Today is October 7. It is the day on which Christians commemorate the military victory that saved Europe from being overrun by the Mohammedans (otherwise known as Muslims or Islamics). The historic sea battle of October 7, 1571, took place off Lepanto in the Gulf of Corinth in southern Greece.
Some background. Islam arose in the eighth century at Mecca in Arabia after one Mohammed had a mystical vision, allegedly of the Archangel Gabriel. His new sect advanced westward by terrorism through the Christian lands of Egypt, Libya, and what is today called Algeria and Morocco. Today, hardly a single Christian has survived in these countries. While we (including the pope at the Vatican) allow Muslims to build mosques, the Muslims do not allow Christians to build churches.
That is why it is said that Islam is not so much a religion of the word as a religion of the sword. The practice of the militant Muslims was to cut off the heads of their victims. Ask the people of Mindinao in the Philippines whether they do this. Or the people of Kosovo after the "ethnic Albanian" invasion.
A hundred years after Mohammed's vision, the followers of Islam had conquered Spain and were pouring into France. Their advance was repelled at the Battle of Poitiers in year 732 by French Christian forces led by Charles Martel, father of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. The Spanish tried again and again to be rid of this scourge. But they did not manage to drive them out for eight hundred long years. Back in the east, the crescent swept northwards, consuming in blood, fire and sword the Holy Land, Syria, and Persia. Once fertile lands were turned into deserts by these uncivilized nomads and their constant fighting.
With the Turko-Mongol invasions of the 13th century, the inhabitants of the Middle East became subject to a new people. The Turks adopted Islam. Nearly all Muslims of the Middle East today are either of Turkish descent or descendants of the original Christian inhabitants who renounced their faith when confronted with the persuasive power of the sword. The political center of the Muslim Empire had shifted from Arabia to Turkey.
Under Ozman, the Turks took up the Arab's holy war against Christianity, advancing on Byzantium, or Constantinople, capital of the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire. By the time of Murad I, the Byzantine Empire had been reduced to the lonely city of Constantinople. Millions of Christians were dead, and millions of others had been compelled to convert to Islam. In 1453 Constantinople finally fell to the Muslims.
Pope Pius V called on the monarchs of Europe to join in the urgent defence of Christendom. The action that was to follow was the biggest naval engagement anywhere on the globe since Octavian defeated Marc Antony in the Battle of Actium in 30 B.C. Propelled by a favourable wind, the Muslim ships advanced in crescent moon formation in the Bay of Lepanto. The Christian admiral, Don Juan, knelt in prayer. Suddenly the wind changed. The two fleets charged, firing their cannon, and, coming alongside, the men met in hand-to-hand combat. The Muslim admiral, Ali Pasha, was killed. The Crusaders had won. 8,000 Europeans had been killed and 25,000 Turks. 15,000 Christian slaves who had been rowing in the Turkish galleys were liberated.
At that moment Pope Pius V had a vision. He suddenly got up and went to the window, peered at the sky, and then turning to those present, announced, "This is not the time for doing business. Let us return thanks to God. Our armada has even now defeated the Turkish fleet." The people of Rome had prayed the prayer of the Rosary in vigil throughout the eve of the battle and into the day.
The feastday of 7 October is honored as a victory accomplished by the prayerful intercession of Our Lady on behalf of her children, Mary Help of Christians, Our Lady of Victories. Catholics now call this day the feastday of Our Lady Of the Most Holy Rosary. It was a sad and ominous day, January 29, 1965, when Pope Paul VI handed the glorious standard of Lepanto, snatched in a daring attack from the Turkish flagship, back to the Turks. This is not scripture, it is history.
Please, if you can remember from your Catholic schooling how to recite the Rosary, do so this month, the month of the Holy Rosary. I firmly beleive that it will be through the intercession of the Blessed Mother that peace will ultimately come to this world. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- An Easy Answer From
by G.K.Chesterton
White founts falling in the Courts of the sun, And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run; There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared, It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard; It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips; For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships. They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy, They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea, And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss, And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross. The cold queen of England is looking in the glass; The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass; From evening isles fantastical rings faint the Spanish gun, And the Lord upon the Golden Horn is laughing in the sun.
Dim drums throbbing, in the hills half heard, Where only on a nameless throne a crownless prince has stirred, Where, risen from a doubtful seat and half attainted stall, The last knight of Europe takes weapons from the wall, The last and lingering troubadour to whom the bird has sung, That once went singing southward when all the world was young. In that enormous silence, tiny and unafraid, Comes up along a winding road the noise of the Crusade. Strong gongs groaning as the guns boom far, Don John of Austria is going to the war, Stiff flags straining in the night-blasts cold In the gloom black-purple, in the glint old-gold, Torchlight crimson on the copper kettle-drums, Then the tuckets, then the trumpets, then the cannon, and he comes. Don John laughing in the brave beard curled, Spurning of his stirrups like the thrones of all the world, Holding his head up for a flag of all the free. Love-light of Spain--hurrah! Death-light of Africa! Don John of Austria Is riding to the sea.
