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Question
Good morning father Angelo,
My name is … I am … years old and I live in … I am writing to ask you the courtesy of adding me to the Confraternity of the Most Holy Rosary. I take the chance of this email also to give you my thanks ( to express my sincere gratitude) for the numerous explanations about the life of faith that you bestow on all Christians.
I haven’t quite understood yet why but I truly feel the need to become part of the Brotherhood. You must know that I had a period (about 10 years) of almost total estrangement from the Church and the grace of God. I had never been very practicing, and my prayer activity (very scarce and limited to my teenage years) during this “dark time” was almost nothing . As if that was not enough, I sinned in a very serious way (especially sins of lust).
I’ve been married for almost 5 years. My wife is and has always been a very religious person and constant even in reciting the Rosary during her life. During lockdown due to Covid-19, on the occasion of the many prayer invitations of the Holy Rosary on TV2000, I was convinced by my wife to join her in reciting it. (I admit that until March 2020 I didn’t even know how to recite a Rosary and I thought it was a long and boring prayer). Well Father, I don’t know what happened to me, but from that night I haven’t stopped praying the Rosary. In the following days I recited just a couple of decades corresponding to the mysteries of the day of the week, but then the frequency increased until the 1st of May, the day from which I have been reciting all the 20 mysteries sequentially. The most incredible thing is that those two hours spent praying the Rosary seem like 10 minutes; if during the day I have nothing to do, I recite more than one whole Rosary ,even if not in full. . My life has changed (and who surrounds me has noticed it too), I went back to Confession and subsequently to Communion, I feel the need to go to the Holy Mass not only on Sundays but also on other days. What I’m living is really extraordinary and unexpected.
What do you think of all this? Is it a personal conversion? A Grace from God? A help from Holy Mary through her Rosary? Is it possible something like this without me asking for it while praying? And above all, while finding myself in mortal sin?
A special thanks goes to you, dear Father, because after this change of heart I felt the need to surf the net to find a way to undertake a different path with the Grace of God and to find a way not to sin. And do you know where I found almost all the answers to my questions? In Your words.
I wish I’m ready and up to being part of the Brotherhood. Thank you for everything, Father Angelo, hoping to do something that is appreciated, I’ll pray for you while reciting the Holy Rosary.
Answer from the priest
Dear friend,
1. I begin the reply to your beautiful email with the words that the blessed Bartolo Longo used in the Supplication to the Madonna of Pompeii: “To the ancient splendors of your Crown, to the triumphs of your Rosary, whence you are called Queen of Victories, add this again, O Mother”. To the many graces obtained by Our Lady of the Rosary we also add your conversion to a fervent Christian life. According to Saint Augustine, the conversion of a soul is more precious than the whole material cosmos because sooner or later the cosmos will end, while conversion brings supernatural and divine goods to an immortal soul.
2. Your conversion is the work of Virgin Mary and I’m not surprised. If the ark of the covenant, which was the prefiguration of the Virgin Mary, while left for three months in the house of Obed-Edom it procured many graces to that family (as it can be read in 2 Sam 6,11) I’m not surprised at all that reciting the Holy Rosary brought you to a fervent Christian life, full of graces and consolations from the Holy Spirit. When you began to pray the Rosary together with your wife it was like you opened the door to the Virgin Mary. And She came and began to act in your soul with her own way of doing which is sweetness.
3. Whent the Virgin Mary went to visit her cousin Elizabeth she didn’t go alone, but she brought with herself a double presence: the one of Jesus who sanctified John the Baptist who was present in the womb of his mother and the presence of the Holy Spirit, so much so that Elizabeth was filled with it and she began to praise the Virgin Mary: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb! To what do I owe the mother of my Lord to come to me? There, as soon as your greeting reached my ears, the child leapt for joy in my womb. And blessed is she who believed in the fulfilment of what the Lord told her” (Lc 1,42-45). The same is true for you too.
4. While you were praying to the Lord with the Rosary, brought in your home by Virgin Mary, He began to purify you, to consecrate you and to do something in you similar to what He did to St. John the Baptist. Now it doesn’t cost you to pray anymore. Actually, prayer has become the breath of your soul. Likewise, while you recreate in your mind that particular event in the life of Jesus, the Lord fills you with the Holy Spirit and something similar to what happened in Elizabeth at the moment of Mary’s visit also happens in you.
5. This is the underlying reason for your inner transformation. Now you can understand how true St. John Paul II’s words are about the Rosary: “in the background of the words Hail Mary the main episodes of Jesus Christ’s life pass before the eyes of the soul. (…). At the same time our heart can enclose in each of these decades of the Holy Rosary all the events that make up the lives of individuals,families, nations, the Church, and all mankind. Personal events and the affairs of others and, in particular, of those closest to us, who are most dear to us. Thus the simple prayer of the Rosary marks the rhythm of human life” (RVM 2).
6. You tell me that what you are living is “truly extraordinary and unexpected”. When Obed-Edom saw himself blessed by the Lord with all his family because of the ark of covenant, prefiguration of Mary, wouldn’t he have said that the time had been “truly extraordinary and unexpected”? It was not only for him, but for all his family too. Wouldn’t Elizabeth have said the same thing about the time during which the Virgin Mary was with her?
7. Your wife, who now sees you transformed, couldn’t say that Mary’s daily presence in your home, brought through the Rosary’s prayer, has really been “something extraordinary and unexpected”? Couldn’t she say that your conversion was one of the most beautiful graces of your family’s life and of your wedding? And that your wedding is now reaching one of its highest moments?
8. Keep it up. As you see, Mary’s presence through the Rosary brought you to Confession, to Sunday and weekly Eucharist. Without you realizing it, Jesus Christ is becoming the centre and the meaning of your life. The Virgin Mary will bring you with sweetness to “do everything throughHim and in view of Him” (Col 1,16). We have no other ultimate purpose than fill us up with Jesus and to reflect His light through our poor person.
I thank you for this precious testimony. Pray that what you have been allowed to experience may become the experience of many others. Thank you for the Holy Rosary whom you dedicate to me in front of the Lord. I’ll do the same for you. In the meanwhile I bless you and I wish you all the best.
Father Angelo