John Paul II’s Apostolic Letter

On the Holy Rosary

RO S A R I U M

Study Guide to
V I RG I N I S M A R I A E
ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue v

Chapter 1 From Dominic to John Paul II: 1

The Rosary in History and Today

Chapter 2 Contemplating Christ with Mary: 23

A Survey of Marian Doctrine and
Christian Prayer

Chapter 3 Christ’s First Disciple: 43

Mary as Teacher and Model

Chapter 4 The Mysteries of the Rosary, Part I: 65

From Nazareth to Calvary

Chapter 5 The Mysteries of the Rosary, Part II: 85

From the Tomb to Today

Chapter 6 Assimilating the Mystery: 105

Helps, Methods, and Fruits

About Endow 127

For Your Next Group 129

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PROLOGUE

Dear Endow Participant,

Two decades ago, during the first year of the new millennium, Catholics
around the world celebrated the Great Jubilee. It was a year when special
graces of mercy and forgiveness were poured out on the faithful, and
God’s steadfast love, manifested in the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ,
was preached from every pulpit.
At the end of the Jubilee, the pope, Saint John Paul II, issued an
apostolic letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte (“At the Beginning of the New
Millennium”). In it, he called the Church to “start afresh from Christ”
and “take up her evangelizing mission with fresh enthusiasm.”1 Then, a
year later, he issued a new encyclical, Rosarium Virginis Mariae (“Rosary
of the Virgin Mary”), which called for renewed devotion to the Rosary
and declared October 2002 through October 2003 “The Year of the
Rosary.”
People were . . . surprised. Many struggled to understand the
connection. Why call for a new focus on Jesus and then suddenly tell
people to pray the Rosary more? It seemed like a bait and switch. Did
the pope want people paying attention to Jesus or to Mary? Did he
want people looking forward to the future or looking back on what
many at the time felt was an outdated tradition? Was he leading the
Church of the new millennium or the Church of the old?
The Polish pope understood, however, what so many had forgotten:
there is no surer way to Jesus than through His mother, and there is no
surer way to His mother than through the Rosary. The Rosary is her
prayer, and because the entire goal of her existence, both earthly and
heavenly, is to bring people to her Son, the Rosary, from beginning to
end, is about Jesus.
To pray the Rosary, Saint John Paul II wrote, is to attend the
school of Mary. It is to sit at her feet and learn about her Son. It’s also

1 Pope John Paul II, Novo Millenio Ineunte, January 6, 2001, 29, 2.

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to learn about holiness, discipleship, and who God made us to be. In
the encyclical, the pope repeated what he had said before: the Rosary
was his favorite prayer. It was the prayer that carried him through the
loss of his parents, the tragedies of war, the dangers of seminary in a
Communist country, the even greater dangers of leading the Church in
that country, and finally the heavy burdens of the papacy. Praying the
Rosary helped make John Paul II the disciple he was, and he knew it
could do the same for all men and women.
Over the next six weeks, through the lens of Rosarium Virginis
Mariae, we’ll explore that prayer together. During the first three
weeks of this study, we’ll look at the foundation John Paul II lays
for understanding the Rosary, surveying its history and the Church’s
teachings on Mary, as well as the Catholic theology of prayer and
discipleship. During the second three weeks of the study, we’ll look
more closely at the foundational meaning of the mysteries of the
Rosary, the nature of mystery in the Christian tradition, and some of
the pope’s practical recommendations for entering more deeply into his
“favorite prayer.”
So much in our world has changed since the start of the new
millennium. The Church and today’s culture face challenges most of
us never imagined two decades ago. Each of us, in our own way, is
struggling through these challenges, trying to make our way through
a world that wants nothing more than to pull us away from Jesus.
The power of the Rosary, however, remains as strong as ever. It is an
unbreakable chain that binds us to Jesus and His mother.
Here at Endow, we pray that this study helps you hold tightly to
that chain as you journey through this “valley of tears,” allowing it to
safely guide you to your true home in Heaven.

Your Sisters in Christ,

The Endow Team

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CHAPTER 1
FROM DOMINIC TO JOHN PAUL II:
THE ROSARY IN HISTORY AND TODAY

Opening Prayer

Hail Mary, full of grace,

the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now
and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

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“The Rosary is a prayer that always accompanies
me; it is also the prayer of the ordinary people
and the saints . . . it is a prayer from my heart.”

