The Rosary Changed My Life

[00:00:01] Even though the rosary is immensely popular among Catholics, I'm convinced that its power is still underestimated. Learn how the rosary changed my life and can change yours as well. [00:00:28] So here at Crisis on the Crisis Point podcast, we often talk about things that are difficult to talk about. Controversies, problems in the church, scandals. I mean, we are named Crisis, after all. However, sometimes I think it's good. And I personally enjoy talking about some of the great things about the Catholic faith. After all, we stay Catholic in spite of the crisis for a reason. Because the, to put it kind of crudely, the positives far outweigh the negatives, infinitely outweigh the negatives of being Catholic. And I would say one of the best parts of being Catholic is the Holy Rosary. And in fact, I wouldn't even be Catholic if not for the Holy Rosary. Now, I know some of you might have heard my conversion story. I'll actually link in the show notes to a recent interview I did with Keith Nestor on his channel that it's a very in depth interview. It's over three hours. [00:01:19] Honestly though, when we got finished with the interview, I looked at my watch. [00:01:24] I thought It'd been maybe 45 minutes and had been over three hours. That's how great Keith is at making you feel comfortable and conducting the interview. But in the first hour or so, I talk in depth about my conversion, but I want to just here just emphasize the role the rosary had in particular with my conversion. [00:01:44] So it actually in a couple ways. First was so I was in college as the early 1990s and I was very involved with the pro life group. I was an evangelical Protestant. I was really about the only Protestant who was really active in the group. It was all Catholics. Like the core team was maybe eight to 10 people. [00:02:03] And it was Catholics and me. And so I had a lot of interaction obviously with practicing devout Catholics. [00:02:10] And I remember one time and I told this story on the Keith Nestor show, but I'll tell it here again, in brief, that we would go to the local abortion clinic every Friday evening and we'd be there for the last hour. They were open, so they closed at six o'. Clock. We'd be there from five to six, praying outside of counseling things that nature. [00:02:31] We went one Friday and it was near Roe v. Wade. So there's a lot more activity there as far as protester, pro abort people, pro lifers, things like that. [00:02:43] And so another local college, University Dayton, I think it University Dayton, maybe I can't remember a local college in Dayton because the abortion clinic was in Dayton. [00:02:53] And they were there and the pro aborts were there in force and they were pretty nasty. And the police were there because they knew it was near the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. They didn't want any problems. And so we prayed. And then after it was over, first, let me take a step back real quick. [00:03:11] It was always kind of funny praying in front of abortion clinic as a Protestant with a bunch of Catholics because they were praying the rosaries, they were praying their, you know, they were maybe doing some liturgical prayers, things like that. And I was always kind of like, well, I got my Bible. I guess I didn't know exactly what I was supposed to do, what prayers I was supposed to say. Because if you just. It's hard to do just spontaneous prayers for an hour. I mean, that's just. At least it is for me. [00:03:33] And so I had that challenge. But anyway, so we're there and then the abortion clinic closes at 6 and we decided we're going to stay. And the police leave, but we decided, okay, we're going to stay for a little bit longer, we're going to keep praying. Just, I think we just fell on our hearts that we need to keep praying. [00:03:49] And a number of the pro boats stayed as well. Well, now the police are gone, it's getting dark and the mood shifts, I'll put it that way. [00:03:58] And what happens is that the pro boards, they start getting nastier in what they're saying. [00:04:05] They start getting very blasphemous, more threatening. They start chanting things like, kill the Christians, send them to the lions. [00:04:12] I mean, it's getting pretty intense. And I will say this, and I'm not one to say this lightly in my life, that is the one time I knew for a fact that somebody was possessed by the devil by a demon. [00:04:28] Because I looked in the eyes of one of them and I could just tell. I mean, it was only, I guess it was a spiritual insight or something, I don't know. [00:04:34] But these people were clearly all of them, if not influenced, were possessed by demons, they were evil and they're chaining some really blasphemous stuff about our Lord and Our Lady. By the way, as a Protestant, I thought the fact that they attacked Our lady was interesting because it's like to me, at that time, I was like, what's the big deal? Who cares? Yeah, she's the mother of Jesus. And so that's nice, but why would you focus on her? [00:05:00] Which is telling. I think that the demons know how powerful she is and so therefore they will influence Those they possess to attack her as well as our Lord. [00:05:12] But then. So as we're praying, and I'm kind of, like, not sure what to do at this point. But then I look over at. Well, because these guys are