From The Rosary, Roses of Prayer for the Queen of Heaven by Rev. Daniel A. Lord S.J.
Mary is the lovely Mother of the world. She is the beautiful Queen of Heaven. Now the sweetest gift that people give toa mother and a queen is a bouquet of flowers. Mary, since that first Christmas, has beenwonderfully good to all her children. So, we love to give her roses. Since she is in heaven, it is hard to give herroses from our gardens. Yet we do this when we decorate hershrines. Always we can give her our Rosary, abeautiful bouquet of prayers. So we lay the Rosary in the arms of ourQueen and Mother.
Often we call the Rosary our “beads.” Almost every Catholic carries these beads in his pocket or in her purse. Little children love to say them with their parents. When Catholics die, usually their beads are twined through their fingers, and they are buried with them. Great saints have called their beads a ladder leading up to heaven. But simple, uneducated people loved them too. Today, good Catholics say them when they walk, in street cars, while they wait for friends, at night in their rooms, driving their autos, wherever they have a minute to think of Jesus and talk to Mary.
Like all the great saints, Saint Dominic deeply loved God’s Mother, Mary. He dedicated his splendid priests, the Dominicans, to her. Dominic taught men to love the name of Jesus. He longed to make them know and love the sweet Mother of Jesus. He wanted them to pray to her, to think of her, to recall the wonderful life of Jesus and Mary. Mary loved her son, Dominic. So she gave him a string of beads like a necklace. She taught him how to use it. She asked him to give it to the world. And from that day on, men and women have used the Rosary when they pray to God’s Mother.
