Daily Gospel Reflection
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October 7, 2025
Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.”
In my office, I often use three screens: one displaying a research paper, another showing an email reply, and a third streaming a video interview. I am not proud to admit it, but I often try to do too many things at once, leaving me anxious and burdened.
Each time I read this gospel, I find I am Martha. The need to do, do, do. Martha is not wrong by trying to serve Christ; it is rather beautiful how hard she tries to be a good host for him. The issue with Martha is that she serves her idea of what Jesus needed, not the person before her. In an attempt to please, she chooses to perform, to stretch her limits, and therefore becomes burdened by hosting. By trying to do many things, she fails to do one thing, which was to be present to the presence of Christ.
This story reminds me how often we try to please Christ rather than receive him. We might feel it is necessary to complete every prayer, devotion, or petition perfectly before we even get out of bed in the morning. But Jesus does not ask us to do much – only to recognize him in the tasks ahead, in our hearts, our homes, our work.
Christ prefers us to be like Mary in the story, at his feet, listening to him speak. Being present to him daily will look different to each of us. For me, even a small task at work can be an encounter with Christ, if I’m not stretching myself across three screens.
On this Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary, may the rosary draw us into being with Jesus by meditating on his mysteries, remembering his life, and resting in his presence today.
Prayer
Good and gracious God, your Word opens our minds and hearts. Each day we strive to live your Word. Help us to listen to your Son, to trust in his healing power. Never abandon us in time of suffering and loss. Bring us your comfort and assurance. Like Martha, may we turn to your Son in our time of need, and find comfort in his presence. We ask this in his name. Amen.
Saint of the Day
The rosary has been a popular, Scripturally-based set of prayers invoking Mary's intercession since the Middle Ages. The most widely accepted legend of the rosary's origins holds that Mary appeared to Saint Dominic when he was struggling with preaching in the early 13th century and instructed him in this new prayer practice. In this apparition, Mary told him to encourage people to pray the rosary, and Dominic found subsequent great success in his preaching once he began spreading this devotion. Given that the earliest recording of this story dates from three hundred years after these events supposedly took place, the legend of Mary's appearance to Dominic is highly apocryphal. But it is true that the rosary grew in prominence in popular piety through the protection and support of Dominic and his Dominican friars.
Why is the rosary such a fitting Marian devotion? In its essence, the rosary is a marriage of scriptural meditation and formulaic, repetitive prayers, whose aim is to facilitate the prayer practitioner's contemplation of the events of Salvation history narrated in Scripture. The prayers and their accompanying "mysteries" allow those who pray them to meditate on the events of salvation history that occurred in Mary and Jesus' lives. This prayerful contemplation of God's actions imitates Mary's disposition of openness to God's will (Lk 1:38) and continual pondering of God's actions in her life (Lk 2:19). Thus, the rosary is the Marian devotion par excellence, as it aims to instill in the devotee the very disposition of the Marian figure he or she contemplates in prayer.
October 7th was chosen as the feast for celebrating Mary as Our Lady of the Rosary due to her intercession for the European naval forces in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Originally, Mary was honored today under the title "Our Lady of Victory," to celebrate the aid she gave to the European navy. For on the day of the battle, Pope Pius V called upon Christians all over Europe to pray the rosary in anticipation of the cataclysmic naval battle, asking for Mary’s intercession in battle. After the victory, the Pius V instituted a feast day to Our Lady of Victory, commemorating the power of the rosary in obtaining Mary's intercession. Three years later, the name of this feast was changed to Our Lady of the Rosary, and its presence in October led the entire month of October to be celebrated still by many Catholics as the month of the rosary.
Our Lady of Victory figures prominently in stained glass windows in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on Notre Dame's campus. An entire side chapel in the Basilica features windows containing images of our Lady of Victory, the Battle of Lepanto, and her shrine in Paris. A famous Marian shrine in Paris, Notre-Dame des Victoires, is named after Our Lady of Victory. In 1832, an association of people began to gather at this Paris shrine to dedicate themselves to Mary through the reception of the Miraculous Medal and praying for the conversion of sinners. Miracles and great wonders occurred, and soon, tens of thousands of people journeyed to the shrine. Eventually, the communities of prayer who gathered at the shrine evolved into the Archconfraternity of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The confraternity and the centrality of this popular Marian shrine in nineteenth-century France partially explains the prominence of Our Lady of Victory in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on campus: when Father Edward Sorin, C.S.C., left France as a missionary priest with the Congregation of Holy Cross to found the University of Notre Dame in the nineteenth century, this devotion was at the height of its popularity.
Despite the rosary's mythical beginnings, and the spectacular origins of today's feast, the rosary's real power is not in the miracles worked through it, but in its gradual and gentle transformation of the hearts of those who pray it to model the obedient, courageous heart of Mary. And, finally, in its conversion of our vision to see God's saving work not as history locked in ancient texts, but as a palpable, tangible reality in our own lives, today.
Our Lady of the Rosary, you help us see the saving work of God in our own lives—pray for us!