circling us. It's getting kind of dicey. [00:05:21] And I see a young woman from our pro life group, and she's kneeling in prayer, praying the rosary. So she's kneeling, she's got a rosary. I can see it kind of from her hands. And there's a pro board standing over her, like, right in front of her, screaming at her, saying nasty stuff, really kind of awful stuff. [00:05:39] And I just noticed that this young woman, a friend of mine, she is just at total peace. She doesn't even. I don't even know if she realized the guy was there standing and yelling at her. [00:05:51] And I remember thinking to myself, wow, that rosary, that really does something. I mean, how is she able not to get agitated, not to get upset, not to yell back and just pray? [00:06:06] I couldn't have done that. I know I couldn't have done that. [00:06:09] I wouldn't even know how to do that. And so there was something very impressive about that, by the way, that woman ended up becoming my wife. We weren't. We weren't even dating at the time. [00:06:21] But so I know very much that, you know, her devotion to the rosary. [00:06:26] So that's one part of it that started, you know, helped the process along of being attracted to Catholicism. But really what happened was, so I had a friend, my roommate, who would argue with me, tried to convert me Catholicism. He was a Catholic, tried to convert me Catholicism for years. [00:06:42] And we got in a big fight one time, and we. And we were. And I told him, don't. Let's not talk about this anymore. I said, much more nasty than that. But I was like, let's just stop talking about this anymore. I'm done. I don't want to become Catholic. Stop trying to make me become Catholic. I told my sister about the same time, there's no way I'm becoming Catholic. Because she knew I was hanging on a bunch of Catholics. And I think she was getting a little nervous. [00:07:03] And then a month later, for a variety of reasons, I won't get into it here. Like I said, the Keith Nester interview is probably the best place to get into details. [00:07:11] I decided one day to pray the rosary as a Protestant. My roommate, the one who I had the argument with, he had a bunch of rosaries hanging from his lamp, and he had how to pray rosary pamphlets. Remember, there's no Internet at this point, at least not the Internet as we know it. I couldn't look up how to pray the rosary. So if I didn't have that little pamphlet there, I wouldn't have been able to. But he put it there, I think, on purpose for me to see so I could grab it. And sure enough, I grabbed it and I picked one of the rosaries. And in fact, the rosary picked is this one right here. I still have it to this day. It's a cheap. There were all these cheap plastic rosaries that probably, you know, cost 5 cents to make or something like that. [00:07:50] And so I grabbed this one. I knelt at my bed. My roommate, of course, was not there. [00:07:56] And I just simply took it. I looked at the instructions, started reading it. I of course, knew the Our Father, what we called the Lord's Prayer, and I didn't know the Hail Mary. And so I just. I didn't know the glory of be. So I'm just reading through it and I just do that. [00:08:09] And I sighed, you know, I'm going to pray the rosary every day for a week, once a day for a week. At the end of the rosary, at the end of the week, I will decide whether or not I want to become Catholic, because I really thought the Holy Spirit was telling me, hey, why aren't you becoming Catholic? But I wasn't sure. I didn't, you know, it's not something you do lightly. So on Sunday evening, I prayed it. Tuesday I pray. Wednesday I pray. I'm sorry, boy, I can't count the days. Sunday I prayed it. Monday I prayed it. Tuesday night I prayed it. And at the end of that rosary, I decided to become Catholic. I couldn't even get through the whole week. As I like to tell my friend, for three years you tried to get me in Catholic church and you had no luck. Our lady just took three days. [00:08:49] And so it really showed me the power of the rosary. I mean, it's the rosary converted me to Catholicism. [00:08:56] I mean, yes, I know there's other factors. I listened to Scott Hahn's conversion story. I read Catholicism and fundamentalism, my friend, you know, and him, him talking to me about it. I read some other Catholic works. I learned about Catholicism from my friends and everything. Yes, the witness of my pro life Catholic friends, all that stuff, lots of different factors, but ultimately it was the rosary that brought me into the Catholic Church. [00:09:19] And so I just think that this is something. [00:09:22] And the reason I'm bringing this now, by the way, the reason I'm having this podcast right now is because this week is actually the 34th anniversary of that decision to become Catholic. It was on February 23, 1992, that I first prayed the Rosary, and on February 25, 1992, that I decided to become Catholic. So 34 years ago this week. [00:09:45] Now, you would think then that having the Rosary be the thing that made me become Catholic, that I would have been a daily rosary prayer from day one of my Catholicism. [00:09:57] You would think that, but you would be wrong. [00:10:00] Because I am not a good person. I am not a. [00:10:04] I'm just, you know, I'm a sinner and I'm fallen. And I. I struggled to maintain a schedule of praying the Rosary my whole first