Mary of the Rosary

Each evening at 6:30 p.m. several of us come together in the infirmary chapel to pray the rosary. Some of us have been doing this for decades. Nor is it unusual to see one of us on his way to work, walking under the trees, or in the cloister with a rosary dangling from his hand. Mary truly is present to us as our own mother throughout the day and night. This simple filial love for our Blessed Mother is evident in the earliest years of our Cistercian Order, a period of church history that saw a great flowering of marian devotion. All Cistercians consider themselves under the special protection of Mary. Some of us express our trust in the Mother of God by joining her name to our own, for instance, “Mary Kevin,” “Mary Stephen,” and “Mary Anselm.” The last word of the Salve Regina that we sing at the close of Compline each evening is thus the last word we say each day: “Maria.”