The Bishop and the Priest Whose People were Changed

Attribution: from The Secret of the Rosary, Fourth Decade.

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. Before advising her, he asked what she already did, and she answered simply that her chief exercise was the Rosary, prayed each day while meditating on the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries.

The bishop was astonished at the depth of what she drew from those mysteries. "I have been a doctor of theology for twenty years," he said, "and read many fine books on devotion, but I have never met anything better than this, or more suited to the Christian life. From now on I will follow your example, and I will preach the Rosary." He did, and in a short time his whole diocese changed for the better, with sins abandoned, wrongs repaired, and fervour and charity taking root where his earlier efforts had borne almost nothing. He took to wearing a rosary at his side and showing it when he preached, saying that he took more pride in the Blessed Virgin Mary's rosary than in all his robes of office.

A priest in Denmark used to tell, with great joy, that exactly the same thing had happened in his own parish. He had tried every argument he could think of from the pulpit, to no effect, until he began to teach his people the Rosary, and within six months he saw a plain and lasting change. Both men had found the same secret, that this simple prayer of Our Lady can soften and turn hearts where learning and eloquence alone cannot.

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Source:

Simplified retellings of the miracle and conversion stories that St. Louis de Montfort gathered in The Secret of the Rosary, written in the early eighteenth century. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the traditional English translation but not word for word. Montfort himself called them "ancient but authentic stories about the holy Rosary," collected from earlier authors such as Blessed Alan de la Roche, and offered on human authority, not as articles of faith.