decade as a Catholic, my first 10 years as a Catholic, I did not pray the rosary regularly, even though I knew it's fire. And here's the thing, when I did get in the habit, like a short term, maybe for a couple months, I'd pray the rosary every day. [00:10:28] I noticed a difference in my life. [00:10:32] I noticed a difference in my life. I was more peaceful, I was less stressed. I was more able to resist sin. [00:10:40] I wasn't perfect. I didn't solve all my problems. It didn't mean that bad things didn't happen to me or what. I didn't have struggles at that. However, I did notice just there was something different when I prayed rose. Yet I still would fall out of the habit after a few weeks, maybe a month or so. [00:10:56] And this was the first decade. And I will also say this, and this is just shows how slow and dumb I am. [00:11:02] But for the first decade of my Catholicism, I still had some kind of nagging doubts about Mary and her role. I mean, my Protestantism, it doesn't happen overnight, people, when you convert. I think other converts will tell you this. Some might not, but at least it was the case for me. [00:11:22] It's not like day one, you're like, okay, I'm super into this Catholicism and I know everything to do and it's all like, just natural to me. No, what happened was, is that I would. I would literally. I remember praying early on as a Catholic. I'd say, okay, Lord, if this is a wrong way to pray, let me know. And don't hold it against me, but I'm going to ask your mother for a favor here. [00:11:47] That's how much I was. Not a hundred percent, like even. I mean, I was. I'd been confirmed in the Catholic Church. I was. I was going to Mass, reason, sacraments, all that stuff. I believed in my head. But there was still something in Me that was like, ah, I hope this is not wrong. [00:12:01] But then over time, obviously I did learn that the rosary is super powerful. I mean, I should have known that from day one. It's what brought me in the Catholic Church. I know, but at the same time I should have realized that the power of the rosary. [00:12:18] And really what I've come to realize is that the rosary is our most powerful weapon that we as lay Catholics have. Now, I want to be clear here. The sacraments are obviously the most powerful resource we have. There's nothing even close to the sacraments when it comes to graces that you can receive from God. The sacraments are number one, you know, obviously baptism, Holy Communion as regularly as possible, going to confession regularly. [00:12:47] But here's the thing, all, all the sacraments, except for baptism emergency situations, all the sacraments are dependent upon a priest being available. [00:12:55] You can't receive communion without a priest. You can't receive confession without a priest. And so they're not something necessarily that we can do just, well, they're not something we can just do on a whim. It's not like all of a sudden just be like at 10 o' clock on a Tuesday morning, hey, I think I'm going to receive communion now. Well, no, there might not be any masses available, you know, but the rosary is a sacramental, it's known as a sacramental. And sacramentals also convey grace. Not quite the same as sacraments, but they also can convey grace and they're things that devotions that we do. [00:13:30] And the rosary, I would argue, is probably the most powerful sacramental we have. I would argue that. [00:13:37] And it's completely accessible at all times. God gave us ten fingers for a reason, people, so we could pray the rosary wherever we are. [00:13:47] That's why God gave us ten fingers. I don't think you know that, but that's the reason. [00:13:52] And so we can pray a rosary no matter where we are, no matter what situation. We could be in jail without access to anything. We could be in solitary and confinement with nothing with us. And we can still pray a rosary. [00:14:06] And it is, and I think God has. Our lady through Our lady has made that the most powerful weapon that we have, spiritual weapon we have. [00:14:16] And so I think it's also very powerful because of, for a lot of reasons. First of all, because Our lady is our greatest intercessor in heaven. Our lady is far and beyond all of other creation. Now, to be clear, for any Protestants who might be listening, Our lady is a creation. She does not do the worship that is Due to God. However, she is due what's called hyperdulia, which is like extreme devotion, extreme veneration. [00:14:46] She is given. She is believe. We believe that she is the queen of heaven and Earth. She is above not only all men, all creation, all the lower creation, all the human race, but also above the angels as well. She was created as the greatest of all creation is Our Lady. So obviously a. A devotion that is dedicated to her is going to be extremely powerful. [00:15:12] I would also say it's extremely powerful because of what we say first. The first part of the Hail Mary, which is the key part of the Rosary, is just from Scripture. