Pints With Aquinas - The Holy Rosary: EVERYTHING You've Ever Wanted to Know w/ Gabi Castillo

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Meet our guest, Gabriel Castillo, a passionate Catholic Lay Evangelist and the creative force behind ‪@gabiafterhours‬ . Known for his dynamic presentations and deep devotion to the faith, Gabriel has dedicated his life to spreading the word of God through innovative online documentaries and engaging podcasts. His work, which focuses on the power and significance of the Rosary, has reached millions worldwide, inspiring countless individuals to deepen their faith. Join us as we delve into a profound conversation about the Rosary with Gabriel Castillo. Matt's Books: Pockey Guide to the Rosary: https://www.amazon.com/Pocket-Guide-R... Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecr... Show Sponsors: Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Strive21: https://strive21.com/matt Exodus90: https://exodus90.com/matt   

Gabby, it's great to have you back on the show. Thank you, Matt. It is an honor to be here, especially to talk about the topic that we're going to discuss. Indeed. I mentioned this to you yesterday, but Jordan Peterson, I don't know if you've checked recently, but I think your previous episode is doing better than his. That's all the grace of our lady. I'm not going to lie. That feels a little bit good. There was a time where he kind of he went above you. I think it was like five hundred and something thousand. I forget what it is that right now.

Yes. And then I thought, OK, well, there's no way Gabby's going to catch up. Right. And he did. Right. What a wonderful thing. Slow and steady wins the race. Yeah. You know, actually, when I was discerning coming to come back because a lot of things are happening, you had illness in your family. There's a hurricane coming for Texas. And so I asked the blessed mother if this is your will, because it seems like a lot of things are happening. You had illness in your family, there's a hurricane coming for Texas. And so I asked the blessed mother, if this is your will,

because it seems like a lot of things are coming up, one, protect my flight, and two, give me some signal grace. Maybe, maybe you can help. Just give me a little, just for a moment, just let me pass Jordan Peterson in views as a small signal grace. And sure enough, we were going back and forth

and right around the time I made the decision, let's go through with this. The storm's gonna be over quickly. That's when it made the jump. Yeah. That's wonderful. All right, so you are, look at this. I'm looking at it now. Thanks Josiah.

Whoa. 513,000 for Gabby, 512,000 for Jordan. I'm a donkey. I'm a donkey. Well, this is what's nice about Pines is I like to have a bigger name on the show. Yes. To then get people to watch you.

Well, thanks. Get people to listen to the conversion stories of good men and women who others may not have heard of, but whose stories are no less powerful. Yes. And I've, after being on your show, I've encountered a lot of people that said, oh, I saw you on Pines or I heard you on Pines. I'd never met you before. But I really connected with your story. And that's why I'm so happy that you invited me back because when I gave my first testimony,

I really witnessed to the power of the rosary in my life and how it helped me to be free from sin and how I use it as my tool for discernment. But I was a little bit sad after the fact. You can't cover everything. It was a three hour interview. We couldn't have been here for five hours. I'm not Jimmy Akin, but I was a little discouraged because I felt like I set people up to the power of it, but I didn't give people a firm foundation. I didn't give them roots in tips where they could thrive and survive and flourish

by praying the rosary. So when you invited me back, we were filming your testimonial and you brought up the idea, maybe we can have a podcast on the rosary. I was like, thank you, blessed mother, because you foresaw this obviously. So I'm so happy and I'm really honored to be back. And let people know about this testimony on first of all, thank you for doing that. We did this in the studio yesterday. When will it roughly release on your channel? So I've got about two videos that I'm currently editing. One on praying with the saints, not necessarily praying to the saints, but really inviting them into your prayer life to be a good friend. And then I have a testimonial from Bishop Lopes, the bishop who's in charge

of the ordinary to the chair of St. Peter, and then after that, God willing, will be your testimony. And what I love about doing testimonies is because we see you, at least I see you, I watch your program on a regular basis, but we don't always get to hear your heart, your story in a way that feels very intimate, using lenses that give you a sense that I'm in the same room with you. We went out and about around Steubenville, got some amazing b-roll. So I'm very excited about that. It's going to be awesome. And everything you said, like the Holy Spirit, was really upon you because it just came straight

out of your heart. And I was really thankful for your time. You made it easy. So people go follow Gabby's channel. There'll be a link to it in the description and then you'll also get to see this. Yeah, my testimony when it comes out. We're gonna talk about the Rosary. When is the first time you heard of the Rosary and or decided to pray it?

So I heard of the Rosary when I was in college, but I didn't pray it until a series of bad events had happened where my backpack was stolen and I lost all my textbooks. And so I was going from class to class, kind of getting broken down by each teacher saying, where's your paperwork? Where's this? Where's that? And I was in a philosophy class, I think it was metaphysics with a wonderful professor named Dr. Rebart who's had great influence in my life. And he said, Gabe, where's your papers? And I said, well, I got my backpack stolen.

