Following the Witness 

Witnessing is our way of being true believers.  Faith, authentic faith, is a matter of personal conviction, and conviction needs space to express itself.  There are many forms of expressing religious convictions, among them moral courage, perseverance in faith, a personal commitment of hope and justice, but also, and in a special way, prayer.  Prayer, public and private, puts us on the cutting edge of our faith.  The person who prays has pledged his or her love for God and by the same token for all those human beings God loves.

The rosary has been and still is one of those forms of witnessing God.  Countless men and women of faith have witnessed their love for God and Mary with the rosary. It would be erroneous to believe that only the simple and poor have made use of the beads.  Pasteur, the great French chemist and biologist, regularly said the rosary and was not afraid to exhibit the beads in public.  Think of Father Patrick Peyton, (1909-1992), another great witness of the rosary and founder of the Family Rosary Crusade.  He was a firm believer in the bonding and strengthening effect of regularly saying the rosary.  He coined the famous expression, "The family that prays together, stays together."  John Paul II in his Rosary Encyclical highlights the importance of these witness prompting our following and personal practice,  "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 Monfort, 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!' As a result, he felt called to build a church dedicated to our Lady of the Holy Rosary in Pompeii, against the background of the ruins of the ancient city, which scarcely heard the proclamation of Christ before being buried in 79 A.D. during an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, only to emerge centuries later from its ashes as a witness to the lights and shadows of classical civilization.  By his whole life's work and especially by the practice of the 'Fifteen Saturdays,' Bartolo Longo promoted the Christocentric and contemplative heart of the rosary, and received great encouragement and support from Leo XIII, the Pope of the Rosary." (Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 8)