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. [00:15:25] And that, of course, is what the angel Gabriel said. [00:15:28] He didn't actually say Mary, he just said Hail, full of grace. The name he gave her was full of Grace, which has so much theological meaning, so much depth to it, and it really points to the Immaculate Conception, that Mary was conceived without sin. From the moment of her conception, she was without sin. She was full of grace. Grace cannot abide with sin. [00:15:48] One or the other will win out when it comes, you know, sin or grace. [00:15:53] And sin completely lost in her case. Now, in our case, they battle. Sometimes grace wins out, sometimes sin wins out. Hopefully grace wins out more and more as you get older. [00:16:05] But for Mary, from the moment of her conception, grace always won out. It always defeated sin. There was no, you know, there was no sin in her. And so that's the first. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. The words of Elizabeth to her cousin Mary, and this is another. [00:16:25] This is what we do. We praise the saints. We praise God, of course, we praise the saints. And we're just repeating scripture here. [00:16:32] Then, though, the second part of the Hail Mary is Holy Mary, Mother of God. So we're giving her that great title that was declared at the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D. that Mary is truly the Mother of God. Why? Because she's the mother of Jesus. And who is Jesus? Jesus is God, the Son, the second Person, Holy Trinity. Therefore, Mary is the mother of God. The Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. So we're acknowledging our. That we're not like her, we're sinners and we need assistance. This is great because it calls in the whole idea of the communion of saints, that it's not just. We're not just in a relationship with God alone, but we're in relationship with the whole Body of Christ. Everybody who has ever been, you know, a follower of Christ, we are united to them in some real way. And so we're asking, and we can ask them to pray for us. So Mary, you know, Holy Mary, Mother God, pray for us sinners. And this is one of the parts I think that's most beautiful is the end now and at the hour of our death. [00:17:27] There's something about modern life that really hates death. I mean, all of. We always hate death, don't get me wrong. [00:17:34] But we flee from death. The idea of death, we hide it. Think about how sanitary death is these days. [00:17:41] Most people rarely if ever see somebody die. [00:17:46] Yet we literally live to die. [00:17:50] We literally live to die. What I mean by that is our whole life is directed towards our death. This is something that the ancient Stoics had very right. They had something's wrong, but they had very right. I've been reading some Stoic work lately, just their philosophy, but they talk about the idea, Marcus Aurelius, for example, talks about this in his Meditations, that basically all of life is directed towards your death, having a good death. Now, his definition of a good death isn't the same as our definition of good death, but the principle is very Christian, very Jewish, very Christian. This idea that you live to die, that you want to have a good death, what does it mean to have a good death? It means that you are ready to meet God. You are ready to meet God and how you live is how you will die. Yes, I know there are some cases of a deathbed conversion, but those are rare. And more, if you ask like priests who have been with the dead and all the people dying and stuff like that, they'll tell you this, more likely than not, how you live is how you're going to die. So if you live away from God, you're going to die away from God. If you live for God, you're going to die for God, you're going to die with God. Well, here in the rosary, every time you pray a Hail Mary, you are bringing up your death because you're saying, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. So pray for us now. Yes, but at the hour of our death. So what we're really praying for there, yes, we're praying that Mary would be with us at the hour of our death. [00:19:11] With Joseph, we would have a holy death in which we'd be with. Just like Joseph was with Mary and Jesus, and we'd be with them forever in heaven. But it's also kind of Saying, like, if, if I want you to pray for me at my death, now at the hour of my death, you're getting me ready now for my death. You're praying for me now so that my death will be a holy one. It's not like a magic thing. [00:19:35] Like, okay, all of a sudden, like, let's make it so that when we die, we'll magically have this beautiful conversion to God and we'll make sure we're holy then. But doesn't matter now what we're like, no, it's asking Mary, help shape me today so that when I die, I'll be ready. When I die, I'll be ready to meet, meet your son, Jesus Christ. And so it's a beautiful prayer and we say it in the rosary over and over again. [00:20:02] And it just, it's a great prayer to say. It's. I mean, it's after the Our Father, which of course is given to us by Jesus, which is the greatest prayer. And I would argue that the Hail Mary is the second greatest prayer. So literally, the rosary is made up of the two greatest prayers that we can pray, the Our Father and the Hail Mary. So it's a great spiritual weapon. Also, I would say, you know, like I said, the rosary has impacted my life just incredibly. I mean, obviously it's changed my life in making me, you know, converting me to Catholicism, which, which is the best gift it's given me. But also just praying the rosary now. I've been praying the rosary regularly for 20 years, 20 plus years now. I think it was around 2002, 2003, 2004, something