About the Rosary

Some years ago, I read book by Fr. Donald Calloway called No Turning Back about his conversion to Catholicism. When our parish priest asked me to write an article about the Rosary, I found a recent book by Fr. Calloway: Champions of the Rosary: The History and Heroes of a Spiritual Weapon.  I found the following information in this most thoroughly researched and all-inclusive book.

From age fifteen, Donald fell into severe addiction to drugs and at twenty was close to ending his life. His parents became Catholics at some point and in 1992 their son picked up a book lying on their bookcase. At the time, he had no idea who Mary was or anything about the lady who came down from heaven with a message of love, mercy, and conversion in what was called a Marian apparition. He stayed up all night reading it and wrote that “the contents of that book hit me like a divine two by four.”

The next day, looking for a priest, Donald stepped inside a Catholic church for the first time and witnessed five Filipino women praying in the front pew. The priest he met that day told him it was the Rosary and those women prayed it every day after Mass. The book he read had a diagram and the prayers of the Rosary and he began to pray with them.  Fr. Donald Calloway credits those women and the Rosary with his conversion.

In my own experience of the Rosary, I credit several women for including me in praying with them in what I had considered a repetitive and boring way to pray. I would call the Rosary my second conversion to Catholicism.  Like Donald Calloway I was seeking peace and the finding is ongoing. The format first makes me stop and concentrate on the life of Jesus with the help of His and our most loving Mother.