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Forty-Eighth Rose

"But really and truly-what are you doing with an enormous pair of beads? You look like an old
woman instead of a man! I've seen a little Rosary of only one decade it's just as good as one of
fifteen decades. What on earth are you wearing it on your belt for, fanatic that you are? Why don't
you go the whole way and wear it around your neck like the Spaniards? They carry an enormous Rosary
in one hand and a dagger in the other.
"For goodness sake drop those external devotions; real
devotion. is in the heart • • • etc. etc. • • •"
Similarly, not a few clever people and learned scholars may
occasionally try to dissuade you from saying the Rosary (but they are, of course, proud and self
willed). They would rather encourage you to say the Seven Penitential Psalms or some other prayers.
If a good confessor has given you a Rosary for your penance and has told you to say it every day
for a fortnight or a month, all you have to do to get your penance changed to prayers, fasts,
Masses or alms, is to go to confession to one of these others.
If you consult certain people in the world who lead lives
of prayer, but who have never tried the Rosary, they will not only not encourage it but will turn
people away from it to get them to learn contemplation just as though the :Holy Rosary and
contemplation were. incompatible, just as if all the saints who have been devoted to the Rosary had
not enjoyed the heights of sublime contemplation.
Your nearest enemies will attack you all the more cruelly because you are so close to them. I am
speaking of the powers of your soul and your bodily senses these are distractions of the mind,
distress and Uncertainty of the will, dryness of the heart, exhaustion and illnesses of the
body all these will combine with the devil to say to you: "Stop saying your Rosary; that is what
is giving you such a headache Give it up; there is no obligation under pain of sin. If you must
say it, say only part of it; the difficulties that you are having over it are a sign that Almighty
God does not want you to say it You can finish it tomorrow when you are more in the mood, etc.••.
etc.•••"
Finally, my dear Brother, the Daily Rosary has so many
enemies that I look upon the grace of persevering in it until death as one of the greatest favors
Almighty God can give us. Persevere in it and if you are faithful you will eventually

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