Pray The Holy Rosary In Latin

From the Pastor:    Pray The Holy Rosary In Latin

       About a year ago I was contacted via email by a young couple who were starting an online ministry of prayer, focusing solely on praying a daily Rosary in Latin. They asked if I would promote it. Well, sorry to say, I had a lot of other things to do at the time which seemed a bit more important, as we were just coming back from the Bishop’s mandatory covid lockout. I checked out their website and don’t remember much of anything about it. Like so many good things, it seemed to me like a great idea that would soon pass into oblivion. I mentioned it at Mass but didn’t give it much more thought. I never knew if anyone had ever gone online to join them. Then, just a couple of months ago, the couple emailed me again. Monday-Saturday nights they pray the Rosary in Latin at 9:30 pm and invite everyone to join them in this beautiful and powerful prayer. Since they are still active after a full year, the least I can do is promote it with a little bit more enthusiasm! Their website is now filled with (as I write this) 231 videos of the Rosary being prayed in Latin. They put forth a specific intention for each night’s prayer (they pray it Mon-Sat at 9:30 pm our time) and the intention for #231 was For the Jesuit Order, a great intention, indeed! The one prior to that was For Those Suffering From TV Addiction, another fantastic intention! The videos, by the way, are not of the couple or of any of those joining in. They simply give you the written words to the prayers so that, should you need the extra help, you can read along with the prayers as you learn to memorize them. Other pages of their website explain such things as their own permanent intentions as they offer up the Rosary (and they encourage you to have your own intentions, too), four reasons for praying in Latin (1. Latin is a beautiful part of Catholic Tradition. It is the official language of the Holy See and considered sacred by the Church; 2. Praying in Latin is a means of uniting Roman Catholics around the world; 3. Praying in Latin makes us better meditate on the sacred mysteries; 4. Hell abhors it.), why we pray for the Pope’s intentions and what they are officially supposed to be (a very helpful bit of information), the 15 promises that were transmitted to Saint Dominic and Blessed Alan de La Roche and compiled from their works, the reason they only pray the 3 original mysteries and leave off the optional set proposed by Pope John Paul II, and more. I give below a quote from one page, titled About Us, that I found quite worth reading.

       We are a Roman Catholic Prayer Apostolate. Fideles Armati means The Armed Faithful in Latin and we want to equip you with the weapon to fight against the powers of darkness: the Holy Rosary. We pray, firstly, to adore God, expressing to Him our love and loyalty. Secondly, we pray to thank God for His favors. We also pray to obtain from God the pardon of our sins and the remission of their punishment. Finally, we pray to ask for graces for ourselves and others. By praying the Rosary LIVE with us, the prayer of each one belongs to the whole group and make all together but one prayer, so that if one person is not praying well, someone else in the same gathering who is praying better makes up for his deficiency. In the same way, those who are strong uphold the weak, those who are fervent inspire the lukewarm, the rich enrich the poor, the bad are merged with the good.
One who says his Rosary alone only gains the merit of one Rosary; but if he says it with thirty other people, he gains the merit of thirty Rosaries. This is the law of public prayer. How profitable, how advantageous this is! --Saint Louis de Montfort, Doctor of the Church (The Secret of the Rosary)

       So there you have it. The website is https://fidelesarmati.wordpress.com/ and once you get there the rest is up to you! I asked for some of their business cards and they generously sent me a stack which I have placed on the table in the back of the church. Please feel free to click the above link if you are reading this online or take one of their cards if you are reading this to keep yourself awake during my sermon.
       And, lest I forget as I write about our Blessed Mother and the spiritual bouquet of roses we shower her with as we pray the Rosary, today is Father’s Day in the secular world. Wikipedia brings up this little unexpected gem showing how the Catholic Church beat the secular world to the punch with this holiday. Father's Day is a holiday of honouring fatherhood and paternal bonds, as well as the influence of fathers in society. In Catholic countries of Europe, it has been celebrated on 19 March as Saint Joseph's Day since the Middle Ages. In the United States, Father's Day was founded by Sonora Smart Dodd,[1][2][3] and celebrated on the third Sunday of June for the first time in 1910. Yes, Fathers have always been important to Catholics! Happy Father’s Day!

With prayers for your holiness,
Rev. Fr. Edwin Palka