Pope Francis

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I. WHAT IS THE ROSARY?

From Saint John Paul II’s Encylical: Rosarium

Virginis Mariae, paragraph 12

The Rosary of the Virgin Mary, which gradually took form in the
second millennium under the guidance of the Spirit of God, is a
prayer loved by countless Saints and encouraged by the Magisterium.
Simple yet profound, it still remains, at the dawn of this third
millennium, a prayer of great significance, destined to bring forth a
harvest of holiness. It blends easily into the spiritual journey of the
Christian life, which, after two thousand years, has lost none of the
freshness of its beginnings and feels drawn by the Spirit of God to “set
out into the deep” (duc in altum!) in order once more to proclaim,
and even cry out, before the world that Jesus Christ is Lord and
Saviour, “the way, and the truth and the life,” “the goal of human
history and the point on which the desires of history and civilization
turn.”
The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart
a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all
the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be
said to be a compendium. It is an echo of the prayer of Mary, her
perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation
which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian
people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the
beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love.
Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though
from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer.

2 For the remainder of the references to our central document, we will refer to the
paragraph number but just indicate the number. If you are interested in following
along, see the Vatican’s website for a complete copy of this marvelous letter. It can also
be purchased in booklet form from a bookstore.
http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters/2002/documents/hf_
jp-ii_apl_20021016_rosarium-virginis-mariae.html.

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Key Points

The Church credits Saint Dominic Guzman with popularizing the

devotion that would grow into the Rosary.

In thirteenth-century France and Germany, the Church had a problem

on its hands. For decades, a sect known as the Cathars (or Albigensians)
had been growing in both strength and numbers, attracting people with
their simple, austere ways. Unlike the corrupt Catholic clergy of the
day, the Cathar leaders practiced chastity, embraced poverty, and gave
generously to those in need.
They did so, they claimed, in imitation of Jesus. But they also
claimed there were two gods (an evil god of the Old Testament and a
good god of the New Testament), that Jesus never assumed a human
body (merely the appearance of one), and that the entire material world
was evil (including the human body). Only by entirely rejecting the
material world and all it contained—including sex, money, and food—
and by remaining perfectly sinless did the Cathars believe anyone could
attain salvation.
Their way of life should have been a hard sell. But people kept
signing up, and the Church seemed powerless to stop it. Finally, in the
early thirteenth century, one bishop decided to try something new. He
asked one of his most faithful priests to found a new order of preachers,
one that would embrace a lifestyle almost as austere as the Cathars and
would travel wherever error was taught to preach against it. The priest
tasked with this mission was Saint Dominic Guzman.
The son of a wealthy Spanish couple, Dominic was both intelligent
and tenacious. His name literally meant “dog of the Lord.” He too,
though, was having no luck converting the Cathars, until one day, as
tradition tells us, the Virgin Mary appeared and instructed him in a
new method of preaching, one that integrated the proclamation of the
Gospel mysteries with prayer.
The renowned Dominican theologian (and Saint John Paul II’s
thesis advisor) Father Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange explains:

Under her inspiration, Saint Dominic went into the villages of

heretics, gathered the people and preached to them the mysteries of
salvation—the Incarnation, Redemption, Eternal Life. As Mary had
taught him to do, he distinguished the different kinds of mysteries, and
after each short instruction, he had ten Hail Marys recited. . . . And

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what the word of the preacher was unable to do, the sweet prayer of the
Hail Mary did for their hearts. As Mary promised, it proved to be a
most fruitful form of preaching.3

The prayer of the Rosary slowly developed through the sixteenth

century.