like that, when I really started daily praying. Now, I'm not saying I've never missed a day. I'm just saying that's when I really kept the habit. The God's grace gave me, you know, the, the strength to keep the habit. [00:20:54] It just is, is. And I, like, I, I haven't not. I'm not saying during that time it hasn't been all like, the greatest spiritual life. I'm not saying that. But I am saying it's directed me in the right direction towards my death, so I would be ready for my death. God willing that I'll be ready for my death and Our lady praying for me for it. But also, like, there are promises attached to. There's 15 promises attached to the Holy Rosary. I'm going to link. I'm not going to go through all 15 here. I will link to it in the Show Notes, a site that shows that you can just Google it as well, but they were given to a 15th century Dominican monk by Our Lady. The Dominicans, of course, are the Order of the Rosary because the rosary was given in its current form to St. Dominic by our Lady. [00:21:39] And a few of the promises, for example, are. The rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell. It will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies. Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It is a powerful armor against hell. If you're praying the rosary every day, those demons have a lot harder time, you know, attacking you. They have a lot harder time tempting you because you're praying the rosary every day. It does. It destroys vice, decreases sin. I'm not saying it makes you a perfect person, but it puts you on the path to that. I think it puts you on the path that and defeat heresies. I love that you know, that Our lady, she defeats heresies because heresies are important. It's not just, you know, our moral life, it's what we believe as well, because what we believe ends up impacting our moral life for one reason. [00:22:23] It defeats heresies. It defeated the hair, my heresy. I was a heretic. I believed many false things. And Our Rose and praying the rosary for three days defeated all those heresies. I mean that. There's your testimony right there for how it defeats heresies. [00:22:38] Another promise is the recitation of the rosary will cause virtue and good works to flourish. [00:22:43] Another one is all who recite the rosary are my beloved children and the brothers and sisters of my only son, Jesus Christ. I mean, think about it. When you're praying the rosary, you're asking your mama to help you out. [00:22:54] And what mama isn't going to help you when she's asked? I mean, what mother? Loving mother, if you ask her. Hey, Mom, I need some help here. Can you help me? Isn't going to rush to do that. Our Lady's no different. In fact, she's better and she's going to rush. [00:23:08] Another promise is devotion to my rosary is a great sign of predestination. Now, I know the word predestination kind of freaks people out a little bit. [00:23:17] Catholics because we think of the Calvinists. The truth is, there is. We do believe in predestination. There's a little booklet by Jimmy Akin about predestination. Catholic predestination versus Calvinist predestination. I think I even asked about this on the podcast when I had him as a guest, but I can't find it anymore. But it was very excellent. It was a tiny booklet. But Catholics do believe in predestination. We just don't believe in the Calvinist version of predestination. But the idea, though is that if you're devoted to the rosary, it's a sign that you, that you have been set apart for God. [00:23:46] And so let's increase that devotion to the rosary. I mean, after all this, what are you waiting for? If you're not praying the rosary daily, what are you waiting for? Get started. [00:24:00] As our friend Taylor Marshall would say, you're not on the team. I know people get all like, oh my gosh, I can't believe he says that. You know, what is this? You know, he's just saying you need to pray the rosary daily, people. [00:24:11] I mean, come on, lighten up. Don't get so, like, upset about dumb things. [00:24:16] But yes, get on the team. Pray the rosary daily. [00:24:20] And you know, this is, this isn't key. I mean, you just got to do it. I mean, I don't know how else to emphasize it. And the key here for me was in getting started, you know, kind of keeping the habit. [00:24:32] I had a tendency, if I missed a day or two, then I would just kind of give up. [00:24:36] That's not, that's just me and my dumb personality. But like, if you miss a day, just pray it the next day. Just every day. Pray it every day. So here are some practical tips I want. Now I want to get in some more practical tips about, you know, to help you pray the rosary daily. Also how to pray the rosary, because there might be people watching this who don't really know. And yes, you can Google it and I'll put a link in the show notes to how to pray the rosary. But I do want to give a general overview. [00:25:00] The first thing I would say is there are many ways to pray the rosary. [00:25:04] I would just, I want to give some of my advice though from my own experience. I would say it is best to set aside a specific time and a specific place in private to pray the rosary daily. [00:25:17] And I would recommend it's first thing in the morning when you get up in the morning. Okay, maybe make your coffee if you're a coffee person. I'm not, but my wife