OUR LADY OF RANSOM FEAST DAY 24 SEPTEMBER
OUR LADY OF RANSOM
FEAST DAY 24 SEPTEMBER
From the 8th to the 15th century, the presence of Saracens, (Moors, or Muslim Arabs), posed extreme danger to Christians on the seas, as pilgrims in the Middle East, or living in North Africa, Sicily and Spain, where the Caliphate occupied a significant portion of the Iberian Peninsula. Raids by Saracen militias and armed groups resulted in the captivity of many Catholics, who were sold as slaves. Particularly during the 13th century, the powerful Islamic Taifa kingdoms in Spain, and the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean, operated an enormous slave trade, and the Spanish and Sicilians, in particular, were subject to raids where they would be sold into slavery, or, if they remained in the subjugated area, forced to renounce their faith in the face of severe discrimination, torture and death. It is estimated that in one year more white Europeans were taken captive in these raids than the total number of slaves shipped to America over the entire period of the American/African slave trade. *
Organisations of knights such as the knights of St John Hospitaller and the Templars were formed from the 11th century to protect Catholic pilgrims in the Holy Land, the Hospitallers running hospices along the pilgrim path and operating a hospital in Jerusalem. There were also charitable institutions, usually run by the nobility, often comprised of knights, which guarded the coasts and undertook the ransom of Catholics from captivity. These groups, however, focused predominantly upon nobility in purchasing their ransom.
The Blessed Virgin Mary appeared separately to St Raimund, of the Order of St Dominic, King James 1 of Aragon, and St Peter Nolasco in 1218, where she requested that each of them contribute to establishing a religious order dedicated to redeeming those captives held by the Muslims. The order established is known as "The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of Captives", also known as the Order of Our Lady of Ransom. St Peter Nolasco focused the order on ransoming those who were not wealthy or prominent men, but those whom he called, “the poor of Christ”.
They were mendicant and clerics of the order sold scapulars to pay the ransom demands, (they did, however, have patronage of nobility and royalty). Significantly, those who sought to join the order were required to pledge that they be prepared to offer themselves in the place of, and even die for, any captive for whom they were negotiating - and the order experienced absolutely no shortage of vocations. When Catholic rulers recovered more land on the Iberian Peninsula, some of the land was given to the Mercedarians.
After World War II, the Order evolved its charism of rescue from physical slavery to that of slavery to addiction – drugs and other sins which bind the soul into a psychological and spiritual slavery. Although present in many countries, their mission is effective primarily in South America, Spain and Italy.
Devotion of the Order to Our Lady of Ransom is prayed by a chaplet, with a medal, five Pater beads, three sets of four Ave beads, prayed in honour of Our Lady’s Crown of excellence, and ending with a Glory be - the “Crown of Twelve Stars of Our Lady of Mercy” based upon the Book of Revelation, (12:1): “And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”
*See Further, Dario Fernandez- Morera"The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise".
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