The Power of The Rosary and My Personal Experience

good afternoon my name is father Joseph Gill from st. Mary's in Stanford and I just got here about 30 seconds ago so it's privilege to be with you I was with the day for married down a Sacred Heart in Stanford so it's nice to come to another Sacred Heart to speak about the rosary and the power of the rosary in history and the power of the rosary in the life of the Saints and the power of the rosary in my own personal life my own personal walk with Christ so forgive me if I tell some stories that you may have heard before those who have been around the Catholic Church for a long time they know some beautiful powerful stories about the Rosary but I think they're worth retelling and the first one happened in the year fifteen seventy one it was one of the most powerful events really in history in 1571 the Ottoman Empire the Muslims had begun this naval campaign against Christianity and particularly they were trying to conquer conquer the island of Venice and when they got to Venice they were planning really to spread out through all of Italy and throughout all of Christendom to take over Christianity now they know that they had been beaten back for quite a bit after the Crusades and they were wanting to exact their revenge and so they were planning in October a major naval battle to take this island of Venice well the Christian the Christians basically the Holy Roman Empire the papal States and many of the other small countries for example the country of Naples Naples and Sicily which they themselves were their own separate countries heard about this plan they started to gather an army they started to equip naval ships started to recruit men who were willing to fight this battle but they knew that they were outnumbered in fact there was only there were 12,000 less Christian soldiers than there were Muslim soldiers heading into this battle they simply couldn't find any more people to be willing to fight with them and for them and so knowing that their their situation was rather dire the Pope at the town time pope pius v opened every church in rome and invited every pastor to tell every person in their parish to pray the rosary for the success of this battle this battle that was going to occur on October 7th 1571 and so the naval battle was waged with thousands upon thousands of soldiers with hundreds of ships both from the Ottoman Empire and from the Holy Roman Empire and the two of them continued to fight all throughout the day and when all of the dust is settled the Christians had won the day with a far less amount of ammunition far less ships and far fewer men and this really miracle saved Christianity it saved Christendom at that time from the Muslim invasion and not only did it save Christendom but it showed the power of the rosary and pope pius v was so amazed at the fact that everyone who prayed the rosary was able to obtain this victory from God that he declared October 7th the feast of Our Lady of Victory which we now know is Our Lady of the Rosary the feast and the power of the Holy Rosary that really saved Christianity from the impending doom that the Muslims wanted to recoup reap wreak upon it this is the power of the Rosary the Rosary is one of the most powerful weapons that we have against sin weapons against addictions weapons against fear weapons against any evil in the world in fact blessed Pius the ninth one of our popes said give me an army saying the rosary and I will conquer the world give me an army saying the rosary and I will conquer the world Padre Pio used to call the rosary his weapon and often if he was without it he would say bring me my weapon and everyone knew what he was talking about his rosary that powerful prayer Don Columba Marmion who was a great spiritual writer used a wonderful analogy he said that the rosary is too evil what David and Goliath David's stones were too Goliath because if you think about it five small stones couldn't take down this magnificent Giants unless God's hand was with him unless the Holy Spirit guided those stones exactly in the same way how can a few small beads overcome the power of evil only if they're placed in the hands of more powerful than evil the power of Our Lady and the power of our Lord who are able through the Rosary to overcome the vast network of evil that exists in the world and in our own human hearts that is the power of the rosary over this past year I had the privilege and the rather awesome duty of assisting at an exorcism I am NOT an exorcist myself but I was able to assist with this exorcism and one of the things one of the stories from that exorcism that really stood out to me was one in one of the early sessions we were all praying the Hail Mary very silently in our own minds nobody was speaking at all we were just kind of laying our hands on this young man who was possessed and all of a sudden his eyes snapped open and in an unearthly voice he cried out we can't have him we can't have him because of the power of that Hail Mary the demons within him recognized that this young man was consecrated to Mary and to Jesus and therefore nothing could touch him nothing could conquer him because of the power of the Hail Mary and the power of the Rosary that we were praying even in our own minds it's kind of a mind-blowing experience to me to experience that same way that the power of the Rosary really exemplified itself in my own life I in my life have kind of had kind of like a love-hate relationship with the Rosary because growing up my parents forced us to pray the rosary once a week it was on the way to church on Sundays we lived about 20 minutes from the church and we could get an entire rosary in by the time we got to church and my the only way that we would ever get soda only once a week