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A Red Rose
For Sinners

POOR MEN AND WOMEN who are sinners, I, a greater sinner than you, wish to give to you this rose-a
crimson one, because the Precious Blood of Our Lord has fallen upon it. Please God that it will
bring true fragrance into your lives
but above all may it save you from the danger that you are in. Every day unbelievers and
unrepentant sinners cry: ''Let us crown ourselves with roses' But our cry should be: "Let us
crown ourselves with roses of the Most Holy Rosary."
How different are theirs from ours! Their roses are pleasures of the flesh, worldly honors and
passing riches which wilt
and decay in no time, but ours, which are the Our Father and Hail Mary which we have said
devoutly over and over again and to which we have added good penitential acts, will never wilt or
die and they will be just as exquisite thousands of years from now as they are today.
On the contrary, sinners' roses only look like roses, while in point of fact they are cruel thorns
which prick them during life by giving them pangs of conscience, at their death they pierce them
with bitter regret and, still worse, in eternity,
they turn to burning shafts of anger and despair. But if our roses have thorns, they are the thorns
of Jesus Christ Who changes them into roses. If our roses prick us, it is only for a short time-and
only in order to cure the illness of sin and to save our souls.
So by all means we should eagerly crown ourselves with these roses from heaven, and recite the
entire Rosary every day, that is to say three Rosaries each of five decades which are like three
little wreaths or crowns of flowers: and there are two reasons for doing this: First of all to
honor the three crowns of Jesus and Mary-Jesus' crown of grace at the time of His incarnation, His
crown of thorns during His passion and His crown of glory in heaven, and of course the three-fold
crown which the Most Blessed Trinity gave Mary in heaven.
1Wisdom 2:8.