Salve, Regina, Mater Misericordiae.
Today's Feast of Our Blessed Lady is a Feast of Victory,
formerly entitled the Feast of Our Lady of Victories.
Today we know it as the Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary.
We celebrate this Feast on October 7th because in 1571,
on October 7th, in the Bay of Lepanto,
which is now called the Bay of Corinth,
in Greece, a very small and outnumbered Christian Catholic fleet
under the admiralship of a 22-year-old boy or young man
defeated a vastly numerous Ottoman fleet of Muslim Turks.
And it was a tipping point in the history of Europe
and of that part of the world because up until that time,
the Ottoman Empire had been expanding
and much of Eastern Christendom had been lost to Islam.
And it was the intention of the Ottoman Empire to invade Southern Europe
and overwhelm the whole of Europe as it had tried to do before in Spain
and was trying to do again.
And what happened was that in the face of this great danger to the Church,
a saintly Pope, a man of prayer, by the name of Saint Pius V,
he asked the Christian leaders of Europe to come together
to defend Christendom from this threat.
And many did come together,
but it was a relatively small group of Christian soldiers
that ended up trying to protect Christendom from Islam.
England at that time was leaving the faith,
so England was not to be counted on.
Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth,
you know, in the aftermath of the defection of England.
Germany was in turmoil because of the Protestant heresy.
And there was many other Christian kings and leaders
who were not eager to participate.
So the group of, the fleet was a relatively small fleet.
And Pius V, instead of turning the fleet over to someone more experienced,
turned it over to his godchild who he had tutored,
who was the bastard son of the Holy Roman Emperor,
John I of Austria,
because he believed he was a good man more than anything else
and was a man of faith and a man of prayer.
And while this man of prayer, Pius V,
chose, especially chose his leader
because he believed he would do the job well
and because he was a good man,
he also asked everyone in Christendom to pray the rosary
to Our Blessed Lady and evoke her intercession upon,
upon the soldiers and upon the whole of Christendom.
And that is what the people did.
And on the morning of October 7th,
when the Christian fleet sailed into the Bay of Lepanto,
knowing that the Turks were waiting for them there,
they had a headwind against them.
They realized how outnumbered they really were.
Don Juan got into a little boat, a dinghy,
and went from ship to ship and told the men
that either they would be victorious or they would die,
but they would give glory to God.
And he asked them to pray the rosary.
He made sure they were confessed.
He told them that blasphemy would be treated as treason.
So he tried to make sure that his soldiers were right with God.
And then he trusted in divine providence.
There was one ship that, as a matter of fact,
had, I think it was on the flagship of Admiral Andrea Doria,
had actually been given an icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe
because in 1531 Our Lady had appeared in New Mexico
and so somehow the icon of Our Lady of Guadalupe
had wound up on one of the ships in the Bay of Lepanto.
So these men were truly trying to find a way
to follow God.
And Don Juan was a very brilliant soldier.
He had a good plan and he was very innovative.
He had decked out some of his ships with weaponry
that had never been used before and he used them in a new way
and it was very effective.
But actually what ended up changing the outcome of the battle
was a turn of the wind.
They were about to engage.
The wind turned in the favor of the Christian fleet
and in very short order they destroyed,
just completely wiped out the Ottoman fleet.
Not all of the ships were sunk,
but what weren't sunk were taken captive.
And in the process as well,
many, many thousands of Christian slaves
that had been captured by the Muslims
and were used as galley slaves on the ships were set free.
So back in Rome where St. Pius V was,
he had been praying all through that day the rosary
and at one point he looked out his window,
he felt inspired to look out his window
and in vision he saw the victory of Lepanto.
So he immediately informed his aides and those around him
that the battle had been won long before anybody else
had received word of the victory.
And in thanksgiving to Our Blessed Lady
he instituted the Feast of Our Lady of Victories
on October 7th.
And it was only later that the feast was changed
to the name Our Lady of the Rosary.
But the two titles, of course,
are tied together very closely
because it is through Our Lady that we conquer.
You know, this story, which is a true story,
is very much like many stories that have taken place
throughout the history of those who follow God.
You can even think back to Gideon in the Old Testament
who was sent into battle against the enemies of Israel
and God even willfully put Gideon at a disadvantage.
He had thousands of soldiers
and God stripped so many of his soldiers away,
almost it seems arbitrarily,
depending on how they drank the water out of the lake,
determined whether they were to stay or not,
until there were only 300 soldiers left.