Although Dominic’s Mary-inspired style of preaching didn’t bring the

Cathar crisis to an end, its relative success did inspire him to promote
a new devotion: the 150 Aves.
As early as the fourth century, the liturgical worship of Christian
monks included praying all 150 Psalms. Although few laity could
participate in those prayers due to widespread illiteracy, they could pray
the Ave (the forerunner to the prayer we know as the Hail Mary). So,
beginning in the thirteenth century, at the urging of Saint Dominic,
that’s what they did, reciting the prayer 150 times daily.
Originally, the Ave consisted only of the words spoken by the
Angel Gabriel in Luke 1:28 and by Saint Elizabeth in Luke 1:42: “Hail,
full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and
blessed is the fruit of your womb.” By the early fourteenth century,
though, the names of Mary and Jesus were added to the prayer, and by
the end of the fifteenth century, the prayer included a plea for Mary’s
intercession: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and
at the hour of our death.”
To better keep track of the prayers, people eventually divided the
Hail Marys into groups of ten (called decades), started praying an Our
Father before each new grouping, and began counting the prayers on
chains of beads. Collectively, this prayer became known as Our Lady’s
Psalter.
Likewise, during the fourteenth century, the Church encouraged
people to meditate upon different biblical events as they prayed the
Hail Marys. According to Mariologist Dr. Mark Miravalle: “At given
times in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, anywhere from 50 to
150 mysteries were meditated upon during the reciting of the 150 Hail
Marys.”4
Finally, in 1569, Pope Saint Pius V (a Dominican) issued the

3 Reginald Garrigou-LaGrange, Mother of Our Savior and Our Interior Life (Char-
lotte, NC: TAN Books, 1948), 297.
4 Mark Miravalle, Introduction to Mary: The Heart of Marian Doctrine and Devotion
(Santa Barbara, Calif.: Queenship Publishing, 1993), 90.

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apostolic constitution Consueverunt Romani Pontifices, which formalized
how Christians should pray the Rosary. In it, he emphasized the
importance of using the Rosary to integrate both vocal and meditative
prayer and limited the mysteries upon which people were to meditate
to fifteen: five Joyful Mysteries related to the Incarnation, five Sorrowful
Mysteries related to Christ’s Passion and death, and five Glorious
Mysteries related to the Resurrection and the life to come.

The Rosary has continued to develop across time and cultures.

Today, with one significant exception, the heart of the Rosary prayer
remains what it was in 1569, when Pope Pius promoted the prayer to
the universal Church. As we meditate on each mystery, the Church calls
us to pray one Our Father and ten Hail Marys. Those two prayers are
the only prayers absolutely required by papal teaching on the Rosary.
Through the centuries, however, different regions and cultures
have made the Rosary their own by including additional prayers. In
the United States and much of Western Europe, Catholics begin the
Rosary by praying the Apostles’ Creed, saying an Our Father for the
Pope’s intentions, and then saying three Hail Marys for an increase in
faith, hope, and charity. In many Spanish-speaking countries, people
instead end the Rosary with those prayers. Elsewhere, Catholics begin
the Rosary with the opening words of Psalm 70: “O God, come to my
aid; O Lord, make haste to help me.”
In most countries (but not all), Catholics also now end each
decade of the Rosary with the Glory Be, a prayer of praise based upon
the prayers of the angels and saints in the Book of Revelation and
the doxologies in the letters of St. Paul. This prayer also maintains the
original link between the Rosary and the prayers of Christian monks, as
the Glory Be is an important part of the Divine Office (the daily cycle
of readings and prayers prayed by the Church’s priests and religious).
Other prayers and practices, including adding Hail Holy Queen, the
St. Michael Prayer, and Fatima prayers, abound.
The only significant change to the Rosary since 1569 was made
in this encyclical that we’re now reading. As we’ll discuss in our fourth
week, Saint John Paul II introduced a new set of mysteries in Rosarium
Virginis Mariae, the Luminous Mysteries, which recall the events of
Jesus’ public ministry. Accordingly, the full Rosary now consists of 200
Hail Marys instead of the original 150.

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Bringing It Home

When Saint Dominic began using the style of preaching that would
gradually grow into what we call the Rosary, he had one goal: to call
men and women to follow Jesus. His call went out to the Cathars, who
were following a false Christ. And his call went out to those who called
themselves Christians, but whose faith was weak and poorly formed.
Through preaching and prayer, Dominic put the real Jesus before the
crowds and called his listeners to follow Him.
In the centuries since, the Rosary has issued the same call to all
who have prayed it. The mysteries upon which we meditate put Jesus
ever before our eyes. In the midst of our own busy days, filled with
babies, bills, deadlines, laundry, and meetings, the Rosary fixes our eyes
on Jesus. It asks us to think about who He was, what He did for us, and
what humanity did to Him.
It’s not Saint Dominic who issues that call, though. Nor is it the
Church. It’s Mary, Jesus’ mother. Mary was the first person to fix her
eyes on Jesus. Mary was the first person to meditate on the events
of His life; she “kept all these things, pondering them in her heart”
(Luke 2:19). She was His first follower, His first disciple, and from the
beginning of His public ministry, she has been calling others to join
her. “Do whatever he tells you,” she told the servants in Cana in John
2:5. In the Rosary, she says the same to us.