isn't. I know she makes her coffee first, but before you look at your phone, before you read, you know, get, get on the computer before you do anything, pray, pray your rosary first thing. That way you're not going to miss it. And honestly, your mind is best set for prayer first thing in the morning. It's not got all the jumble of the day cloud, you know, distracting you and everything that so pray the rosary morning. Also, when you're praying it, don't worry about distractions. Don't worry about distractions. You're going to have them. [00:25:56] Like I said, I've been praying the rosary daily for decades, and every single rosary I've ever prayed, I've had distractions. You're going to have them. Don't worry about it. Just when you realize you're being distracted, come back. Come back and start thinking about the mystery again. You start thinking about your day, you know, something going on in your life, a stress, whatever. Okay, fine. What I would do is just say immaculata. I'm offering that up to you. Now I'm going to focus back on the rosary. [00:26:20] So that would be my recommendation for your daily rosary. I also think the family rosary is extremely powerful. For many years in my family, we would pray the rosary on Sunday evenings, and only Sundays we do other. We do a shorter other prayers on the other evenings, like maybe the compline or something like that, because we just couldn't get in the habit of doing the rosary every single day. [00:26:41] One Lent, about three years ago, I think it was, my wife said, let's pray the rosary every day as a family in the evening together for Lent. And we did, and we just kept the habit. And now basically we do that. Now there are. If we're out that evening, like on Tuesday evenings, here we go, the kids go to catechism class and we go to adoration. And so we come home from that kind of late. We don't pray the rosary those nights. We're, you know, adoration and catechism. And if we're out, we just don't get to it. We won't pray the rosary every single night. But. But most nights we pray the rosary as family, and that's extremely powerful. That is very good now for me, because I know we're not going to necessarily do it every single evening. I still pray my rosary in the morning, my personal rosary. So I would not. I would not replace your personal rosary with a family rosary. I do both. If you have a family situation, you can also pray rosary anywhere, though you can pray rosary on your commute. I know I used to live in Washington, D.C. where commutes were easily, you know, 45 minutes to an hour. You pray your rosary on your commute. Now, I don't think that's not my recommendation for the, you know, to do that because I think you get too easily distracted. Not you can't really enter into the prayer of the Rosary, But. But at the same time. [00:27:48] There's nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with it. And if that's the only time you can find, then go ahead and do that. [00:27:56] You could just be out on a walk and decide, I'm going to pray the rosary. Maybe pray a decade of the rosary instead of the full rosary or something like that. So it really is up to you. But I personally would recommend doing it first thing in the morning before you do anything else. Pray your rosary. I think that's the best way for the habit to stick. And I also think it's the most fruitful praying of the rosary. [00:28:17] Another question you might, some people might be asking is like, what rosary do you use now? I, I, of course my first rosary I ever prayed was this super cheap one. Now I don't pray this one every day anymore. I stopped that very soon because I didn't want to. I knew eventually it would fall apart and I wanted to keep it. I mean, I've had now for 34 years. I didn't want anything to happen to it. So I actually don't. I, I sometimes will pray this on the anniversary of my conversion, but that's about it. [00:28:41] But you also, you know lots of different types of rosary. I mean, here's a nice. This is one I got. I don't even know where I got this. This is like just a regular kind of wood bead rosary. I know men like this a little bit better. My wife makes the, the, the, the knot rosaries and I thought I had one sitting here on my desk, but I don't. But I have a million of them in the house. Those are very nice. Those are good for, to donate to prisons because they often actually usually do the breakable ones for prison. Now I forgot about that. So also you could, you know, there's things like rosary rings. This is like a little rosary ring where it has the rosary. It has like 10 little beads and then across and you can just, you know, people actually wears when you put in your pocket and you can pray this very easily. I have a rosary bracelet here From Rugged Rosary Ruggedrosaries.com or something like that. And it's very nice as a saint. Maximilian Colby Metal and so what I'll do is often like, because I think you should carry a rosary with you at all times in case there's situations where you just want to pray the rosary. What I do instead of carrying my pocket is I just have this bracelet. I'll just take it off and pray it. Also, speaking of rugged rosary, this rosary right here on my that's hanging on my laptop. This is a good, manly rosary, as I like to say. I mean, it's a nice, strong, sturdy, big rosary. And I. I love that one as well. Although