at Sunday lunch if we pray the rosary and our parents would look in the rearview mirror to see if our lips were moving during the rosary and so I grew up kind of despising and being basically being forced to pray the rosary well when I was around 16 years old I kind of experienced a deep conversion and the Lord kind of touched my heart and really helped me to fall in love with him more and more and so that lent I decided I was going to take on the hardest penance I could possibly think of which was to pray the rosary every day for me that was torture it was very difficult and I used to be able to the rosary nine minutes flat and now studying like lam speed records in this rosary because I just wanted to get it over with but you know what psychologists say how long it takes to form or break a habit it's approximately 28 days and luckily Lent is 40 do you have a little extra time to practice and when LEM was over I found that I could not put the rosary down and I continued to pray it ever since and since I was 16 I've been praying the rosary every day very powerful experience in my own life to help set me free from some sins another friend of mine had a powerful experience with the rosary he was really struggling with lust and with addictions to pornography and so he was he wanted to be free from this addiction and he kept praying god how long am I gonna have this with me how long until I'm freed and he kept hearing in a soul the voice of the Lord saying when you have prayed one rosary for every time you've committed that sin you will be free and he thought to himself I better get started I have a lot of rosaries to pray you know but he did he did pray it every day faithful and he found that after many years of praying the rosary he was set free from this addiction to sin and he experienced that glorious freedom of the children of God that is the power of the rosary one last story about the rosary before I talk a little bit more about how we can benefit from the rosary are any of you familiar with the story of Blessed Bartolo Lango no it's a wonderful wonderful Saint story because it shows the incredible power of the rosary Bartolo Longo started out as a satanic priest not the way that most Saints stories usually start out he grew up as in a good Catholic home but when he went off to college some of his roommates were very involved in the worship of Satan and he started to go along with them to their black masses where they would desecrate the Eucharist where they would spit upon the crucifix all sorts of ways to mock and insult God and he was so taken in by this and by the promise that Satan had promised him and everyone who worshiped him of money of pleasure of power of Fame and popularity he was so taken in by that that he asked to be ordained a satanic priest and so he was and he said it was one of the most terrifying experiences of his life that while they were ordaining him a satanic priest he was able to see demons flying around the room and he was so horrified by this but he continued on in that path and he started to lead black masses and continue to mock the Eucharist continue to do anything possible to practice vice however he was very deeply disturbed by the fact that he was having more and more visions of Satan and more and more kind of thoughts of suicide thoughts of killing himself and so he went to the Catholic priest that was on his college campus and he asked him I need help I don't know what's going on I'm seeing these visions I'm having this despair within my soul what do I need to do and the priest told him to converse to repent to give up that sinful life and to turn his life over to the Lord and he did he made a good confession he got out of that life of Satanism and he started to follow the Catholic path however he was still filled with despair he continued to be plagued with the memories of the things that he had done of the way in which he mocked the Eucharist of the way in which he tried to draw Souls away from heaven and he thought to himself there's no way that I can be saved after what I did and so he was actually planning to kill himself he had set a date for his own suicide and as that date was approaching he had a dream and in a dream that night he saw the Blessed Mother and the Blessed Mother held out a rosary and said if you pray this rosary daily and you teach others to do so you will be saved and when he woke up he knew exactly what his life's mission was it was going to be to spread devotion to the rosary and so literally with his bare hands he started to rebuild this old church that had fallen - into ruins much like st. Francis this church in Pompeii Italy and he rebuilt this church and dedicated it to Our Lady of the Rosary after that he went around traveling throughout the countryside teaching others about the power of the rosary and this former satanic priest we now recognize as a blessed blessed Bartolo Longo someone who was saved through the power of the rosary pretty remarkable story huh just goes to show you that God's mercy is endless for anyone no matter how bad their former life was so what the rosary all about well the name rosary literally means a garden of roses or a crown of roses and so every time we pray the rosary it's like offering Mary a crown of roses the origins of the Rosary are probably not really from Saint Dominic but go even further back than that because the rosary was often called the poor man's Salter in other words the poor man's book of Psalms because there are 150 Psalms in the Bible through these beautiful prayers that Jesus himself used and many of the monks used to pray that constantly they would continue reciting the Psalms chanting them in a way to give praise and glory to God but those who couldn't read couldn't participate in that and so the