Discussion Questions

1. What does your mother know about you that nobody else knows?
What do you know about your children that nobody else knows?
Why is this kind of knowledge possible for a mother?
2. Do you see any similarities between the Cathars and our culture?
Why or why not?
3. How well do you feel you know Jesus? What else about Him would
you like to know?

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“Our Lady has never refused me a grace

through the recitation of the rosary.”
Saint Padre Pio

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II. OBJECTIONS TO THE ROSARY

From Saint John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 4-5:

The timeliness of this proposal is evident from a number of

considerations. First, the urgent need to counter a certain crisis of
the Rosary, which in the present historical and theological context
can risk being wrongly devalued, and therefore no longer taught to
the younger generation. There are some who think that the centrality
of the Liturgy, rightly stressed by the Second Vatican Ecumenical
Council, necessarily entails giving lesser importance to the Rosary.
Yet, as Pope Paul VI made clear, not only does this prayer not
conflict with the Liturgy, it sustains it, since it serves as an excellent
introduction and a faithful echo of the Liturgy, enabling people to
participate fully and interiorly in it and to reap its fruits in their
daily lives.
Perhaps too, there are some who fear that the Rosary is somehow
unecumenical because of its distinctly Marian character. Yet the
Rosary clearly belongs to the kind of veneration of the Mother of God
described by the Council: a devotion directed to the Christological
centre of the Christian faith, in such a way that “when the Mother
is honoured, the Son . . . is duly known, loved and glorified.”
If properly revitalized, the Rosary is an aid and certainly not a
hindrance to ecumenism!
But the most important reason for strongly encouraging the
practice of the Rosary is that it represents a most effective means of
fostering among the faithful that commitment to the contemplation
of the Christian mystery which I have proposed in the Apostolic
Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte as a genuine “training in holiness.”

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Key Points

After Vatican II, many came to see the Rosary as an outdated prayer.

In the decades leading up to the Second Vatican Council, devotion to

the Rosary flourished. Both at Fatima and Lourdes, the Virgin Mary
urged people to pray the Rosary for the Church and the world. And as
devotion to those apparitions spread, so too did devotion to the Rosary.
Particularly in America, thanks to Venerable Father Patrick Peyton
(who coined the phrase, “the family that prays together stays together”)
and Blessed Archbishop Fulton Sheen (whose popular television
show regularly preached the importance of praying the Rosary), the
popularity of the Rosary spiked in the 1940s and 1950s. Public Rosary
crusades and rallies regularly took place in cities across America, and
countless families prayed nightly Rosaries in their homes.
Then came the Second Vatican Council.
The Council itself did nothing to discourage Catholics from
praying the Rosary. Rather, it strongly encouraged devotion to Mary.
What the Council did do, however, was call for a renewal in Catholic
liturgy and the reordering of Catholic devotional life to the liturgy.
“Pious exercises should be consistent with the liturgical season, should
be derived from the liturgy, and should lead to the liturgy, which by its
nature exceeds popular devotion,” stated the Conciliar document on
the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.5
Unfortunately, many people took those words to mean that non-
liturgical devotions were problematic, so around the world, priests and
bishops eliminated Marian novena services and communal Rosaries
from their parish and diocesan schedules. Pope Paul VI tried to correct
this confusion in 1969, when he wrote a letter commemorating the
400th anniversary of Pope Pius V’s writings on the Rosary, but the
new liturgical calendar that was also issued that year eliminated many
Marian feast days and spoke louder than his words. Attempts by various
bishops to “modernize” the Rosary by changing and eliminating some
of the prayers only increased the confusion.
By the time John Paul II became pope in 1978, millions of
Catholics believed the Rosary belonged to the past, along with the
Latin Mass and chapel veils. Grandmothers continued to pray it, but
many young people, including Catholic school students, were never

5 Second Vatican Council, Sacrosanctum Concilium, December 4, 1963, 13.

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introduced to it. Throughout his papacy, however—and most notably
in this encyclical—John Paul II attempted to reverse course. Re-igniting
devotion to the Rosary, he believed, was key to helping the work of
the Second Vatican Council bear fruit in the world and helping all
Catholics enter more fully into the worship of Christ in the Mass.

