home where everyone recognizes in Mary their mother, for she is the mother of Jesus, God made flesh and the brother of each of us. Thanks to the “Yes” uttered by the young Mary of Nazareth to the fully imparted gift of God, we are re-created as children of divine life. Praying the Rosary gradually tames us and brings us to enter into a new life, that very life which corresponds to our vocation.
Beside Mary, the prayer of the Rosary opens us to the plea of the Lord of Life. Why choose death when, seeking us, he knocks at our door: “Adam, where are you?” Yet we are afraid, and we hide. However, with Mary, we unleash Jesus’ own cry of trust, which arose at the pinnacle of his suffering: “Abba! Father!” Thus we are brought back to life; once again, our hearts — even our bodies — are immersed in their source. The prayer of the Rosary embeds itself in our whole being; it heals us in the most intimate part of ourselves, by releasing us from suspicion, by letting ourselves be touched by Jesus’ hand and refashioned by his breath, by letting ourselves be restored to life.
Jesus’ States of Life
However, praying the Rosary for inner healing is not magic. Right from the beginning, Father Dwight warns us: the course is a difficult one. The cases he mentions do not witness to 100 percent success. Rather, he calls us not to neglect the regular remedies offered by our Church, such as meditating on the Word of God, reaching for the sacraments, etc. If the world only knew! We would be running on all fours to the sacrament of confession, for it sets us free. My privileged experience as a priest at the Shrine of Lourdes will not deny it. The Rosary does not dispense us from participating in the life of Church; quite the opposite. It impels us to take part, and brings us to encounter her not as a mere society to which we should subscribe, but as the humble Nazareth to which we are convened and where we uncover that we have reached home, for we are at Mom’s!
Along the lines of the great Christian tradition, starting from “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” to the Second Vatican Council, via Saint John Eudes and the French school of spirituality, praying the Rosary connects with our innermost being in its relation to the Father, a relation which Jesus comes to infuse in us, while we bond with the mysteries he experienced. “For by his incarnation the Son of God has united himself in some fashion with every man. He worked with human hands, he thought with a human mind, acted by human choice and loved with a human heart. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like us in all things except sin” (Gaudium et Spes, 22).
When I accept the apostolate of Jesus’ mother in my life, I do not register new ideas, but I allow divine life to give me birth through the infusion of the Spirit, which she welcomed in fullness. Thus in my life resides the Gift-Person, the love of God in person. Hence I am set free from the fears of loss, suffering, and dying. Instead, everything gets re-orientated towards offering. Sacrifice opens me up for communion with others: I do not deprive myself; I give, and I receive to a hundredfold the joy to love and be loved. From then on occurs “a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (Gaudium et Spes, 24).
The Proclamation of the Kingdom
From the Cross of Love, Jesus entrusts me to his mother, “Woman, behold your son.” Jesus’ mother directs my gaze and my heart to the source that springs forth: “Do whatever he tells you” (Jn 2:5). I will then have to fill, with the water of penance, the empty jars used by the Jews for ritual purifications at the wedding of Cana. Thus, as humble servants of the New Covenant, we may rejoice to remain beside Jesus and his mother. However, we must move ahead on the path of trust, and go beyond superficial feelings. We might get discouraged on the way, saying, “It’s too hard!” or even “that’s ridiculous!”
Father Dwight speaks of a real obstacle course, with obstacles induced by pride or discouragement. We must accept that we will progress slowly, but keeping in the right direction. It is never too soon, or too late, to get started! Jesus leads us gradually into his filial trust: he totally depends on his relationship with the Father. As for us, we are free! Yet, we are not to do merely anything we please, but rather we are to answer his plea for love.
We then realize that our own hands crucified the Lord. The tears of repentance pervade us when we fathom the abysses of darkness within us that compel us to despise our brothers and sisters, and even our own lives. However, simultaneously, we meet Jesus’ gaze upon us; in his eyes, there is no judgment or condemnation, only a gaze that calls us to live, and quit the prison of our artificial, proud, or fearful self. Jesus restores the child in us, the very child who answers “Yes!” to life and love received. “Blessed are you, Lord, for creating me!”
Father André Cabes
Rector, Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine (Lourdes, France)
Preface to the Second Edition
I will never forget my first attempt to pray the Rosary. I was a young Anglican priest working in England. Because I was from an evangelical background, I had a natural bias against any sort of Marian devotion. At the time, in my late twenties, I was going through a personal crisis, and as I headed off to a Benedictine monastery to make my retreat, a parishioner put a Rosary into my hand and said, “I think you need one of these, Father.”
When I arrived at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, I looked at the Rosary and asked myself, “Why should I be right and a billion Catholics be wrong?” So I got a book from the bookstore on how to pray the Rosary and got started. That retreat was the start of a real transformation. Months later, when I had worked through the crisis, my spiritual director said very gently, “The prayers of Our Lady have helped you so much, haven’t they?” I was suddenly shocked into awareness. “Yes!” I said to myself. “It was when I began to pray the Rosary that I came into the crisis, and it was then that I found my way through the problems.” Up to that point I had not connected the dots and seen how the prayers of the Blessed Mother had been the catalyst to my inner healing.
It was another ten years before I came into full communion with the Catholic Church, but during that time I was introduced to the healing ministry of the Church through some very unusual priests. After becoming Catholic, I worked for a charity as a fundraiser and awaited the call to be a priest. I waited ten years. My timing was not God’s timing. Then, in 2005, the door opened for me to return to the United States to be ordained as a Catholic priest.
I had the chance to live for three months in a cabin in the woods in Greenville, South Carolina, while I waited for all the details for my ordination to come together. The cabin had been built by a Catholic woman I met years before when I was in college. She was a Benedictine oblate and a very devout and simple Catholic. While I was living alone in that cabin, I had plenty of extra time, and it was then that this book, Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing, was given to me. I say it “was given” because it almost wrote itself. The idea came to me in prayer, and each section of the book tripped off my fingers almost automatically.
Since then the book has helped thousands of people and has continued to be reprinted. Now, some twelve years later, I am pleased that it is going into a second edition with a fresh cover and an updated text. The book has been translated into Polish, Croatian, and French, and we would love to see it published in Spanish, Italian, and other languages.
The Christian faith is not just a theory or a good idea. It works. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God is transforming the world. He is doing this by transforming individuals into the likeness of Christ.
The process of this transformation is a long, hard journey. It’s the work of a lifetime. The first step of the journey is coming to realize that we need God’s help. Then we have to accept what God has done for us in Christ. Then, with God’s help, we embark on the adventure of faith. The end of our journey is what Jesus calls “abundant life.” This is a life of total healing. It is a life of fullness. It means becoming all that God created us to be. This is not just a possibility, but a command. If you’re a Christian, fullness of life and holiness is your calling.
We