Mahound is in his paradise above the evening star, (Don John of Austria is going to the war.) He moves a mighty turban on the timeless houri's knees, His turban that is woven of the sunsets and the seas. He shakes the peacock gardens as he rises from his ease, And he strides among the tree-tops and is taller than the trees; And his voice through all the garden is a thunder sent to bring Black Azrael and Ariel and Ammon on the wing. Giants and the Genii, Multiplex of wing and eye, Whose strong obedience broke the sky When Solomon was king.
They rush in red and purple from the red clouds of the morn, From the temples where the yellow gods shut up their eyes in scorn; They rise in green robes roaring from the green hells of the sea Where fallen skies and evil hues and eyeless creatures be, On them the sea-valves cluster and the grey sea-forests curl, Splashed with a splendid sickness, the sickness of the pearl; They swell in sapphire smoke out of the blue cracks of the ground,-- They gather and they wonder and give worship to Mahound. And he saith, "Break up the mountains where the hermit-folk can hide, And sift the red and silver sands lest bone of saint abide, And chase the Giaours flying night and day, not giving rest, For that which was our trouble comes again out of the west. We have set the seal of Solomon on all things under sun, Of knowledge and of sorrow and endurance of things done. But a noise is in the mountains, in the mountains, and I know The voice that shook our palaces--four hundred years ago: It is he that saith not 'Kismet'; it is he that knows not Fate; It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate! It is he whose loss is laughter when he counts the wager worth, Put down your feet upon him, that our peace be on the earth." For he heard drums groaning and he heard guns jar, (Don John of Austria is going to the war.) Sudden and still--hurrah! Bolt from Iberia! Don John of Austria Is gone by Alcalar. St. Michaels on his Mountain in the sea-roads of the north (Don John of Austria is girt and going forth.) Where the grey seas glitter and the sharp tides shift And the sea-folk labour and the red sails lift. He shakes his lance of iron and he claps his wings of stone; The noise is gone through Normandy; the noise is gone alone; The North is full of tangled things and texts and aching eyes, And dead is all the innocence of anger and surprise, And Christian killeth Christian in a narrow dusty room, And Christian dreadeth Christ that hath a newer face of doom, And Christian hateth Mary that God kissed in Galilee,-- But Don John of Austria is riding to the sea. Don John calling through the blast and the eclipse Crying with the trumpet, with the trumpet of his lips, Trumpet that sayeth ha! Domino gloria! Don John of Austria Is shouting to the ships.
King Philip's in his closet with the Fleece about his neck (Don John of Austria is armed upon the deck.) The walls are hung with velvet that is black and soft as sin, And little dwarfs creep out of it and little dwarfs creep in. He holds a crystal phial that has colours like the moon, He touches, and it tingles, and he trembles very soon, And his face is as a fungus of a leprous white and grey Like plants in the high houses that are shuttered from the day, And death is in the phial and the end of noble work, But Don John of Austria has fired upon the Turk. Don John's hunting, and his hounds have bayed-- Booms away past Italy the rumour of his raid. Gun upon gun, ha! ha! Gun upon gun, hurrah! Don John of Austria Has loosed the cannonade.
The Pope was in his chapel before day or battle broke, (Don John of Austria is hidden in the smoke.) The hidden room in man's house where God sits all the year, The secret window whence the world looks small and very dear. He sees as in a mirror on the monstrous twilight sea The crescent of his cruel ships whose name is mystery; They fling great shadows foe-wards, making Cross and Castle dark, They veil the plumèd lions on the galleys of St. Mark; And above the ships are palaces of brown, black-bearded chiefs, And below the ships are prisons, where with multitudinous griefs, Christian captives sick and sunless, all a labouring race repines Like a race in sunken cities, like a nation in the mines. They are lost like slaves that sweat, and in the skies of morning hung The stair-ways of the tallest gods when tyranny was young. They are countless, voiceless, hopeless as those fallen or fleeing on Before the high Kings' horses in the granite of Babylon. And many a one grows witless in his quiet room in hell Where a yellow face looks inward through the lattice of his cell, And he finds his God forgotten, and he seeks no more a sign-- (But Don John of Austria has burst the battle-line!) Don John pounding from the slaughter-painted poop, Purpling all the ocean like a bloody pirate's sloop, Scarlet running over on the silvers and the golds, Breaking of the hatches up and bursting of the holds, Thronging of the thousands up that labour under sea White for bliss and blind for sun and stunned for liberty.
Vivat Hispania! Domino Gloria! Don John of Austria Has set his people free!
Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath (Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.) And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain, Up which a lean and foolish knight for ever rides in vain, And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade.... (But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)