8/7/2019 The Value of Public Rosaries (taken from the Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis de Montfort)

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Forty-sixth RoseOf all the ways of saying the holy Rosary, the most glorious to God, mostsalutary to our souls, and the most terrible to the devil is that of saying orchanting the Rosary publicly in two choirs.

God is very pleased to have people gathered together in prayer. All the angelsand the blessed unite to praise him unceasingly. The just on earth, gatheredtogether in various communities, pray in common, night and day. Our Lordexpressly recommended this practice to his apostles and disciples, and promisedthat whenever there would be at least two or three gathered in his name hewould be there in the midst of them.

What a wonderful thing to have Jesus Christ in our midst! And all we have to doto have him with us is to come together to say the Rosary. That is why the firstChristians met so often to pray together, in spite of the persecutions of theEmperors, who had forbidden them to assemble. They preferred to risk deathrather than to miss their gatherings where our Lord was present.

This way of praying is of the greatest benefit to us:

1. because our minds are usually more alert during public prayer than whenwe pray alone;

2. when we pray in common, the prayer of each one belongs to the wholegroup and make all together but one prayer, so that if one person is notpraying well, someone else in the same gathering who is praying bettermakes up for his deficiency. In the same way, those who are strong upholdthe weak, those who are fervent inspire the lukewarm, the rich enrich thepoor, the bad are merged with the good. How can a measure of cockle besold? This can be done very easily by mixing it with four or five bushels ofgood wheat.

3. One who says his Rosary alone only gains the merit of one Rosary; but ifhe says it with thirty other people he gains the merit of thirty Rosaries.This is the law of public prayer. How profitable, how advantageous this is!

4. Urban VIII, who was very pleased to see how the devotion of the holyRosary had spread to Rome and how it was being said in two groups orchoirs, particularly at the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, attacheda hundred days' extra indulgence toties quoties, whenever the Rosary wassaid in two choirs. This is set out in his brief Ad perpetuam rei memoriam,of the year 1626. So every time you say the Rosary in common, you gain ahundred days' indulgence.

5. Public prayer is more powerful than private prayer to appease the anger ofGod and call down his mercy, and the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit,has always advocated it in times of disasters and general distress.

In his Bull on the Rosary, Pope Gregory XIII declares that we must believe, onpious faith, that the public prayers and processions of the members of theConfraternity of the Holy Rosary were largely responsible for the great victoryover the Turkish navy at Lepanto, which God granted to the Christians on thefirst Sunday of October 1571.

When King Louis the Just, of blessed memory, was besieging La Rochelle, wherethe rebellious heretics had their strongholds, he wrote to his mother to beg her

to have public prayers offered for a victorious outcome. The Queen-Motherdecided to have the Rosary recited publicly in Paris in the Dominican church of

8/7/2019 The Value of Public Rosaries (taken from the Secret of the Rosary by St. Louis de Montfort)

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Faubourg Saint-Honor, and this was carried out by the Archbishop of Paris. Itwas begun on May 20th, 1628.

Both the Queen and the Queen-Mother were present, with the Duke of Orleans,Cardinal de la Rochefoucault, Cardinal de Brulle, and several prelates. The courtturned out in full force as well as a great number of the general populace. TheArchbishop read the meditations on the mysteries aloud and then began the OurFather and Hail Mary of each decade, while the congregation of religious and lay-folk answered. At the end of the Rosary a statue of the Blessed Virgin wascarried solemnly in procession while the Litany of our Lady was sung.

This devotion was continued every Saturday with admirable fervour and resultedin a manifest blessing from heaven, for the King triumphed over the English atthe Island of R and made his triumphant entry into La Rochelle on All Saints Dayof the same year. This shows us the power of public prayer.

Finally, when the Rosary is said in common, it is far more formidable to the devil,

because in this public prayer it is an army that is attacking him. He can oftenovercome the prayer of an individual, but if it is joined to that of others, the devilhas much more trouble in getting the best of it. It is easy to break a single stick;but if you join it to others to make a bundle, it cannot be broken. Vis unita fitfortior. Soldiers join together in an army to overcome their enemies; immoralpeople often come together for parties of debauchery and dancing; evil spiritsjoin forces in order to make us lose our souls. Why, then, should not Christiansjoin forces to have Jesus Christ present with them, to appease the anger of God,to draw down his grace and mercy on us, and to frustrate and overcome thedevil more forcefully?

Dear friend of the Confraternity, whether you live in the town or the country,

near the parish church or a chapel, go there at least every evening, with theapproval of the parish priest, together with all those who want to recite theRosary in two choirs. If a church or chapel is not available, say the Rosarytogether in your own or a neighbour's house. This is a holy practice, which God,in his mercy, has set up in places where I have preached missions, in order tosafeguard and increase the good brought about by the mission and to preventfurther sin.

Before the Rosary was established in these little towns and villages, dances andparties of debauchery went on; dissoluteness, wantonness, blasphemy, quarrelsand feuds flourished; one heard nothing but evil songs and double-meaning talk.

But now nothing is heard but hymns and the chant of the Our Father and HailMary. The only gatherings to be seen are those of twenty, thirty or a hundred ormore people who, at a fixed time, sing the praises of God as religious do. Thereare even places where the Rosary is said in common every day, at three differenttimes of the day. What a blessing from heaven that is!

As there are wicked people everywhere, do not expect to find that the place youlive in is free of them; there will be people who avoid going to church for theRosary, who may even make fun of it and do all they can, by what they do andsay, to stop you from going. But do not give up. As those wretched people willhave to be separated from God and heaven forever, already here on earth theyhave to be separated from the company of Jesus and his servants.