Saturday, May 07, 2011

First Saturday Devotion: Our Lady of the Holy Rosary

He followed the noble fragrance until he came to the beautiful rose...For the Son of the Most High saw this lovely, tender, fragrant rose blooming among the thorns of the sinful world and the sweet fragrance of her earnest desire wafted up to him unceasingly.  He was caught by her eager love and so enraptured that he leapt from his father's lap down to this rose among thorns and was so sorely pierced that his hands and feet bled.

- Our Lady Mary's Rose Garden, c. 1430
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Ave Maria, rose without thorns,
you were born to comfort me.
A queen of high birth,
help me that I shall not be lost.

- From an early Latin Marian Psalter, 13th Century


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Hail Mary, branch of Jesse,
from you came the noble one,
Jesus, your child, whose sweet name
took away from us all our sins.

Latin Marian Psalter, late 13th or early 14th Century


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I greet you, Mary, my Lady.
Accept this little rose chaplet
that I have recited for you today.

- Marian Psalter, 14th Century


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Hail, Jesse's King;
angel's praise, joy, delight;
royal child of kingly descent,
God's daughter, Christ's wet nurse.

- Marian Psalter, beginning of the 14th Century

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Help us, because of the glances
that he often cast at you,
as a child toward its mother.
Whatever you wish, he does for your sake.
Help us, Lady, on account of the fear
that evil Herod caused you
through the children
that he struck, thus frightening you.
Help us, because of the undefiled
flight to Egypt/ the suckling,
God's nursing at your breasts,
which surely pleased you.

- Marian Psalter


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Help us, on account of the noble reception
with palms, as Christ neared
Jerusalem, the place he yearned for,
as he foretold that he would.

- Marian Psalter


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Help us, Lady on account of the agony
that Christ suffered on death's journey,
when Pilate washed his hands,
that we find a just end.

- Marian Psalter

Source of Psalter stanzas: Stories of the Rose: The Making of the rosary in the Middle Ages by Anne Winston-Allen.

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