Stories

A Spanish countess who had learned the Rosary from St. Dominic prayed it faithfully every day and made great progress in her soul. Wanting to go further, she asked a bishop, a famous preacher, for practices that would help her toward perfection.

A nobleman placed one of his daughters in a monastery that had grown lax, where the nuns cared only for vanity and amusement. Their confessor, however, was a zealous priest devoted to the Rosary, and to guide this young nun he told her to pray it every day while meditating on the life, passion, and glory of Jesus Christ.

In 1578 a woman of Antwerp had given herself to the devil and signed a contract to that effect with her own hand. Almost at once she was struck with remorse and longed to undo the terrible thing she had done, so she went looking for a wise and kindly confessor who could tell her how to be set free.

Several soldiers who fought under the protection of Our Lady of the Rosary found themselves delivered again and again against impossible odds. Simon de Montfort saw small companies scatter forces many times their size, and a papal legate, Cardinal Pierre, once saw three thousand men who had prayed the Rosary carried safely through a battle against a hundred thousand.

St. Dominic had a cousin named Don Perez who was living a thoroughly immoral life. Hearing that Dominic's preaching on the Rosary was converting many, he said, "I had given up all hope of being saved, but now I begin to take heart again. I must hear this man of God." So he came to a sermon, and Dominic, seeing him, preached against sin with all his force and begged God to show his cousin the true state of his soul.

Alphonsus, a king in Spain, had been living a disordered life, and after many misfortunes he was driven to take refuge in a town belonging to one of his allies. It happened that St. Dominic was there on Christmas Day, preaching the Rosary and the graces it wins, and saying that those who prayed it devoutly would overcome their enemies and regain all they had lost.

Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, grieved for twelve years because her marriage had given her no children. When St. Dominic visited her, he told her to pray the Rosary every day and ask God for the grace of motherhood, and she followed his counsel faithfully. In time she gave birth to a son, Philip, but the child died in infancy.

Blessed Alan de la Roche told of a man he knew who was possessed by an evil spirit and had tried every kind of devotion to be rid of it, but nothing worked.

A lady in Rome led such a strict and fervent life that she put even the strictest religious to shame. When she came to St. Dominic for direction and made her confession, he gave her one Rosary for her penance and urged her to pray it every day.

Blessed Alan de la Roche told of a nun who had always had a great devotion to the Rosary. For several years before she died she was bedridden and suffered agonizing pain, and at last she died.

One day St. Gertrude had a vision of our Lord counting out gold coins. She gathered the courage to ask him what he was doing. He answered, "I am counting the Hail Marys that you have said. This is the money with which you purchase heaven."

One day St. Mechtilde was at prayer, trying to find some new way to show her love for the Blessed Virgin Mary, when she fell into ecstasy. Our Lady appeared to her with the words of the Hail Mary written in letters of gold across her breast.

When Father James Sprenger and his brethren were working to revive the Rosary and its Confraternity in Cologne, two priests famous for their preaching grew jealous of the good they were doing and began to speak against the devotion at every chance. Being eloquent and well respected, they turned many people away from it.

While St. Dominic was preaching the Rosary at Carcassonne, a heretic mocked his miracles and the mysteries of the Rosary, and his scoffing kept others from being converted. As a punishment, God allowed a great host of demons, said to be fifteen thousand, to take possession of the man.

Alphonsus, a king in Spain, wanted all his court to honour the Blessed Virgin Mary by praying the Rosary. So he wore a large rosary on his belt, although, strangely, he never prayed it himself. Even so, the sight of it encouraged his courtiers to say theirs with devotion.

Blessed Thomas of St. John was famous for his sermons on the holy Rosary, and the devil, jealous of all the good he did, tormented him until he fell gravely ill. He was sick so long that the doctors gave him up, and one night, when he truly believed he was dying, the devil appeared to him in the most terrifying form imaginable.

A young friar had the beautiful habit of saying Our Lady's Rosary every day before dinner. One day, for some reason, he had not managed to say it, and the refectory bell had already rung. He asked his Superior for permission to say it first, and withdrew to his cell.

By the middle of the fifteenth century the Confraternity of the Rosary that St. Dominic had founded had fallen into neglect, and Our Lady chose Blessed Alan de la Roche, a Dominican in Brittany, to revive it. He had been a great sinner in his youth, and it was the Blessed Virgin Mary, he was told, who had won the grace of his conversion.

One day St. Dominic was to preach at Notre Dame in Paris, on the feast of St. John the Evangelist, before the whole University and many noblemen. Anxious to give a fine sermon worthy of so learned a crowd, he was in a little chapel behind the high altar preparing it by saying the Rosary, as he always did, when the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him with a book in her hand.

Seeing that the weight of people's sins was blocking the conversion of the Albigensians, St. Dominic withdrew into a forest near Toulouse and prayed for three days and three nights, weeping and doing hard penance to turn aside the anger of God, until at last his strength gave out and he sank down exhausted.