Others object to the Rosary because they believe it gives too much
attention to Mary.

In addition to reforms in the liturgy, the Second Vatican Council also

opened the door for greater ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.
The goal of the Church’s ecumenical dialogue—engaging with other
Christian communities—is to achieve the unity that Jesus prayed for
at the Last Supper: “that they may all be one” (John 17:21). The goal
of interreligious dialogue—engaging with non-Christian religions—is
to establish common ground between people of faith and help them
find salvation in Christ.
As the Church understands it, neither form of dialogue should
lead to the watering down of Catholic belief. Rather, such dialogue
should clear up confusion about what the Church believes, promote
friendship between believers, and ultimately lead all people into the
fullness of truth that the Church possesses.
Not all Catholics have been clear on those points, however, and
in an attempt to further ecumenical dialogue, some have argued that
devotions such as the Rosary, with its emphasis on Mary, present
obstacles to unity.
What these arguments often miss, however, is that the focus of
the Rosary is never Mary; it’s always Jesus. Of the twenty mysteries
of the Rosary, all but two focus exclusively on the life of Jesus. The
last two Glorious Mysteries—Mary’s Assumption into Heaven and her
Coronation as Queen of Heaven and Earth—then call us to reflect
on the fruits of Christ’s death and resurrection, which were first
experienced by His mother but will be experienced by all the blessed in
Heaven. Pope Paul VI further explains:

As Gospel prayer, centered on the mystery of the redemptive

Incarnation, the Rosary is therefore a prayer with a clearly
Christological orientation. Its most characteristic element, in
fact, the litany-like succession of Hail Marys, becomes in itself an
unceasing praise of Christ, who is the ultimate object both of the

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angel’s announcement and of the greeting of the mother of John the
Baptist: “Blessed is the fruit of your womb.” 6

A third common objection to the Rosary is that it is difficult to pray.

From the outside, the Rosary can seem like an unchallenging prayer:
the same prayers are repeated, over and over again, seemingly flying in
the face of Jesus’ warning to “not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles
do” (Mt 6:7). Even from the inside, it can be difficult to pray. Lasting
anywhere from fifteen to twenty-five minutes, the Rosary requires focused
attention, which doesn’t always come naturally to even the saints among
us. In her autobiography, Story of a Soul, Saint Thérèse confessed:

When alone (I am ashamed to admit it) the recitation of the

rosary is more difficult for me than the wearing of an instrument
of penance. I feel I have said this so poorly! I force myself in vain to
meditate on the mysteries of the rosary; I don’t succeed in fixing my
mind on them.7

The same elements of the Rosary that can make it difficult for
some to pray, however, are the very elements that can make it so
helpful for those who struggle with it. Because the Rosary combines
both vocal and meditative prayer—saying the Our Fathers and Hail
Marys while thinking about the life of Christ—and because it calls us
to do so while slowly fingering beads, it is a profoundly incarnational
prayer. It calls the whole person—body and soul—into the presence
of God. Through the repetition of the words and the movement of
the fingers, the body is able to relax, similar to what happens with
knitting or other busy work often employed in the therapy of those
struggling with post-traumatic stress.
At the same time, through the contemplation of the mysteries,
the mind is encouraged to focus and discover new depths to the words
being repeated. We tell our husbands, children, and parents “I love
you,” countless times. But those words, so often repeated, take on
different shades of meaning when paired with different memories,
thoughts, and actions about that person. The same is true with Jesus
and Mary. The more we meditate upon the mysteries of the Rosary,

6 Pope Paul VI, Marialus Cultus, February 2, 1974, 46.

7 Thérèse Martin, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of Thérèse of Lisieux (Washington,
D.C.: ICS Publications, 1975) 242.

