Teaching the Rosary and Getting Blessed Back

A man recently suicidal came to the adoration chapel and started ranting. The Lord, I felt, understood his pain. When his rant ended and he said, "You are right. Mary is real and we should honor her."
He was/is, a Protestant but had been coming to our church thanks to the invitation of an outreach group many years back.

If not for the Lord, he said, his years of marijuana addiction segueing into hard drugs, drink and delinquency to mask his childhood sexual abuse, he would be dead like many of his colleagues. He now goes to different churches which gave me the chance to explain, not many would give him Jesus because their "communion" give only a representation of Him, not the real Flesh and Blood. I who have been in chronic rage before was granted unusual peace because of the Daily Eucharist, so if he wants the fruits, he has to get the real deal. Only those whom the Lord designated from the apostolic tradition, which Peter and his successors (now Pope Francis) is the head, and that is the Catholic Church, expresses the fullness of the faith, I say. This is irrefutable from history.

Because he alleged he was not able to get medicines after his hospitalization, nor is able to do the three-blessings exercise because of lack of a notebook, I recommended something more powerful. I told him about the rosary. He expressed he doesn't remember how to say it and that he has lost his own. I offered him one and with the pamphlets from church, I guided him with the prayers. It made me so happy to really see someone doing it for the first time--like holding the beads in a non-directional way, or having him say aloud "next bead", to remind himself that after "Amen" or at "Hail Mary" not "Holy Mary" too is when the bead moves along.

Taking a cue from St. Dominic who used to pray/ preach with the rosary, I used the mysteries' Scriptural mini-summaries to have a little teaching/ historical/moral affirmation which made the rosary come even more alive. I was surprised that R didn't know that Cana was the first public miracle, given that many Protestants know their Bible, but I still emphasized that this miracle foreshadowed the Real Presence, that if Jesus can easily make water into wine, how easier it is to have the Bread be made into His Body at the moment of consecration by the priest. He took all the lessons of each luminous mystery avidly. The humble and the suffering are eager students.

This method of preaching, in connection after each mystery, was St. Dominic's way of getting through hardened hearts, a way that Mary Herself taught, for She has given him the rosary and the way to say it. Fr. Donald Calloway says in his recent book Champions of the Rosary, Europe was saved from heretics, especially Islam, by the rosary and we should do so again as a world-wide community.

R, the man, gushed appreciation and excitement as we finished every decade. Initially he thought he would have a lot to go through, but I said, when you get mastery of it, it will only take you twenty minutes, yet it will lock in a lot of blessings and power for your day. I also tell him, you will help save souls and heal your past and safeguard your future, earthly, but more importantly, heavenly.

I was able to guide him to make a sign of the cross during the words of the Glory Be, a practice I saw one of the church ministers do and I realized it came with an indulgence and began doing it too.
R was so energized, "Man, I felt good. Mary AND God really work together! I am gonna tell all those haters out there that they don't know Mary at all. I am going to tell the other churches never to tell lies about the rosary. They got it all wrong."

He said also that he was led to come to this church today and truly was blessed. "I think Mary brought you to me, because you could have left me (for truly I thought about it) but God has a reason why He told me to come to this place when I could be anywhere." In persisting and choosing to be a friend, "accompanying" my friend had done to me before I was more blessed than I could ever imagine. Yesterday I was able to tell about the rosary and give instruction to some nursing home residents, but to do this one-on-one was heaven!