monks devised a way in which people could pray 150 prayers on beads in order to help them keep track so that they would be able to participate in some small way in the chanting in the prayers of the monks and this is how the Rosary came to be 150 Hail Marys in order for people to participate in the prayers of the monks it was st. dominic however who really popularized it and spread devotion to the rosary so that many people could come to know this beautiful devotion but so how do we pray the rosary well how do we get the most out of it well I love what john paul ii said about the rosary he said the Rosary is looking at the life of Christ through the eyes of Mary looking at the life of Christ through the eyes of Mary and there's four things that we can focus on when we're praying the rosary first of all we can focus on the words that were saying the words themselves come right out of Scripture hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee those are the words that the angel Gabriel came and brought to Mary and in the second half blessed are you among women blessed is the fruit of thy womb the words of Elizabeth to her cousin Mary when she encountered the woman who was carrying the Son of God so where these words are so sacred they come right out of the Gospels and if we focus on the words we will derive great benefit from that but in addition to the words we can focus on the virtues that are displayed in these mysteries for example when I think about the Annunciation how Mary this young girl was able to save behold I am the handmaid of the Lord I think of the virtue of docility to God's will or trusting in God and when I pray that that mystery of the Rosary I ask God for the grace for me myself to participate in that to have that kind of trust in God and total surrender to his holy will we can also think about intentions for the Rosary for example when I pray the the first sorrowful mystery which is the agony in the garden and I think about how Christ was mentally suffering in the garden with the fears and anxieties that he knew was was coming up in the great suffering of his passion I often offer that for people who struggle with mental illness or for those who are paralyzed by fear so we can offer the Rosary for our intentions without a final way in which we can benefit greatly from the rosary is by really meditating on the mystery kind of putting yourself there as you were like immersing yourself in that scene try to see you know what is it like when Christ was going through his agony in the garden would I be one of those apostles who was falling asleep would I have stayed awake in my sometimes like Judas and betray the Lord am I like Jesus and going through a difficult time in my own life and having to pray father take this cup from me but not as I will but as you will what did Jesus look like what did it look like when the angels came to minister him what was it like when Jesus sweated blood and then Jesus encounters Judas and you ponder all this in your mind and you put yourself there and you have a real encounter with Christ using your imagination to bring the mystery of the Rosary to life the most important thing about the Rosary is pray as you can not as you can't even to this day I really can't pray the rosary sitting down I fall asleep and I don't know if you've ever had that happen to you but there is this there's this Catholic rumor that flies around that says that when you fall asleep praying the rosary that your guardian angel finishes it for you that's not true that's not true guardian angels don't finish prayers for you because then otherwise I would I would always pray that the Rosary is kind of like a Catholic version of counting sheep you know you need to go to sleep you know pray few Hail Marys and all of a sudden your angel takes care of the rest not true so the way in which I pray the rosary personally is I walk around on a beautiful day out you can see me strolling through the streets of Stanford praying the rosary not only is it a good witness but it helps me to really meditate and enter into the mysteries it's a good idea to definitely apply your mind to math to the myth to mysteries of the rosary because if we simply just recite the words but our hearts are not in it we don't benefit very much from the grace we have to apply our minds our wills our souls our imagination to these great mysteries of the rosary and that's how we benefit from it not just simply mindlessly reciting words but really making this a prayer making it a heart-to-heart encounter with Christ so that's been the story of my life with the rosary it's a beautiful devotion one that I encourage everyone to pray daily one that our lady encouraged the Shepherd children at Fatima to pray daily and through them the rest of the world is invited to that as well because the rosary has the power to overcome armies it has the power to overcome Satan the power to conquer addictions and sins the power to convert Souls and ultimately the power to make us Saints and so my friends we now enter into 15 minutes of silence in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament as we allow His grace to work upon our hearts

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Keywords: Fr Joseph Gill, Rosary, Blessed Bartolo Longo, Our Lady of Victory, October 7th, addictions, sin, powerful, battle, Bridgeport, Connecticut, Personal Experience, Power of The Rosary, Prayer, Lepanto, lepanto battle 1571, Exorcism, Daily Rosary, Bartolo Longo, Satanism, Suicide, Pompeii, Our Lady of the Rosary, origins of the rosary, Intentions, Intercessory, Meditations, Heart to Heart, Conversion, Sanctity, Bible, Healing, encounter with christ, Gardian Angel

Id: 8Z4XKvk60ag

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Thu May 12 2016