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Twenty-Sixth Rose

But if you are still in the state of active contemplation or the usual prayer of quietude, which is
to say that of placing yourself in the presence of God and loving Him. you have every reason in
the world not to give up saying your Rosary. Far from making you lose ground in mental prayer or
stunting your spiritual growth, it will be the most tremendous help to you. You will find that
it will be a real Jacob's ladder with
fifteen rungs and by each one of these you will go from virtue to virtue and from light to light.
Thus, without danger of being misled, you will easily come to the fullness of the age of Jesus.
Christ.

Twenty-Sixth Rose

Sublime Prayer

WHATEVER you do, do not be like a certain pious but self willed lady in Rome, so often referred to
when speaking about the Rosary. She was so devout and so fervent that she put to shame by her holy
life, even the strictest religious in the Church.
Having decided to ask Saint Dominic's advice about her
spiritual life she asked him to hear her confession. For penance he gave her one whole Rosary to
say and advised her to say it every day. She said that she had no time to say it, excusing herself
on grounds that she made the Stations of Rome every day, that she wore sack-cloth and also a hair
shirt, that
she gave herself the discipline several times a week, that she carried out so many other penances
and fasted so much. Saint
  Dominic urged her over and over again to take his advice and
say the Rosary, but she would not hear of it. She left the confessional, horrified at the tactics
of this new spiritual director who' had tried so hard to persuade her to take on a devotion that
was not at all to her liking. ·
Later on when she was in prayer she fell into ecstasy and bad a vision of her soul appearing before
Our Lord's Judgment Seat. Saint Michael put all her penances. and other prayers onto one balance of
the scales and all her sins and imperfections

This is a devotion that originated in the very early Church; it consists in visiting certain
stational churches in Rome and saying prescribed prayers in each one. This practice was usually
penitential (Catholic Encyclopedia) M.B.

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