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The Power of the Rosary

How the mysteries of this prayer opened another dimension of reality

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Kimberly Hahn, the wife of Bible scholar and former Protestant minister Scott Hahn was once asked what three aspects of Catholicism were the most difficult for her to accept.

She answered, “Mary, Mary and Mary.”

It is difficult for most Catholics to understand the typical Protestant reserve about the Blessed Virgin Mary. They can see that Protestants love Jesus and the Bible. They appreciate Protestant zeal and enthusiasm for sharing the Faith. What’s the big problem with loving Mary, too?

Put simply, Protestants see Catholic devotion to the Mother of God as a barrier between them and Jesus. Many of them do not understand the title “Mother of God,” imagining that it grants Mary some kind of divine status as a goddess. Catholic doctrines about Mary seem contrary to Scripture. So, when they hear that Mary was a perpetual virgin and that she was conceived without sin, they turn to Romans 3:23, which says, “All have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God.” When they hear Catholics speak of Mary as “co-redemptrix” or “Mediatrix,” they are quick to quote 1 Timothy 2:5, “There is also one mediator between God and the human race, / Christ Jesus, himself human.”

So how does a person brought up with such a deeply held bias against devotion to Mary come not only to the point of entering the Catholic Church, but also to the point where they have a full and beautiful devotion to the mother of the Lord?

Pilgrimage and Prayer

I can tell you, because I was also brought up in an evangelical Protestant home. I was taught all the usual objections to Catholicism and Marian devotion, but for me the turning point came through two things: a pilgrimage to the Marian shrine of Medjugorje and praying the Rosary.

Jesus
The symbolic fresco of Jesus knocking on your door in Herz Jesu Church in Vienna, Austria. Renáta
Sedmáková/AdobeStock

I first prayed the Rosary when I was a young Anglican priest. I was about to set off on an annual retreat to Quarr Abbey — my favorite monastery on the Isle of Wight just off the south coast of England. A parishioner had just returned from the famous English shrine Our Lady of Walsingham and handed me a rosary.

I had never used the Rosary for prayer before and held the usual Protestant bias against “praying to Mary” instead of God. However, I asked myself, “Why should I be right and a billion Catholics be wrong?”

So I picked up a book from the abbey bookstore about how to pray the Rosary and got started. It changed my life. Somehow, praying the Rosary made my prayer life more real, more concrete, more connected with the realities of my Christian faith.

A few months later I was invited to join a shared Catholic-Anglican pilgrimage to Medjugorje — the famous site in Herzegovina at which five young people were allegedly receiving apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary daily. It is above my pay grade to pronounce the authenticity of the apparitions at Medjugorje, but I can relate my own experience.

I was busy with other things and reluctant to go to Medjugorje, but I had my arm twisted by some parishioners who knew what I needed better than I did.

Every day at 6 p.m. the visionaries would begin praying the Rosary, and everyone in the village would stop what they were doing and join in prayer. Sitting on a balcony with a friend, I followed the pattern with everyone else. As the Rosary began I looked up at the sun. As usual, it was a blaze of light too bright to stare at with the naked eye. I noticed that the reflection of the sun on the hood of the car below was also just an indistinct blaze of light.

At 6:20 p.m., after the first two sets of mysteries, the Rosary would stop while the visionaries experienced their apparition. At that point, my friend elbowed me in the ribs and pointed at the sun. It was now suspended in the sky like a white disc, and the disc was spinning with sparks seeming to radiate out from the sun’s edge. The extraordinary thing was that the reflection of the sun on the hood of the car below was also a simple, white, spinning disc — proving that this was not just a trick of my eyes or an optical illusion.

I came home from the pilgrimage more intent on giving the Rosary a real chance, and it was the unexpected reality of the Rosary that spurred me on.

Reality and Reason

By “reality” I mean the Rosary put me in touch with something solid and almost tangible about my Christian faith. It is difficult to articulate, but it was like a door opened to another dimension of reality. My faith was suddenly more alive. It moved from theological theory to direct encounters with the events of the Gospel and the person of Our Lord.

In his encyclical on the Rosary, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, Pope St. John Paul II said the Rosary is “Christocentric.” Through Mary we are brought closer to Christ, and the mysteries of the Rosary introduce us to him and immerse us in his words and works in a powerful way.

This new reality is reasonable because the meditations of the Rosary involve our minds, as well as our hearts. Prayer that is only personal and subjective can only ever be emotional and ephemeral. Because the Rosary is rooted in the objective events of the Gospel, praying the Rosary is a reasonable activity. We ponder the Gospel mysteries with our minds, and as we do the portals of our hearts are also opened.

