Our lady wears combat boots

Galations 3:1-5; Luke 1:69-75 Blessed be the Lord the GOd of Israel; he has come to his people; Lk 11:5-13

Today in the church we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Victory. This is also referred to as the feast of the Holy Rosary, instituted by Pius V to celebrate the anniversary of the defeat of the Turkish fleet at the battle of Lepanto.

For all purposes the muslim army should have destoryed the small and insignificant christain army, but it wasn't so. The victory was ascribed in part to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the recitation of the Holy Rosary for the cause at hand.

As once was coined by Fr. John Corapi, Our Mother wears combat boots.

She is not afraid to enter the battle. In fact, most statues of the BLessed Mother have her crushing the head of the snake, not by her might but simply by her "yes" and her life of grace.

At the heart of this celebration is the recitation of the Rosary. All battles worth fighting require the proper weapons. There has been none more proven than the recitation of the Rosary.

The Rosary allows us to meditate on the beauty of Christ through the eyes of his mother, the one who knew him initmately more than any one earth.

Keeping christ at the center enables us to weather the storms and fight the good fight and run the race of faith.

The Rosary works on a human level becasue it enagaes the whole person. It involves our speech, our hearing; it occupies our mind and incites our emotions; it assigns a task to our fingertips, those sensitive organs of touch. Is this not how the Lord confirms the faith of his disciples, "see my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see."

Jesus wants to fill up our senses. The Rosary is the perfect devotion that engages our existence with his presence complete. At the center of the prayer is theinvocation of his holy name: blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus.

A few words from Pope John Paul II

"The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at the heart a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the gospel message in its entirety, of which can be said to be a compendium. It is an echo of the prayer of Mary, her perpetual Magnificat for the work of redemptive incarnation which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depth of his love. Through the rosary the faithful recieve abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the mother of the redeemer."

The Rosary allows us to enter the trenches with our mother who leads the way with her boots of grace to behod that precious and beautiful face of Christ.