now it's kind of more as a decoration than anything. [00:29:58] Rosaries aren't decorations. I know that, but just. [00:30:01] I like the way it looks. That's also from rugged rosary. I'm not getting anything paid by them, by the way, to recommend the rosaries, but they do good work. The rosary I pray every day, though, is one made by my wife, and it's this one here with these nice little metal beads. Not metal. Whatever. The glass beads. Sorry, Glass beads. But it is. I like it because it is a blessed Carl rosary. She has a blessed Carl little gold medal here, and it's the colors of the Austrian Hungarian Empire, kind of gold and black. [00:30:33] And I'm actually speaking at the blessed Carl symposium in a couple weeks. [00:30:37] So, you know, maybe you'll see me there and I'll have my blessed Carl rosary. [00:30:41] But, yeah, so that's the one. I have it in this nice little rosary pouch My. My. One of my kids got me for a birthday or Christmas one time. That's the one. I pray daily. [00:30:50] My point of this, though, is it doesn't matter kind of what rosary you pray. [00:30:56] I think, okay, we're physical beings. We live in a physical world, so physical things do matter to us. So I do think it matters in one sense. If it's a rosary that you're very attracted to that makes you like to pick up, there's nothing wrong with it. That's good because that makes you more. More likely to pray it. [00:31:15] So I would say splurge on a good rosary if you just have, like, some cheap ones sitting around. No, get a good rosary now. Don't go crazy and buy, like, 15 different, you know, great rosaries. But, yeah, like this rugged rosary one that was a little expensive, but I liked it. So splurge on it and get a nice rosary, because I do think it will, at least at first, kind of get you interested in praying it. And so definitely there's nothing wrong with that because like I said, we're physical beings. We're attracted to physical things of a certain nature. And so, yeah, get a. Get a rosary you like. [00:31:50] That's a good thing to do. [00:31:52] Now I want to finish here, though, by just a brief primer on how to pray the rosary just in case, like I said, there might be people listening to this, watching this, who have never prayed the rosary before. I will link in the show Notes to a guide, you can just Google how to pray the rosary and you'll find it. But essentially the rosary consists of three prayers. The Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be. That's basically what it's made up. It's order around decades of mysteries. Decades just meaning 10. It won't take you a decade to read to pray a rosary. And each decade is one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, thus the word decade and one Glory be and each bead on the rosary. So in this rosary here, you see, you will see there is like this one that's kind of separate from the others. That's for the Our father. You have 10 in a row. That's for the Hail Marys. And then there's like a little rope area like separation. That's where you say the Glory Be. [00:32:48] And so one thing I just want to address is this is a question I had as a Protestant. So maybe Protestants watching this might have the same question, which is, why so focused on Mary? Why do you have only one prayer to God directed and intend to marry? Essentially, it's because what we're doing is it's a prayer, it's a devotion to Mary. We have other prayers. We have the whole Mass which is directed to Jesus Christ, you know, to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. So we have plenty of prayers to Jesus. We pray to Jesus all the time. It's okay to have devotions to specific saints. That's what this is. It's a devotion to Mary. [00:33:24] So while you're praying though, okay, so you're saying these prayers. And during each decade, what you do is you pray, you contemplate a mystery. And a mystery is simply some event in our Lord or Our Lady's life that you're meditating upon. So for example, I'll just bring up the sorrowful mystery, because we're in Lent right now. The first sorrowful mystery is the agony in the garden. So when Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, he's praying that, you know, for to do God's will and he's sweating blood and all that. You're meditating upon that. Why you're saying the one Our Father, the ten Hail Marys and the Glory Be, you're meditating upon. What does that mean? You know, picturing yourself maybe there. How you do that is up to you somewhat, but you're basically kind of picturing what that mystery means. [00:34:06] And so you're doing this. And then these are categorized in four different groups. You have the Glorious Mystery. I'm sorry, The Joyful Mysteries, the Luminous Mysteries, the Sorrowful Mysteries, and the Glorious Mysteries. Now, there is some controversy with the Luminous Mysteries because the original rosary given to St. Dominic only included the Joyful, the Sorrowful, and the Glorious. And then John Paul II, in the early 2000s, he added the Luminous Mysteries. You, one thing to remember is when it comes to personal devotions, you can do it however you want. There, there are guides on how you, you know, most people do it, but you can change things if you want. My Father in Law, for example, he just prayed the Sorrowful Mysteries every single day. When he prayed Rosary every day, he just prayed Sorrowful Mysteries. But the church basically, kind of the idea is that you pray different Mysteries on different days. So, for example, you pray the Joyful on Monday and Saturday, the Luminous on Thursdays, the Sorrowful on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the Glorious on Wednesdays and Sundays. Now, those who don't pray the Luminous would do it a little differently. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. What I do actually is during Lent, I pray the Sorrowful every day. During Easter, I pray the Glorious every day. During Advent, I pray the Joyful every day. That's okay. I mean, you can do, you know, a lot of people don't do that. And it, it's, it's up to you. [00:35:27] So a rose. When you say, we pray the Rosary daily, we're saying, we're saying, we're praying one set of those Mysteries. So the Sorrowful or the Joyful, whatever. Now you could pray the full rosary all 20 decades, all, you know, all four sets in one day. And that's fine if that takes a lot more time. But if you want to, that's if you have the time to do it and you can. [00:35:48] And the rosary takes about 15 minutes to say, 15 to 20, depending on how fast. At first, you might go a little slower, but it takes about 15 minutes to say. [00:35:55] Now, there's some other prayers also that you do. Like at the beginning, introductory prayers, you do the, you say the Apostles Creed and Our Father, usually for the intentions of the Pope, three Hail Marys for faith, hope and love. Then you go through, like I said, the decades of the Rosary, and then you have some final prayers, the Hail Holy Queen in particular. [00:36:13] Now what some people do is they add some other prayers. I do this as well. Like at the end of each decade, I say, after the Glory be, I say the Fatima prayer, which is, oh, my Jesus, forgive us our sins. [00:36:23] You know, boy, I, I'm okay, everybody got Bishop Baron, because he, he blanked on some, I think the St. Michael prayer. I'm blanking right now on, on the Fatima prayer, which I literally say, you know, five times a day, every 10 times a day, most days. So. [00:36:36] And so the. You say the Fatima prayer at the end of the decade, and then some people say at the end of the rosary, some others, like the, the colic for the, the feast of Our lady of the Rosary, they will say, you know, sometimes the St. Michael prayer often is said at the end of a rosary. And there's some other options as well. When you pray with people you haven't prayed the rosary with, you'll. And they're leading, you'll notice that people just do different things, and that's okay. Like I said, it's a personal devotion. There's not like, it's not like the sacraments, where if you don't follow the form, it might be invalid. That's not going to be the case with the Rosary. So. So I would also say, I'll wrap it up here. But. And I said, like I said, I'll link it in the show notes to various, you know, how to pray the rosary, the 15 promises, my conversion story, all that stuff. But one last thing, I would say one way you could kind of max out. For those of you who pray the Rosary a lot and have been praying it for years, there is a way you can kind of max it out a little bit, kind of supercharge it, pray it in Latin. Now, those who follow my podcast know I'm terrible at languages. I don't do very good at learning languages. But I will say at times what I will do is I will pray the Rosary in Latin. [00:37:44] We've actually started doing that with the family in the, in the last decade of our family Rosary. Lately, we've been praying that one in Latin. [00:37:52] The first four we'll do in English and the last one in Latin. And I just think it's, it's, it's, it's beautiful because in some ways it, because God speaks Latin. Okay? That's the real reason. But what really is happening is it's connecting you to so many people who have prayed the Rosary for many centuries because a lot of them prayed it in Latin, a lot of them prayed in Latin. So you're kind of connected to them, this communion of saints, this communion of people who are devoted to the Rosary. And so I would just say, hey, maybe sometimes, maybe you just do it once a week. Maybe just do one decade or something like that when you pray the daily rosary, pray in Latin, it's easy to pray out the prayers and you'll learn them quickly. I have them memorized. I'm not going to try to say them right now because I just botched the Arlea Fatima prayer, even though I know that by heart on the podcast. [00:38:46] But like, I. I now know I could say the the Our Father and the Hail Mary. I don't look at a sheet anymore. It's very easy to get to learn it very quickly. So. Okay, so that was my last bit of advice. So I would just say again before I get out of here, I urge you, pray the rosary daily. Obviously, you have your minimal things you have to do as a Catholic. You have to go to mass every Sunday. Hopefully you go more than that. You go to confession, hopefully at least once a month. You know, you practice charity, all these things, you avoid sin. [00:39:15] But if you want to do all those things and really, you know, try to do them well and really get the graces to do them well, pray the rosary daily. It's our best spiritual weapon. And I just recommend to everybody very highly. [00:39:27] Okay, that's it for now. Until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember the poor.