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Rosary for Inner Healing

bookIn “Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing” (OSV, $14.95), Father Dwight Longenecker invites us to consider how each of the events in the lives of Jesus and Mary, represented by the mysteries of the Rosary, corresponds to an event or stage in our own lives. Through stories, reflections and prayerful meditations, readers will uncover areas where they may need Christ’s healing touch, and learn how to take them to him in prayer through Our Lady.

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For Inner Healing

While I was being introduced to the Rosary I was also going through a dark time personally. I was receiving counseling from a wise priest who advised me to continue praying the Rosary to help resolve my inner issues.

I did so without giving it too much thought, but six months later another priest (who didn’t know about my new experiences with the Rosary) observed with a loving smile, “I believe you have been helped so much by the prayers of Our Lady.”

Suddenly, I put two and two together to make four. I was being healed of my inner turmoil, and it was the Rosary that had made the difference!

This led me some years later to write a book that has helped many people. “Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing” introduces a new way of praying the Rosary. It shows how the mysteries of the Rosary run parallel to the stages of life. In Rosarium Virginis Mariae, St. John Paul says, “The Rosary does indeed ‘mark the rhythm of human life,’ bringing it into harmony with the ‘rhythm’ of God’s own life” (No. 25).

So, for example, the Annunciation connects with our conception in our mother’s womb; the Visitation with the months of our gestation; the Nativity with our birth; the Presentation in the Temple with our infancy and childhood; and the Finding in the Temple with our adolescence. These stages in Jesus’ life — as the Son of God and with a sinless Mother — were abundant, full — perfect and complete.

It is not so with us, however. Because of our fallen nature and fallen world, we are wounded by sin. When the different stages of life are burdened by sin and wounded by selfishness, praying the Rosary can resolve wounds and bring our lives into harmony with the perfect human life of Jesus and Mary.

An example of this is a woman I’ll call Sylvia, who came to receive counseling about some horrible phobias she was suffering. She feared being strangled and having her throat slit. Sylvia was terrified because she had been diagnosed with a tumor that was slowly strangling her, and the treatment proffered was to have surgery — in other words, to have her throat slit. Both of her fears were coming true at the same time!

Through counseling and some God-given “coincidences,” she discovered that her mother had attempted an abortion while she was in the womb. Praying the Rosary focused on the mystery of the Visitation (which parallels our period of gestation) and brought Jesus’ perfect months of gestation alive in her life, bringing reconciliation and healing. A few weeks later, Sylvia reported that the growth had disappeared, and she no longer needed surgery.

Reality of Redemption

The mysteries of the Rosary are no less than the mysteries of our redemption. Through the incarnation, life, ministry, death and resurrection of Our Lord, we are redeemed and rescued from the curse of sin and death.

This is not simply a theological theory or a preaching point. It is a reality — the reality of redemption, and this reality becomes active in our lives through the sacraments, through the Scriptures and devotions like the holy Rosary.

The poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” What he meant was, “The truth hurts.” Indeed, reality can sometimes be harsh and hard to hear, but it is also true that reality is glorious and full of light and life. Heaven is pure reality. St. Thérèse of Lisieux made the point when she said in her simple, poetic way, “In heaven every grain of dust is a diamond.”

The reality of the Rosary helps these greater realities to come into clear focus and brings us closer to the one who is reality itself: Christ the Lord. 

FATHER DWIGHT LONGENECKER is a priest of the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina. He is the author of “Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing” (OSV, $14.95) and 20 other books on Catholic life and culture. Visit his blog, browse his books and be in touch at dwightlongenecker.com

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Marian Shrine in Wisconsin

The National Shrine of Our Lady of Good Help is the first and only approved Marian apparition site in the United States. Located in New Franken, Wisconsin, and open 365 days a year, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., the shrine offers daily opportunities for the faithful to receive the sacraments and pray: Mass, Rosary, Eucharistic Adoration and the Chaplet of Divine Mercy daily; and other devotions such as a Eucharistic Rosary Procession, Fátima Holy Hour, family Rosary, Sacred Heart devotions, other Fátima devotions and a Eucharistic healing prayer service throughout the month.
In 1859, Our Lady appeared to Adele Brise with the message: “I am the Queen of Heaven who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received holy Communion this morning and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my son will be obliged to punish them.” Adele was told, “Gather the children in this wild country and teach them what they should know for salvation.”

All are welcome to experience this humble and peaceful place of prayer and refuge — no appointment is necessary. Learn more at championshrine.org/

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