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the more meaning the vocal prayers acquire. All this, says Garrigou-
Lagrange, makes the Rosary:

. . . a true school of contemplation. It raises us gradually above

vocal prayer and even above reasoned out or discursive meditation.
Early theologians have compared the movement of the soul in
contemplation to the spiral which certain birds—the swallow, for
example—move when they wish to attain to a great height…The
Rosary well understood is a very elevated form of prayer which makes
the whole of dogma accessible to all.8

Bringing It Home

Saint Thérèse possibly never committed a mortal sin in her life. She was
canonized and declared a Doctor of the Church within a century of her
death. Yet she found it difficult to pray the Rosary. If she struggled—in
a cloister, without children or deadlines or a smartphone to distract her
from the prayers—how are the rest of us supposed to manage? Finding
time to pray it, let alone have the presence of mind to focus on the
mysteries, seems like an impossible challenge.
But the very things that make it so difficult for many of us to pray
the Rosary are the very reason we need it. In a world that works hard
to fracture our attention, the Rosary offers us a daily opportunity to
practice focus. In a world of noise, the Rosary calls us, for just fifteen
minutes, into silence. In a world that is always demanding something
new of us—to be more, do more, achieve more—the Rosary offers
us the comfort of familiar words and a set pattern of prayer. And in a
world that wants us to look away from God and toward ourselves, the
Rosary offers us the opportunity to deliberately and methodically shift
our gaze to Jesus and the story of His life and death.
For some, entering into both the spirit and prayers of the Rosary
comes easily. For others, it takes time and effort. It takes repetition.
It takes meditation upon what the Rosary offers, as well as on the
mysteries. But the more time and effort we put into it, the more we find
the antidote to the problems that keep us from praying it. The Rosary
is, in a sense, its own answer.

8 Garrigou-Lagrange, Mother of Our Savior and Our Interior Life, 297.

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Discussion Questions

1. Did your family pray the Rosary when you were growing up? What
did you think about the Rosary when you were younger?
2. Have your attitudes toward the Rosary changed though the years?
If so, how?
3. Do you and your family pray the Rosary now? Why or why not?

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III. THE CALL TO THE ROSARY

From Saint John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 7–8:

Many signs indicate that still today the Blessed Virgin desires to
exercise through this same prayer that maternal concern to which the
dying Redeemer entrusted, in the person of the beloved disciple, all
the sons and daughters of the Church: “Woman, behold your son!”
Well-known are the occasions in the nineteenth and the twentieth
centuries on which the Mother of Christ made her presence felt and
her voice heard, in order to exhort the People of God to this form of
contemplative prayer. I would mention in particular, on account of
their great influence on the lives of Christians and the authoritative
recognition they have received from the Church, the apparitions of
Lourdes and of Fatima; these shrines continue to be visited by great
numbers of pilgrims seeking comfort and hope.
It would be impossible to name all the many Saints who
discovered in the Rosary a genuine path to growth in holiness. We
need but mention Saint Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort, the
author of an excellent work on the Rosary, and, closer to ourselves,
Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, whom I recently had the joy of canonizing.
As a true apostle of the Rosary, Blessed Bartolo Longo had a special
charism. His path to holiness rested on an inspiration heard in the
depths of his heart: “Whoever spreads the Rosary is saved!”

Key Points

The Church believes that Mary has encouraged Catholics to pray the
Rosary through private revelation.

The Catholic Church believes there are two types of revelation: public
and private.

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Public revelation is what God has done in salvation history,
making Himself known to the Israelites and then to the world through
Jesus Christ. This revelation—which consists of all the divine truths
necessary for our salvation—has been handed down through Sacred
Scripture and Sacred Tradition and is safeguarded by the Church’s
Magisterium. Catholics are called to assent to all the truths given to us
through public revelation.
The Church also teaches, however, that while public revelation
ended with the death of the last Apostle—Saint John the Evangelist—
God has continued to speak to His people through private revelations.
These revelations do not belong to the deposit of faith, nor do they
contain any “new” teachings. As the Catechism explains: “It is not
[private revelation’s] role to improve or complete Christ’s definitive
Revelation, but to help live more fully by it in a certain period of
history” (CCC, 66–67). That is to say, private revelation is intended
to help particular individuals or groups live what we all believe in the
context of the particular challenges of their time and place.
In order to determine whether a private revelation is authentic, the
Church asks three questions:

1. Is the content of the private revelation in harmony with

public revelation?
2. Does authentic mystical phenomena surround the revelation?
3. Have good spiritual fruits been born through the revelation
(such as conversions, vocations, and increased faith and
devotion)?

