Letter IV: The Rosary & the Scapular (Part I)

When the Rosary is well said it gives Jesus and Mary more glory and it is more meritorious for the soul than any other prayer. But it is also the hardest prayer to say well and to persevere in...

Those who pray are certainly saved; those who do not pray are certainly damned.

— Saint Alphonsus Liguori

My Dear Children,

I told you in a previous letter how Jesus, the night before He left His disciples to go where they could not come, gave them two special gifts to help them on their way: a commandment to love one another as He loves them, and the means to do so through the Sacrament of the Eucharist. But there is one more special gift He gave us before he died on the cross that I did not tell you about.

Mary and John stood at the foot of the cross when Jesus was crucified. In his gospel, John always calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” instead of using his own name, so that we would know that it applies not just to John, but to all of us who are beloved disciples of Jesus. The last gift Jesus gave us on the cross before He died was to look at his mother and say to her, “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home (John 19:25-27).

In so doing, Jesus gave us the gift of His own mother to be our mother in a very real and special way, just as I have always told you that God is your true Father and Mary is your true Mother. He didn’t have to do this, but He wanted to give us an abundance of gifts on our journey to Heaven, and just as He chose to come to earth through Mary (even though He could have chosen any other way) so we see Jesus choosing to bring us to Heaven with the help of our Mother Mary — even though He could have chosen any other way. Why did He choose this particular way for us? I don’t know, except that it must be the very most loving way.

Since we have been praying the family Rosary together for probably as long as any of you can remember, I won’t teach the basics of praying it here; you are already so familiar with it. However, “familiarity breeds contempt,” as they say, which just means in this case that since the Rosary is so familiar to you, it can be easy to forget just how special it really is. So I will try in this letter to stir you up with reminders about the unique gift of the Rosary, and encourage you to pray it every single day.

A phrase you may hear, or even have said yourself, is “I just don’t get anything out of it.” If we seriously asked ourselves what exactly we mean by that, I think we would eventually come to the conclusion that we mean spiritual practices that we don’t learn anything from, have trouble concentrating on, or don’t get any consolation from. The two things I have heard these comments about most are the Holy Mass and the Rosary. This is not a coincidence, if you ask me, since they are the two most important practices you can take up on your journey to God. When people choose not to do these things, or don’t esteem them very highly, it is usually because they “do not get anything out of it.”

Let me tell you a story about how I did not esteem the Rosary highly enough because I felt like I “didn’t get anything out of it,” but God taught me it’s power first hand.

After I became Catholic, I had trouble with the Rosary. I prayed it as often as I could, and even started a weekly Rosary group, but I felt like I wasn’t getting much out of it, and it was easy to get distracted praying. I much preferred praying the Liturgy of the Hours, or doing spiritual reading, since those gave me new things to think about and I could easily apply the prayers to my current circumstances. They also stirred me up with fervor on occasion which rarely (if ever) happened to me while I prayed the Rosary. The Rosary continued to be an inconsistent and optional part of my prayer life until we moved to San Diego and I was forced to make what, in hindsight, was one of the most important choices of my life.

Life was busy, to say the least, when we moved to San Diego. Your mother and I were giving everything we had and still felt like there was not enough time. We had 3 children ages 4 and under at the time, and one on the way. I had to get up at 5am to drive into work, I’d return home around 4:30pm, spend as much time with all of you as I could until you went to bed, and then do chores until I collapsed in bed, exhausted. Of course, with such young children our work did not stop when we went to bed. There were always multiple wake-ups or night time “emergencies” that we had to attend to. As you can imagine, after all of our duties were taken care of, we weren’t left with much time for prayer.

As all this was going on, I was also becoming more and more convicted about the need to pray the Rosary. After all, Mary asks so little of us. In the Gospels, her only request for us is to “Do whatever He tells you.” In her apparitions, especially Fatima and Lourdes, her repeated entreaty is for us to pray the daily rosary. I would never have said that I thought I knew more than Mary. But at the same time, I had a million little excuses for why her request didn’t really apply to me, borne largely from the fact that I thought I knew of other practices that would be more fruitful for myself. Well, who do you think was right, me or Mary?

I’m sure that as soon as you stopped laughing you answered that Mary was, of course, right. One day, as I was driving in to work before sunrise, I was wrestling with Mary’s clear request to pray the daily Rosary and my lack of time. I had to make a choice: do I choose to spend my very limited time on some prayer practices of my liking, or should I commit fully to the daily Rosary? I had to choose one, I simply didn’t have time for both.

I chose to commit to the daily Rosary, but it was actually a very scary choice for me. You see, I really felt like I didn’t get anything out of the Rosary. It was usually dry, I often caught myself getting distracted, and I wasn’t learning anything from it or getting any new verses or phrases to ponder, as I might with a book or other devotion. I was afraid that since I felt like I got nothing out of it, I was essentially giving up prayer altogether by choosing the Rosary as my only daily prayer (besides my morning offering, meal prayers, etc). In a sense, I was trusting my salvation to Mary: I had “no more wine” and no hope for procuring any by my own efforts. Either she would intercede for me and communicate graces through the Rosary that I couldn’t perceive or generate through any efforts of my own, or she wouldn’t and I would have effectively given up praying. As you know, Mary, of course, came through, and also taught me one of the most important lessons of my spiritual life.

The lesson is that we can’t make ourselves holy, no matter what we do. I wrote about this at length in my previous letter on the Eucharist. It is God who gives the growth, we can just dispose ourselves to receive it, at best. God chooses to give His grace to us through humble signs and practices, to show us that we are not the cause of our own growth in Charity, He is. He requires only faith (itself a gift), and faith is what it takes to pray the Rosary.

