Monthly Masterpiece - October
Sacred art can help us to contemplate the mysteries of our faith.
Every month we will look at a different image and the mystery it represents.
Every month we will look at a different image and the mystery it represents.
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The Rosary Basilica Portal of Lourdes
Our Lady giving the Rosary to St Dominic Sculpture by Charles Maniglier, 1890 The Wedding at Cana Mosaic from Ivan Rupnik, 2007 
Lady, you are so great and of such high value
that whoever desires a grace and does not come to you wishes his desire to fly without wings. Dante, The Divine Comedy, Paradise, C. XXXII. |
The word Rosary was first used to designate a crown of roses, with which artists liked to adorn the Virgin Mary in ancient representations. It was attributed, then, to the traditional way of praying to Our Lady, like a rose crown offered to her. The disciples of St. Dominic, to whom the Virgin appeared as Our Lady of the Rosary spread its use everywhere. The event is recalled through the sculpture dominating the main entrance of the Rosary Basilica in Lourdes.
In the Middle Ages, the lay brothers in monasteries, because they were not able to read, recited the first part of the "Hail Mary" instead of the 150 psalms. Over the centuries, this prayer was structured into 15 series of 10, centred on the life of Christ, with the help of short meditative additions (named clauses) before finding its current form. Many popes and saints encouraged the devotion. Pius V in particular, after the Christian fleet victory over the Turks attributed to the recitation of the rosary during the naval battle of Lepanto (October 7, 1571), decided to institute the feast of Our Lady of Victories, renamed Our Lady of the Rosary in 1960 by Pope John XXIII. In his Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (2002), Saint John Paul II wrote that "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 depths of his love.” Further on he added: “It is not just a question of learning what he taught but of ‘learning him’.” The mosaic of the Mysteries of Light by the Slovenian artist Fr Mark Ivan Rupnik, SJ, of a style close to Coptic icons, was placed on the façade of the Basilica in 2007, as homage to the newly Blessed John Paul II. It completes the 15 other mysteries already adorning the interior of this church. The spouses of the Wedding at Cana seem helpless in front of their empty cup: they have no more wine! The word that Mary speaks to us, as she sits at table with Jesus, as the Pope emphasized in the same Letter, "becomes the great maternal counsel which Mary addresses to the Church of every age: ‘Do whatever he tells you’”. This scene, full of light, placed on the doors of the Rosary Basilica, introduces the pilgrim into the heart of the Eucharistic mystery, celebrated every day on the altar, as an anticipation of the eternal Wedding Feast. |