The Young Franciscan and the Roses

Attribution: from the chronicles of St. Francis.

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.

When he had been gone a long time, the Superior sent another friar to fetch him. That friar found him bathed in a heavenly light, with the Blessed Virgin Mary and two angels beside him. At each Hail Mary a beautiful rose came from the young friar's mouth, and the two angels took the roses one by one and set them on Our Lady's head, while she accepted them with a smile.

Two more friars, sent to see what had become of the first two, saw the same wonder. Our Lady did not leave until the whole Rosary had been said. It was a living picture of what the book teaches, that every Hail Mary prayed with love places a rose upon her crown.

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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.