesus — Peter, James, and John — saw in Mount Thabor in Israel that our Lord’s face and clothes become dazzling with light, and Moses and Elijah appear. Moses and Elijah represent the two princip...

Friends of the Rosary: We celebrate today the memorial day of Our Lady of Snow (la Virgen Blanca, in Spanish), a feast related to the Basilica of St. Mary Major, one of the illustrious churches in Rome. This feast commemorates the miracle of the snowfall that occurred during the night of August 4-5 in the year 358 on the site where the basilica now stands. According to tradition, the Virgin Mary a...

Friends of the Rosary: Almost 30,000 pilgrims and 61 bishops from the U.S. are participating in the World Youth Day (WYD) gathering in Lisbon, Portugal. Quoting St. John Paul II, Bishop Robert Barron, one of the key figures of the U.S. delegation, said to the pilgrims: “Jesus Christ is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega; he is the king of the new world; he is the secret of history;...

Friends of the Rosary: As the effects of secularization on belief and practice are deepening, we continue praying along with the participants in the World Youth Day (WYD) in Lisbon, Portugal, this week Pope Francis urged a gathering of bishops, priests, deacons, consecrated persons, seminarians, and pastoral workers in Lisbon to stay in the boat with Jesus and revive their restless enthusiasm for...

Friends of the Rosary: Today, we join in our prayer the hundreds of thousands of young people participating in World Youth Day (WYD) 2023 in Lisbon, Portugal, a faith event that began on August 1 and will last until this Sunday, August 6th. A high number of youngsters witness that true faith is still alive despite the decline in the practice of religion in our secularized world. The high turnout i...

Friends of the Rosary: Christ Jesus gives us the needed grace and strength to act with charity and brotherly love toward our friends and family members trapped in sin. They might try to confuse us by rejecting any change in their behavior as everything is part of their identity. They rarely are able to see sin rooted in them. We must be very careful and, while looking at them as our brothers, we m...