Prayer is an intimate exchange with God. You already know how easy it is to pray since your life is completely imbued with the spirit of prayer through those upsurges of the heart to Jesus and Mary, those glances to heaven or those outbursts of gratitude and love, prayers of entreaty or supplication, etc. Nourished in this way by the sacraments, inundated by the Word through wholesome reading, united with others in prayer, imbued with love in all your actions, and particularly as you accomplish the duties of your state, your soul, shaped in this manner, cannot do anything other than sing a hymn of thanksgiving as you are doing and communicate to other the light that dwells in it.

One element is missing to your happiness: that of being able to pray the rosary ALONE. Begin with three “HAIL MARYS”. A few days later you will feel the need to recite a decade of the rosary alone with God. Already accustomed to a life of orison, you will reach the point of being able to say the rosary, and then one day you will make it a duty to pray the fifteen-decade rosary, adding to it a moment of reflection at the mention of each of the joyful, sorrowful and glorious mysteries. A prayer of the Church recommended by the Popes and more particularly by Mary during her epiphanies (apparitions) when, at Fatima, she revealed herself under the title of Our Lady of the Rosary. The rosary: a silent and effective weapon which she gives to her loving and attentive children in order to be victorious over the spirit of evil that claims so many victims.

In troubled times, this prayer which is so simple and which, at the same time, is a summary of the Gospel, is within reach of everyone, the great and the little, the adults and the children, the powerful ones and the humble. It is the weapon of peaceful combats, contrary to the destructive weapons invented by men to sow trouble, violence, terror, ruin and even death.

If tomorrow’s society wishes to experience a Christian renewal and at the same time a “human renewal”, then it must, through the prayer of the rosary, draw upon itself the graces with which Jesus’ Merciful Heart is filled in order to be able to pour them upon the world.

To help you say the rosary at home, you can use a cassette on which the mysteries of the rosary have been recorded.

Do not torment yourself if, during your prayer, certain distractions assail you. Even with the best of intentions, we cannot get away from this. What counts, first of all, is the love we put into our prayers and our actions. In this way, God gives graces of light through which the soul acquires a better understanding of the divine ways and has a more ardent desire to advance with generosity. The more the soul advances in its relationship with God, the less agitated and impetuous is the manifestation of its love, but what it loses in emotion and exterior manifestation, it gains in depth. The movement of its will to love God and souls becomes more steadfast, and it penetrates more deeply into the divine mysteries. Thus, the soul reaches the point of being able to contemplate God in silence and with love. The more the soul becomes enamoured of God, the more it feels the need to concentrate its love in a total generosity through the consecration or the giving of itself to Jesus through Mary. And the graces are abundant. Therefore, what counts, above all, is not to reason but to love and to abandon oneself.

Go forward… soon, your rosary will be a “garland” of flowers which you will like to offer to God every day for the welfare of the Church which we are all called to serve.

May our country, may the world, return to Jesus through Mary, and everything else – peace, prosperity, constructive dynamism – will be given it besides.

Mother Paul-Marie