It was the custom in the Middle Age, as formerly among the Romans, for noble personages to wear crowns of flowers called chaplets. These crowns were offered to persons of distinction as a feudal due.

The Blessed Virgin, as Queen of heaven and of souls has a right to, the same homage; wherefore the Church asks us to recognize the title of Mary as Queen of the Holy Rosary, and she exhorts us to offer to her as daughter of the Father, mother of the Son and spouse of the Holy Ghost a triple chaplet or three crowns of roses, of which she shows us all the beauties in to-day's office, and to which she has given the name of Rosary.

The Collect reminds us that the recitation of the Rosary is a mental prayer in which we meditate on the mysteries of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus; with these Mary was intimately associated.

The Gospel, which gives us the chief part of the angelical salutation, shows us that the Rosary is a vocal prayer. The Pater, Credo and the Gloria, which are recited with the Ave Marias, are also found in the Mass or in the Divine Office.

The Rosary, as a private devotion, consists therefore of elements taken from the liturgical Cycle, and the feast of the Rosary forms part of the Cycle.

This prayer has, in the course of the centuries, obtained many graces for Christendom. The feast of Our Lady of the Rosary was instituted to commemorate the victory of Lepanto (Sunday, October 7, 1571) when, thanks to the recitation of the Rosary, the forces of Islam, which threatened to invade Europe, were broken. Gregory prescribed this feast, replacing very significantly the feast of our Lady of Victory, for certain churches; it was extended to the Catholic world by Clement XI, in thanksgiving for another triumph over the same foes in Hungary in 1716 under Charles VI.

Taken from “The Saint Andrew Daily Missal” Imprimatur 1955