Our Lady of Ransom, Free Us From Muslims

September 24:  Feast of Our Lady of Ransom (Our Lady of Mercy)

  The Blessed Virgin appeared in 1218 in separate visions to St. Peter Nolasco, St. Raymond of Penafort and James, king of Aragon, asking them to found a religious order dedicated to freeing Christian captives from the barbarous Muslim Saracens, who at the time held a great part of Spain.

    On August 10, 1218, King James established the royal, military and religious Order of our Lady of Ransom (first known as the Order of St. Eulalia, now known as the Mercedarian Order), with the members granted the privilege of wearing his own arms on their breast. Most of the members were knights, and while the clerics recited the divine office in the commanderies, they guarded the coasts and delivered prisoners. This pious work spread everywhere and produced heroes of charity who collected alms for the ransom of Christians, and often gave themselves up in exchange for Christian prisoners.

    This feast, kept only by the Order, was extended to the whole Church by Innocent XII in the 17th century.

In the Middle Ages, Muslims conquered a great part of Christian territory and had carried off into slavery many thousands of Christians. The Church decided to organize the work of ransoming slaves. 

The Order of Our Lady of Ransom, called the Mercedarians, and founded by St. Peter Nolasco, ransomed 490,736 slaves between the years 1218 and 1632. 

Our Blessed Mother herself appeared in a vision to St. Peter Nolasco, and requested him to found a religious order devoted to the rescue of captives. This was in 1218. Previous to that, since 1192, certain noblemen of Barcelona, Spain, had organized to care for the sick in hospitals and to rescue Christians from the Moors. St. Peter Nolasco, St. Raymond of Pennafort, and King James formed the new Order of Our Lady of Mercy. The group included religious priests who prayed and gathered the means, while the lay monks or knights went into the very camps of the Moors to buy back Christians, and, if necessary, take their very places. We have mentioned the magnitude of their success, a success that was won through the heavenly assistance of the Mother of Mercy, Our Lady of Ransom.

Excerpted from the Feasts of Our Lady by Fr. Arthur Tonne

Learn more about the spirituality, saints and history of the Order of Mercedarians who take a vow to risk their lives to save Christians who find themselves in extreme danger of losing their faith in the new types of captivity.  

http://orderofmercy.org/the-mercedarians.html