Month six of the 2026 Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage nine-month novena is here.

Fr. Walter Wagner, O.P., pastor of Saint Thomas Aquinas University Parish and homilist for the 2026 Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage, offers this month’s reflection. This past Easter, his parish welcomed 92 people into the Church through baptism, reception into full communion, and confirmation. But behind that joy, Fr. Walter sits with a harder question: Will they stay?

His answer turns to Mary. At the finding of the child Jesus in the temple, she did not simply move on from what she could not understand. She kept all these things in her heart, returning to the mystery again and again. Fr. Walter calls her the first Christian practitioner of contemplation, and invites us into that same practice through the Rosary.

As we move through the ups and downs of human experience, the Rosary draws us back, again and again, to the unceasing and unfailing mastery of God.

Join us in praying the fifth month of the novena, and in preparing for the Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage on September 26, 2026, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, DC.