Even those private revelations that the Church recognizes as

authentic, however, aren’t binding on the faithful. While every Catholic
is required to believe that God is a Holy Trinity, Jesus is God-Made-
Man, and the Eucharist is really His Body and Blood, no Catholic is
bound to believe with divine faith the messages of private revelation.
Each of us is left to decide if we find the messages helpful and applicable
to us in our daily walk in faith with Christ.

Most Marian apparitions have urged the faithful to pray the Rosary.

Over the past two hundred years, dozens of people around the world
have reported receiving private revelations from Mary, the Mother of
God. While many of these apparitions have been disproved by the

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Church, nine have been officially recognized, which is more than the
Church recognized in the eighteen centuries prior. For this reason,
this time in Catholic history has often been referred to as the “Age
of Mary.”
Of the nine recognized apparitions, two in particular have garnered
attention worldwide: the apparitions at Lourdes and Fatima.
On February 11, 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to fourteen-
year-old Bernadette Soubirous in the French mountain town of
Lourdes. Over the next eight months, Mary would appear to
Bernadette eighteen times. Although she remained silent at first,
Mary eventually began speaking to Bernadette, communicating to
her the urgency of praying for those in sin and doing penance, both
for their conversion and her own. Mary also confirmed the truth of
the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, defined four years earlier
by Pope Pius IX, and, as proof of the truth of her message, directed
Bernadette to dig up a previously unknown mountain spring and
build a great chapel there. In the years since, those waters have been
the instrumental cause of multiple confirmed miracles and even more
unconfirmed ones.
Almost seventy years later, in 1917, the Virgin Mary again appeared
to three children in Fatima, Portugal: Lucia (age ten), Jacinta (age
seven), and Francesco (age eight). Between May 13 and October 13,
she spoke to the children six times, stressing the urgency of prayer and
devotion to her Immaculate Heart, with the stated goals of preventing
further bloodshed in World War I (which was raging at the time) and
bringing about the conversion of Russia. Multiple signs accompanied
her words—most notably, the “miracle of the sun,” on October 13,
1917, in which the sun spun like a disk, put on a light show, and
then plunged to the earth before righting itself once more. Over one
hundred thousand people witnessed the miracle.
At both Lourdes and Fatima, the Rosary figured prominently.
At Lourdes, Mary herself held a Rosary and fingered the beads in
silent prayer. Inspired by Our Lady, Bernadette prayed a Rosary at the
beginning and end of each apparition. As more spectators joined her,
they also prayed a Rosary. At Fatima, Mary referred to herself multiple
times as “Our Lady of the Rosary” and called for the daily praying of
the Rosary by the faithful “in order to obtain peace for the world and
the end of the war.” She also instructed the children to add a new prayer
at the end of each decade: “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins; save us from
the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need

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of thy mercy.” Called the Fatima Prayer, it remains widely prayed as
part of the Rosary today.9

Blessed Bartolo Longo’s life witnessed to the power of the Rosary.

Of all the saints who have prayed the Rosary and promoted praying the
Rosary, none have been quite so transformed by it as Blessed Bartolo
Longo.
Born in 1841, Longo grew up in southern Italy, where his wealthy
Catholic parents were known for their devout faith. Longo, however,
lost that faith soon after he arrived at the University of Naples’s law
school. There, the nationalist, anti-Catholic politics of the day spilled
over into the classroom, and Longo quickly got caught up in the anti-
clerical, anti-papal rhetoric of his professors. At the same time, he
developed an interest in spiritualism and the occult, which was then
on the rise both in Italy and across Europe. Eventually, seeking out the
guidance of mediums wasn’t enough for Longo; he longed for more
direct contact with the spirits. So, he underwent rigorous training to
become a Satanist priest.
Not surprisingly, instead of bringing him peace, his “ordination”
resulted in an almost immediate descent into mental illness. Hounded
by a demon who he called his “angel,” Longo battled depression,
anxiety, and paranoia. He grew so thin and haggard that his family
barely recognized him. They began looking for help and found it in one
of the last remaining Catholic professors at the University of Naples.
His professor, in turn, introduced Longo to a Dominican priest, who
met with Longo every day for nearly a month. While the priest talked
with Longo, hundreds of others prayed for his soul. At the end of the
month, Longo renounced Satanism, went to confession, and returned
to the sacraments. He then spent the next two years trying to atone for
his past by serving the poor and the sick.
Nevertheless, guilt continued to haunt him, until, as he describes:

