More persuasive testimonies on the power of the Rosary
Countless of testimonies pointedly show the undisputed power of the Rosary. As I was recently leafing through these incredible stories I could not fail from reproposing them to each and one of you so as to help us get back to that most blessed golden chain which unites earth with heaven.
When the Rosary is not prayed we are to expect any kind of moral decadence. The Rosary is the prayer that we need to pray to keep going on in this world of sin and death. This has been the testimony of Sister Lucia of Fatima (1907-2005) who in November 26 1970 spoke to Don Umberto Pasquale, an Italian Salesian priest. She told him:
The decadence which exists in the world is without doubt the consequence of the lack of the spirit of prayer. Foreseeing this disorientation, the Blessed Virgin recommended recitation of the Rosary with such insistence, and since the Rosary is, after the holy Eucharistic liturgy, the prayer most apt for preserving faith in souls, the devil has unchained his struggle against it. Unfortunately, we see the disasters he has caused. …We must defend souls against the errors that can make them stray from the good road… We cannot and we must not stop ourselves, nor allow, as Our Lord says, the children of Darkness to be wiser than the children of Light… The Rosary is the most powerful weapon for defending ourselves on the field of battle.
The Rosary liberates from abduction. Here is the testimony of the Nigerian priest Father Valentine Ezeagu who was saved by the Rosary.
Father Valentine Ezeagu was driving through Imo state on December 15, 2020, en route to his father’s funeral when he was ambushed by four armed men. The priest was freed 36 hours later and, reporting his release to his religious superior, Father Ezeagu said the abductors had let him go after seeing him pray the Rosary.
Speaking to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) within minutes of receiving Fr Ezeagu’s phone call, Fr George Okorie, Superior General of the Congregation of the Sons of Mary, Mother of Mercy, said: “When I spoke to Fr Valentine, he told me that seeing him praying the Rosary made his abductors confused… They started having a guilty conscience. It made them realize that, since he was wearing a cassock, they had not got the right person, so they gave him some food and released him.” At that time there had been no information about Fr Ezeagu’s kidnappers, Fr Okorie said: “We thank God who has really touched the hearts of the abductors. We pray for them.”
The Rosary is powerful thanks to its simplicity. Let us hear the healing words that came out from the lips of the great Pope John Paul I. He said:
The crisis is preceded today by a crisis of prayer in general. People are completely absorbed by their material interests; we no longer think much about the soul; noise has invaded our existence. Macbeth could say again: ‘I have killed sleep, I have killed silence!’ We find it very difficult to make a little time for the interior life and for the ‘dulcis sermocinatio,’ the sweet conversation with God.
Personally, when I speak alone with God or with the Virgin Mary, I feel like a child more than an adult. I forget all about the mitre, the biretta and the ring; I dismiss the adult and the bishop with his serious, thoughtful and composed attitude, and I let myself relax with the spontaneous tenderness of a child in the presence of his father or mother. When I am before God, at least for a short half hour, I bring up all that I really am, including my misery and the best of myself. I allow the child that I used to be, who wants to love the Lord and who sometimes feels the need to cry out to obtain mercy, to emerge from the depths of my being. All this helps me to pray. The Rosary, which is a simple and uncomplicated prayer, sometimes helps me to become a child again, and I am not at all ashamed to say that!
Does not this reflection powerful match with what Pope Francis said at the beginning of his pontificate, namely that: The Rosary is the prayer that accompanies my whole life. It is also the prayer of the simple and of the saints. It is the prayer of my heart?
With every reason then we are right to pray to Mary: We fly to Thy protection, O Holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O Glorious and Blessed Virgin. No other prayer can deliver us from all the dangers other than the great and most powerful Marian prayer of the Rosary!
Fr Mario Attard OFM Cap
