Our Lady of Victory

Dear Parishioners, 

It was the year 1571, a fleet of ships assembled under the title, “Holy League,” which included the Papacy.  They had organized and arrived upon hearing of a seismic threat to the Christian West.  The Ottomans were coming by sea.  Pope Pius V knew how precarious this moment was. Various supreme pontiffs had ordered Crusades to try to defend Christians from Muslim attacks, dating back 500 years to the late 11th century. Virtually all of them failed. The Ottomans had reveled in a long run of conquests under Suleiman the Magnificent, who, since the 1520s, had wiped out Christians and captured their territory, killing and enslaving many.  Now, a new invasion was in motion.  Failure meant exposure to further Muslim conquests in the Mediterranean and likely Central Europe. In Rome, Pope Pius V, whose treasury bankrolled part of this military endeavor, ordered the churches of Rome opened for prayer day and night, encouraging the faithful to petition the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary through the recitation of the Rosary. The supreme Turkish commander, Ali Pasha, stood aboard his flagship, the Sultana, in the center of an alignment of Muslim ships shaped like a massive crescent moon. His Sultana flew a massive banner brought from Mecca with the name of Allah embroidered in gold letters 28,000 times. His opponent, Don Juan, wore around his neck a relic of the True Cross given to him by Pius V.  That morning, the Christian forces all attended Mass on their respective ships and received absolution. The Pope had delegated Capuchins to the papal ships, Jesuits to the Spanish ships, and Dominicans and Franciscans to the others.  More than 100,000 men and hundreds of ships squared off in the water.  This was truly a spiritual battle. 

The two sides engaged in a vicious exchange.  As the sea battle waged on, Christian forces were beginning to buckle under the onslaught of the Muslim ships.  Suddenly, the momentum swiftly changed when a sudden shift in the winds turned the tide in favor of the Holy League.  Deemed as nothing less than miraculous, the Christian fleet rallied and broke the Turkish fleet.  For the first time in a century, the Mediterranean was free.  Had the Christian defenders lost this battle, many Christians would either have been killed, taken into slavery, or forced to convert to Islam.  When news reached Rome, the Pope, awakened in the middle of the night, burst into tears of joy and invoked the words of Simeon: “Lord, now let your servant depart in peace” (Luke 2:29).  To commemorate this victory of the Holy League, the pope added a new feast day to the Roman Liturgical Calendar- October 7th would henceforth be the feast of Our Lady of Victory. Later renamed to the Feast of the Holy Rosary.    We have been placed in the midst of a fallen world filled with conflicts.  Conflicts between our neighbor, God, and within ourselves.  As disciples of Christ, we labor and stand against those forces that would have us surrender to the world and our own selfishness.  We are never alone in this battle, for Jesus assures his disciples to “take heart; I have conquered the world.”  He is triumphant, but there still are battles left for him to fight in all the Lepanto’s that rage within our own troubled souls. In the midst of these battles, I know that Christ the Lord fights for us still, and that the Lady of Victory is at his side. 

In Christ,

Fr. Luke Fleck