The Bereavement Team is holding a gathering to support parishioners who are grieving on Tuesday, October 08, at 10:00 AM in the church hall. You are welcome to join them in prayer and fellowship. 

Our Pastoral Care Training Course is scheduled for Saturday, October 26 and November 16th in the church hall from 08:30 AM - 3:30 PM. We will start both days with mass and then move into the facilitated portion of the course, which offers opportunities for group discussion and reflection. The information is valuable and enriching for both personal and ministry purposes and includes.... An overview of Pastoral Care, Empathy versus Sympathy, Caring with Faith, Facing Suffering and Loss, etc. Our present team is invited to join us for an inspirational refresher (either to attend partial or full days) - please register so we get numbers and can have printed material for you. Fr. Mariusz is reimbursing our parish registrants' registration fees. Nancy is vetting and providing security screening for our new volunteers. Register by accessing any of the registration strategies in the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18_wp_7ZWPa4QfpWuF4tH3nVA8I3Ee-7r/view?usp=sharing

Our Lady of Fatima urged, "I want you to pray the Rosary every day for peace in the world, the conversion of sinners, and an end to wars." Let's make an effort to obey Mary's call and pray the Rosary daily. In our parish, the Rosary is prayed every day after the Holy Mass, and on Sundays, it is prayed before the Mass.

 The Rosary prayer is a prayer that unites everyone, as everyone can find something for themselves in it. A mystic may devote themselves to meditating on the mysteries of the Rosary, a contemplative may imagine Gospel scenes, and an activist may pray the Rosary quickly, ten by ten. The prayer is simple and suitable for the poor and the rich, for children, adults, and the elderly. We all learned it as children, and in adult life, we may reach for the rosary in difficult moments, problems, troubles, and doubts. Soren Kierkegaard said: "A man without faith stumbles over a blade of straw, with faith he moves mountains." This also applies to the rosary prayer – those who use it speak about miracles, strengthened faith, and achieving the impossible.

 The origins of the Rosary prayer date back to the times of the Desert Fathers in the third and fourth centuries. They used strings to count repeated prayers. The word rosary is not only associated with the prayer itself but also with the characteristic chaplet (prayer rope) used to count the number of repeated parts of the prayer. The spread of the Rosary prayer is attributed to the Dominican Blessed Alain de la Roche (†1475), who initiated the Church's tradition according to which the Blessed Virgin inspired St. Dominic Guzman to pray the Rosary for the conversion of heretical Albigensians and sinners.

The Rosary prayer, which consists of the repeated 'Hail Mary', is a call to Mary, the Mother of God, asking for support. A humorous analogy on Facebook compares the rosary prayer to little Jesus pulling Mary's robe, shouting: "Mom, mom, mom..." In a similar way, we call to Our Lady for help as we move the beads of the rosary. Although God is the one who works miracles, Mary intercedes for us and asks with us, as if she were crying out to God on our behalf. Mary cares for us when we feel bad, like a real mother. Each of us carries a different image of a mother in our hearts based on our experiences, but Mary surpasses even our imaginations. St. John Paul II often spoke about the intercession and role of Mary, entrusting his life and pontificate to her.

The 16th century in Europe's history was when its inhabitants once again faced the threat of Muslim armies. This time the aggressor is Turkey, which has just reached the peak of its power and is looking more and more greedily at the countries in the northern part of the Mediterranean. The growing threat from it reached its climax in the early 1670s, when Pius V, a Dominican, was pope.

Faced with the risk that the State of the Church would turn into a province of the Ottoman Empire, the pope took political action: he established the Holy League, began to collect troops and money for their maintenance, and thought about strategy. However, he did not neglect the spiritual side and reached for a measure proven by hundreds of years of practice in his order – he addressed the whole Church with a call to pray the rosary in the intention of the victory of Christians.

The day of the decisive battle fell on October 7, 1571, the first Sunday of the month – the day that the Dominicans celebrated as the remembrance of Mary, Queen of the Rosary. At Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth, two powerful naval armies faced each other, and the Pope and the faithful fell to their knees with rosaries in their hands.

During the prayer, Pius V had a vision in which he saw the bay where the battle was taking place, and above it Mary looking calmly at the struggle. Our Lady assured the Pope of victory. And indeed – no sooner had the battle begun than the wind unfavourable to the armies of the Holy League died down. The outnumbered Turkish ships were scattered, only a small number of them managed to escape. The blow was so strong that the Turkish fleet never regained its glory.

To commemorate this event, Pius V established the remembrance of Our Lady of Victory on October 7, and two years later Pope Gregory XIII designated the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary on the first Sunday of October. This concerned only the territories of the State of the Church, until in the eighteenth century, Clement XI, in gratitude for the defeat of the Truks near Belgrade, extended this feast to the entire Church. In the twentieth century, as part of the liturgical reform, Pius X moved the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary to October 7.

A few dozen years earlier, in 1883, Leo XIII ordered the invocation 'Queen of the Rosary' to be inscribed in the Litany of Loreto. He also, two years later, ordered that the Rosary be prayed every day throughout October. And so the Dominican way of defeating the enemy became a tactic known throughout the Church. Known and highly valued.

The world is at a crossroad. God is more offended than ever as people ignore Our Lady's maternal request to "stop offending God." Yes, we must listen to Our Lady's request and stop sinning if we hope to enjoy God's blessings and to avert His wrath. He will hear us, if we pray through the intercession of His Blessed Mother. That's why we're doing the Public Square Rosary Crusade.

In The Secret of the Rosary, Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort said: "Public prayer is far more powerful than private prayer to appease the anger of God and call down His mercy, and Holy Mother Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, has always advocated public prayer in times of public tragedy and suffering."

JOIN US FOR THE PUBLC SQUARE ROSARY CRUDADE

What: The Holy Rosary
Where: Corner of Centre St. and 3 Ave SE.
When: Saturday, October 12, 2024 @ 12:00pm

Join us for a Eucharistic Celebration on Mon, Sep 30, 2024, at 5 pm at St. Mary's Cathedral on National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. All are welcome! Visit this page to find out more about the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation on Sep 30, events in your area, and how to support healing initiatives through Together In Action and the Indigenous Reconciliation Fund.