And God told Gideon that he did this
because he didn't want the Israelites to think
that they won the battle.
He wanted them to believe
that it was through the power of God.
You know, men like Don Juan of Austria,
he stood up and he did the right thing at the right time
and he put himself in harm's way for the right reason,
to protect Europe from Islam,
to protect the faith and protect the future
of the papacy and the whole Roman Catholic Church.
And yet it was through the power of Our Blessed Lady,
through a turn of the wind,
that ultimately victory was won.
And that story, which is very much like many other stories
throughout Christian history,
is a paradigm of our spiritual life.
We have already won the victory if we believe that,
if we put our faith in Jesus Christ,
who is our King and our victor,
and we confront many enemies,
especially the devil,
but also the world,
and the flesh.
And we are very easily overcome.
And by our own strengths,
we will not be victorious.
But through the power of God,
we will be.
Through the power of God,
we can do all things,
as we read in today's Gospel.
The angel Gabriel tells Our Blessed Lady
that her cousin Elizabeth,
who was old,
had conceived a child,
because nothing is impossible
with God.
And a greater miracle
was being worked in Our Blessed Lady.
She was a virgin,
she was to remain a virgin,
and yet she was to conceive
and bear a son.
She conceived virginally
and gave birth virginally.
That's how the beginning of our salvation
was begun.
Our Lady was weak,
not morally or physically,
but in terms of being a virgin,
she was helpless to become a mother.
And yet through the power of God
and her consent,
her saying yes to God,
she became the very Mother of God.
And the same is true for us.
Even though our enemies
are great and many,
and everything is at stake,
our eternal salvation,
even though that's true,
God's power is with us always.
And He wants us
to turn with confidence
to Our Blessed Lady.
That's what we need to learn
from this feast.
We need to turn to Her.
Why the Rosary?
Why was it the Rosary
that was so powerful
at Lepanto and elsewhere?
Why was it the Rosary
that Our Lady asked us
to pray at Lourdes
and especially at Fatima,
where she told the children
that the whole world
was held in the balance?
And if people were converted,
did penance,
that the world would have peace?
And that if they did not
heed her words,
there would be wars
and annihilation of nations,
and the Holy Father
would have much to suffer?
She said the Rosary.
Why the Rosary?
Because the Rosary
is the way Our Lady thought
and acted and thinks and acts.
It is Christ and our salvation
seen through her eyes.
And it is an attempt
to remain in her presence
because we recite the Hail Mary
over and over again
and invoke her presence.
And somehow between
either the words of the Hail Marys
or the thoughts of the Mysteries,
we are entering into the heart
of our Blessed Lady
and she is present in our lives.
And it is an act of humility,
you know, to be obedient to that.
It is to pray the Rosary
because Our Lady has asked us to do it.
It is an act of humility and obedience.
It is childlike,
not childish, but childlike.
And it is an expression of confidence
in God and in the Blessed Mother.
And we should have recourse
frequently to the Rosary.
We should pray it every day,
at least a third part of it.
But we should also perhaps pray
even more often the Rosary.
And when we are in need,
especially,
to gather together
and pray the Rosary.
The Family Rosary
is something that Father Patrick Payton
truly believed
would be an instrument of healing
in families
and an instrument of unity.
And he is right.
You know, his old adage
is really true.
The family that prays together
stays together.
We need to turn to prayer
more often.
If we prayed
and guarded our spiritual life,
our life of prayer,
then we would be able to do
the things that we need to do.
We would be inspired
to stand up and do what is right.
But we would do it
in and through our Blessed Lady.
There is a lot of noise in the world.
It comes from all kinds
of different sources.
And sometimes it comes
from religious sources.
And we need to stand up
and be counted
in the world in which we live.
But we need to be doing
God's work,
not our own work.
Don Juan did God's work
because he was obedient
to his Godfather, the Pope,
and because he prayed.
And the Holy Father was doing,
was a man of prayer
before anything else.
And through his prayer
and his fidelity
to his own vocation,
he drew these noble and good men
into battle
for the sake of the salvation
of souls and the future
of Christendom.
So let us also stand up
and be counted.
But do it first of all
by the way we live,
by our life of prayer
and by our union
with our Blessed Lady.
If we draw closer to her
with confidence,
then we are locked into victory.
We are guaranteed victory.
We only need to be faithful
and to persevere
and to turn with confidence
and humility
to our Lady of Victory,
our Lady of the Rosary.
Amen.
Amen.
Amen.