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Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage

A National Pilgrimage Devoted to Christ and Our Lady

CATHOLIC

The 15 Promises of the Rosary

The Holy Father, Pope Francis, recently urged the faithful that “today, in this time of pandemic, it is necessary to hold the Rosary in our hands, praying for us, for our loved ones and for all people.” The Rosary, as St. Dominic witnessed during his mission to the Albigensians, is also a powerful prayer for increasing the receptivity of souls to orthodox preaching.

The benefits of what Pope St. John Paul II called “an exquisitely contemplative prayer” were enumerated in a special way by a 15th century Dominican friar. According to the tradition, Alanus de Rupe received the following 15 promises to those who pray the Rosary devoutly from the Blessed Virgin Mary herself through a private revelation. We hope that they encourage you in meditating on the mysteries of Christ by praying the Holy Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

1. Those who faithfully serve me by the recitation of the Rosary shall receive signal graces.

2. I promise my special protection and the greatest graces to all those who shall recite the Rosary.

3. The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell. It will destroy vice, decrease sin, and defeat heresies.

4. The recitation of the Rosary will cause virtue and good works to flourish. It will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God. It will withdraw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities, and will lift them to the desire of eternal things. Oh, that souls would sanctify themselves by this means.

5. The soul which recommends itself to me by the recitation of the Rosary shall not perish.

6. Those who recite my Rosary devoutly, applying themselves to the consideration of its sacred mysteries, shall never be conquered by misfortune. In His justice, God will not chastise them; nor shall they perish by an unprovided death, i.e., be unprepared for heaven. Sinners shall convert. The just shall persevere in grace and become worthy of eternal life.

7. Those who have a true devotion to the Rosary shall not die without the sacraments of the Church.

8. Those who faithfully recite the Rosary shall have, during their life and at their death, the light of God and the plenitude of His graces. At the moment of death, they shall participate in the merits of the saints in paradise.

9. I shall deliver from purgatory those who have been devoted to the Rosary.

10. The faithful children of the Rosary shall merit a high degree of glory in heaven.

11. By the recitation of the Rosary you shall obtain all that you ask of me.

12. Those who propagate the holy Rosary shall be aided by me in their necessities.

13. I have obtained from my Divine Son that all the advocates of the Rosary shall have for intercessors the entire celestial court during their life and at the hour of their death.

14. All who recite the Rosary are my beloved children and the brothers and sisters of my only Son, Jesus Christ.

15. Devotion for my Rosary is a great sign of predestination.

God Never Lets Us Go

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By Father Pius Pietrzyk, O.P.

On May 23rd, 2008, I was ordained a priest of Jesus Christ. I like to think that my Nana—my Irish grandmother—is having a great laugh right now. She always hoped that I would become a priest. I thought about it a great deal when I was in high school. I even decided I would become a priest, in that half-hearted way teenagers make any long-term decision. But like so many young people, the lure of ambition and the prestige of the world pulled me away from the Church. A career in the law became my goal, and God took a back seat, and I was content to keep Him there.

But, try as we might, God never lets us go. “Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? … If I fly with the wings of dawn and alight beyond the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand hold me fast” (Psalm 139). I think the same can be said of grandmothers.

It was a great sadness to me when my Nana died. It was April 30th, weeks before my college graduation—and I was to be the first of her grandchildren to graduate from college. But she left me something very valuable; she left me her Rosary. It was not valuable in the way the world measures value, but only so in the way a grandson values the keepsake of a dearly missed grandparent.

It was valuable in another way, too. That Rosary was priceless in that it was like a cord passed from God through my Nana’s hands to me. Years later, after I did graduate from law school, as I began to embark on a promising career in a prestigious Chicago law firm, I discovered that Rosary again. But this time, I began to pray it.

As I did, God gave a firm tug on that cord, and slowly brought me back to Him. It was in that time of prayer that I discovered that as happy as I was being a lawyer, the Lord wanted for me an even greater happiness. And so, at the dawn of my career, I left all the things the world told me were valuable, to serve God in his Church.

While all of this is ultimately attributable to God’s grace, I think my Nana’s prayers were a part of it, too. Some time after I became a Dominican—and after I took the name ‘Pius,’ after the Dominican saint Pope Saint Pius V—I learned a surprising fact. The Church celebrates the feast day of my new patron Saint Pius on April 30th, which is the exact same day my Nana left this world. I like to think that coincidence was my Nana’s way of saying “I told you so.” So, if you were at my ordination, and you heard the echo of faint laughter, it was probably just my Nana, happy that I finally realized she was right all along.