One day in the fields around Pompeii, I recalled my former

condition as a priest of Satan. . . . I thought that perhaps as the
priesthood of Christ is for eternity, so also the priesthood of Satan
is for eternity. So, despite my repentance, I thought: I am still
consecrated to Satan, and I am still his slave and property as he
9 Miravalle, Introduction to Mary, 144.

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awaits me in Hell. As I pondered over my condition, I experienced
a deep sense of despair and almost committed suicide. Then I heard
an echo in my ear of the voice of Friar Alberto repeating the words
of the Blessed Virgin Mary: “One who propagates my Rosary shall
be saved.” Falling to my knees, I exclaimed: “If your words are true
that he who propagates your Rosary will be saved, I shall reach
salvation because I shall not leave this earth without propagating
your Rosary.”10

Longo spent the rest of his life spreading devotion to the Rosary,
writing books about it, composing Rosary novenas and prayer manuals,
publishing a magazine devoted to it, and building the great Basilica of
Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary in Pompeii. Befriended by Pope
Leo XIII, who himself wrote twelve encyclicals on the Rosary, Longo’s
work eventually led to the dogmatic definition of Mary’s Assumption
in 1950. His writing also inspired Saint John Paul II, who drew upon
Longo’s writing to formulate the Luminous Mysteries, which he
introduced in the encyclical Rosarium Virginis Mariae. Longo passed
away in 1926 and was beatified by John Paul II in 1980.

Bringing It Home

Over the centuries, saints have composed countless prayers, litanies,

and novenas that have helped people express their love and devotion
to God. But no prayer outside the liturgy is as powerful as the Rosary
because the Rosary truly is Mary’s prayer.
It was Mary who taught Saint Dominic how to integrate the
mysteries of her Son’s life and the words of the Ave into his preaching.
And it was Mary who urged us, again and again, to pray the Rosary
when she appeared to children.
That is the beauty of the Rosary: it’s rich enough that a brilliant
theologian can discover new insights in it as he prays, but it’s also simple
enough for a child to pray and understand. Sinners and saints both can
be led closer to Jesus through the prayers, while the old and young,
rich and poor, great and little, learned and simple can find something
in the mysteries to which they can relate. This is because it is a prayer
10 “Former Satanist Priest Becomes Saint,” Dominican Friars Foundation, last ac-
cessed November 8, 2019, https://dominicanfriars.org/former-satanist-priest-be-
came-saint/.

19
 SAMPLE
whose origins are more supernatural than natural, and whose greatest
champion has been Our Lady herself. That makes it a prayer like no
other, and also one that bears fruit like no other.

Discussion Questions

1. What is your initial reaction to the concept of private revelation

and Marian apparitions? Do you embrace them easily or are you
skeptical? Explain.
2. Have you ever visited an apparition site? If so, what was your
experience like? If not, is there one you would like to visit? Why?
3. Blessed Bartolo Longo struggled to believe that, given his past, God
would welcome him into Heaven. Do you ever struggle to believe
God can forgive you for the sins of your past? What has helped you
in that struggle?

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Closing Prayer

Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,

our life, our sweetness, and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve,
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.
Turn then, most gracious Advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us,
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
Amen.

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SAMPLE
“I take refuge, then, in prayer, and turn to
Mary, and our Lord always triumphs.”
Saint ThÉrÈse of Lisieux

22
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our mission. Endow gratefully receives financial contributions and grants as a
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Please consider joining our mission and inviting others to do so by going to www.
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and the thousands of women and men praying for our mission! Deo gratias!
 MISSION
Endow’s mission is to educate women toward a deeper, more profound
understanding of their God-given dignity and vocation as women. Rooted in
the teachings of the Catholic Church, the Endow study program recognizes
and affirms the true genius of women and responds to our culture’s desperate
need for an authentic feminine presence in every aspect of life and society.

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