Saint Who?
Saints Who Promoted the Rosary
Saint Dominic
Priest and founder († 1221)Feast: August 8
Dominic de Guzman, founder of the Order of Preachers, was called by God to preach to the Albigensians. Taking their name from Albi, the town in France where the heresy originated, this group denied the goodness of the material world and many other moral and doctrinal truths of the Catholic faith.
Dominic had high hopes to make speedy headway among these heretics. But despite his courageous efforts, many years passed with little progress. According to a tradition, exhausted by labor and penance, Dominic fell into deep sleep. The Blessed Virgin then appeared to him and instructed him to “preach my Psalter.”
Father Don Calloway writes in his book Champions of the Rosary of the significance of this: “In essence, Our Lady had instructed Saint Dominic to take the Marian Psalter out of the monasteries, infuse it with sacred mysteries and meditation, and take it into the streets to become a weapon of mass conversion.” Mary had asked Dominic to combine a decade of “Angelic Salutations” with meditations on aspects of the faith that the Albigensians denied. Dominic’s work and his new order blossomed. He made many converts, and helped to stop the spread of the heresy.
Almighty Father, through the intercession of
Saint Dominic, may we set the world ablaze
through praying and spreading the rosary.