As soon as I committed myself to Mary through the Rosary, the graces immediately started flowing. I started by just praying the Rosary on my way to work every day, as reverently as I could, knowing that this was my one prayer time and so I needed to make it count. Slowly, gently, Mary started opening doors that I didn’t even know were there. I began to feel inspired to do other, additional prayers or spiritual reading, and miraculously found time for them. I would also have gentle suggestions for how best to shepherd our family in the faith whispered into my mind while I was praying the Rosary, and they would invariably be very fruitful and just what we needed at the time. Eventually, through these little open doors and gentle suggestions, we began praying the family Rosary together every single day, and by God’s grace and our Lady’s favor have not missed a day since.

I could go on and on about how much peace, joy, and progress in the spiritual life praying the daily rosary has brought to my marriage, our family, and my spiritual life in general, but I will have to spread those testimonies out throughout these letters — there are too many (and counting!). Suffice it to say that it is the grace we receive from God, not our own efforts, that are the measure of a prayer. And this was undeniably proven in my own experience.

Now that you’ve heard some of my personal testimony about the Rosary, let’s hear what Saint Louis de Montfort has to say about those who feel like they “don’t get anything out of” the Rosary:

When the Rosary is well said it gives Jesus and Mary more glory and it is more meritorious for the soul than any other prayer. But it is also the hardest prayer to say well and to persevere in, owing especially to the distractions which almost inevitably attend the constant repetition of the same words.

When we say…any prayers other than the Rosary, the variety of words and expressions keeps us alert, prevents our imagination from wandering, and so makes it easier for us to say them well. On the contrary, because of the constant repetition of the same Our Father and Hail Mary in the same unvarying form, it is difficult, while saying the Rosary, not to become wearied and inclined to sleep or to turn to other prayers that are more refreshing and less tedious. This goes to show that one needs much greater devotion to persevere in saying the Holy Rosary than in saying any other prayer…

Being human, we easily become tired and slipshod — but the devil makes these difficulties worse when we are saying the Rosary. Before we even begin he makes us feel bored, distracted, or exhausted—and when we have started praying he oppresses us from all sides. And when, after much difficulty and many distractions, we have finished, he whispers to us: “What you have just said is worthless. It’s useless for you to say the Rosary. You had better get on with other things. It’s only a waste of time to pray without paying attention to what you’re saying; half an hour’s meditation or some spiritual reading would be much better. Tomorrow when you’re not feeling so sluggish you’ll pray better; don’t finish your rosary until tomorrow.” By tricks of this kind the devil gets us to give up the Rosary altogether or else hardly say it at all, and we keep putting it off or else change to some other devotion.

Do not listen to the devil, but be of good heart even if you imagination has been bothering you throughout your Rosary, filling your mind with all kinds of distracting thoughts—as long as you really tried hard to get rid of them as soon as they came. Always remember that the best Rosary is the one with the most merit, and there is more merit in praying when it is hard than when it is easy. Prayer is all the harder when it is (naturally speaking) distasteful to the soul and is filled with those annoying little ants and flies running about in your imagination, against your will, and scarcely allowing you the time to enjoy a little peace and appreciate the beauty of what you are saying.

The very reasons we don’t pray the Rosary — the distractions, the dryness, the lack of variety — are the very reasons that make it meritorious. The Rosary really is more difficult and we really don’t get as much out of it (naturally speaking). But prayer isn’t about what we get out of it. Love is not self-seeking. We ought to approach prayer and our devotions with an attitude of being there to worship God, in whatever way He has taught us is best, not whatever way is most pleasing to us.

Do you recognize the temptations that the devil suggests after praying the rosary? I know that I have heard them many times, and that is exactly what people are summarizing when they say “they don’t get anything out of it.” As for you, if you ever hear someone say that, or hear that temptation in your own mind, simply reply by saying “Get anything out of it? I pray the Rosary to give something to Jesus and Mary, not to get something. The less I get out of it the better — that means more for Jesus and Mary.” And after all, you truly do get more out of it in the end, but it is communicated quietly and received only through faith, just like the the grace we receive from the Eucharist.

I hope that I have stirred you up with reminders as to why we ought to pray the Rosary every day. In my next letter, I will write to you about how we can pray the Rosary well, even in the midst of dryness, and how we can use the brown scapular to grow in confidence for God and overcome any scrupulosity. For now, let us give Saint Louis de Montfort the last words on praying the Rosary every day:

Even if you have to fight distractions all through your whole Rosary be sure to fight well, arms in hand: that is to say, do not stop saying your Rosary even if it is hard to say and you have absolutely no sensible devotion. It is a terrible battle, I know, but one that is profitable to the faithful soul. If you put down your arms, that is, if you give up the Rosary, you will be admitting defeat and then, having won, the devil will leave you alone.

But at the Day of Judgement he will taunt you because of your faithlessness and lack of courage. “He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in that which is greater (Luke 16:10). He who fights even the smallest distractions faithfully when he says even the very smallest prayer he will also be faithful in great things. We can be absolutely certain of this because the Holy Spirit has told us so.

So all of you, servants and handmaids of Our Lord Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary, who have made up your minds to say the Rosary every day, be of good heart. Do not let the flies (it is thus that I call the distractions that make war on you during prayer) make you cowardly abandon the company of Jesus and Mary, in whose holy presence you always are when saying the Rosary.

With all my love in Christ,

Dad