The Excellence of the Rosary / Conferences for Devotions in Honor of the Blessed Virgin

CONFERENCES FOR DEVOTIONS IN HONOR OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN
BY REV. M. J. FRINGS
NEW YORK JOSEPH F. WAGNER
Nihil Obstat REMIGIUS LAFORT, D.D. Censor
Imprimatur JOHN CARDINAL FARLEY Archbishop of New York
NEW YORK, September 19, 1912
Copyright, 1912, by JOSEPH F. WAGNER, NEW YORK
CONTENTS
CONFERENCES FOR SODALITIES B. V. M.
I was exalted as a rose plant in Jericho. —Eccles. xxiv, 18.
My dear brethren, when Pope Pius IX, on May 23, 1877, gave audience to a number of pious pilgrims he said to them: Have courage, my dear children! I exhort you to fight against the persecution of the Church and against anarchy, not with the sword, but with the rosary, with prayer and good example. This Pope, who with great wisdom and strong hand has guided for thirty-two years the bark of Peter, which in many violent storms had been rocked to and fro, he who well knew the great dangers of our times, regarded the rosary as a conquering weapon.
What great confidence his successor, Pope Leo XIII, placed in the veneration and invocation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, by means of the rosary! He exhorted all Christianity to pray the rosary daily during the month of October, in order to obtain assistance in these distressing times. In his brief on this occasion Leo XIII says: It has been a favorite and prevalent custom of Catholics, in times of need and danger, to take refuge in Mary, and to seek consolation from her motherly concern.