He's like, see me after class. And I'm like, again, like again. And he reaches in his pocket and he pulls out a handful of something brown. I thought it was pretzels. I have no, I was like, why is he giving me pretzels? And he puts his hand in my hand and he says, I got this for you. It was blessed by Pope John Paul II at one of his audiences. I want you to have it. And I opened my hand and it was a wooden rosary made of olive wood. And that was the first rosary that I received. And then that led

up to, I mentioned in our previous interview, an event that happened with me and a diabolical obsession that I had had. And that obsession was that time that I actually prayed it on my own for the first time, but using that rosary that was blessed by John Paul II. We'll put a link to your initial interview, just a blow Peterson out of the water even more, so people can watch that and they should watch that because your story was really powerful. Yeah, first time I heard about the rosary, I grew up in a Catholic home in the sense that my mom was Catholic and would drag us to mass. God bless her. You know, it wasn't easy. I never made it easy on her. She dragged us

every Sunday. My dad wasn't Catholic so he would stay home and... Converted Matt is tough to deal with. I can't imagine a pagan... It was really tough. I'm just getting... Winey, pagan Matt. Yeah, and my dad would stay home, watch the football. That always seemed way better, more interesting than what I was being forced to do. But my grandma, we would often pick her up and take her to Holy Mass with us. And she was one of these beautiful old women who,

she'd always be sitting at her kitchen table and she would have her murder mystery novels and her tattered prayer books and her rosary beads. And I never prayed the rosary. And after my conversion, when I was 17, I had a desire to pray it. I said to my mother, how do you pray this? And she said, oh, I think you maybe pray

10 Hail Marys here. And I thought that was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard. Obviously, that's not it. No one's gonna pray 10 Hail Marys in a row, so you must have this wrong. I went to the parish, exactly. I went to the parish bookstore and bought a little pamphlet and learned to pray it and really loved it. And it's interesting because I think I was dealing with a lot of people who were imbued, let's say, with the spirit of Vatican II. I say that in a pejorative way. And so I was kind of discouraged from praying it. But it's interesting that even though

there was no one to impress in praying, there was just an attraction, even on a natural level to something physical that I could hold, that I could complete, that was sort of very straightforward. Because sometimes when you're told pray, you're not really sure what that means or how to do it or how long you should be doing it

So that was really helpful for me and I liked it a great deal. I ended up writing a book Called I don't know what it's called the Holy Rosary or something. They're saying maybe you could look it up It's with it's with Ascension Press and they put it in a beautiful little leatherette Book or if you want to say something classier than leatherette you say vegan leather. Vegan leather, yes. Vegan leather and I dedicated it to my grandma and in that book I show how each mystery fulfills a type in the Old Testament so it's very scriptural so if people want to check it out they're welcome. That's very important I think especially if there's any Protestant listeners to take that to heart,

because the Rosary is something that is scriptural. It's the Bible on beads, which I'm sure we'll get to in a moment. Yeah, all right, well, I've got 10 questions. Okay, pocket guide to the Rosary. Thank you. That's what it's called. Before your questions, I want to give your audience a warning, or some advice, because we're talking about holy ground and changing your spiritual life and your prayer life is serious. So a couple of tips that I have for people take only what applies to you. As we're discussing this, be attentive to the movements of your heart. If you feel a stirring within a conviction, like a sense like I really need to take up the rosary.

That's how God communicates. He communicates through movements of the heart. You're not necessarily going to hear the voice of the Virgin Mary saying, my daughter, my son, pray the rosary. It's very important. It's going to be a strong tugging on the heart or an illumination on the mind. Also, if there's something that I say that bothers you or that seems off, put it aside and just say, that's not for me, that doesn't apply to me, but still be open to the ways that

God might communicate to you in the other things that we discuss, especially if you're Protestant. We might say a lot of Catholic stuff that you don't understand that doesn't, like you have no idea we're talking about receiving the blessed sacrament. You can't relate to that whatsoever. Just let that go. Let it pass on by you as not being relevant to where you're at right now. And then, again, be open to the possibilities that even a Protestant could be called to

praying the Most Holy Rosary. So I just wanted to get that out of the way that not everything applies to everybody and be attentive to how God might be moving. Excellent. And we're going to get to a question that's going to help our Protestants. We love you and we hope that we can make some suggestions as to why you might even decide to pray the Rosary if you wish. First question is, I guess, the idea that the Rosary is a means to an end, not an end

in and of itself. And so how does the Rosary fit more broadly into our spiritual life? This is so important because a lot of times Catholics don't even have an idea of what the end is. So the end of the spiritual life is union with God. That's the goal that we have. I want to be one with Christ. I want to be a partaker of the divine nature.

I want Christ to live and work and act through me, and that's the essence of holiness and that's the essence of heaven. That happens in three primary ways. First and foremost, freely in the sacraments. God gives us His divine nature in baptism, we receive His body, blood, soul, and divinity in Holy Communion, and great change happens there. Real change, a real sanctification happens there. The second place that happens is in prayer where I encounter God praying, so this is going to be relevant to what prayers I do and I don't do.

I encounter God there in a divinization, a theosis also happens, a direct gift from God by grace. And then the third part, which most people don't have in mind, is what I do and how I do it. So I know that you're a great lover of St. Maximilian Kolbe and he explained it the best when I took this in and prayed with it. Blew my mind, blew my heart. I think about this on a daily basis. So when he was a priest, he was guest lecturing

at a seminary in Rome, and all the seminarians were like, Colby's coming. He had a great fame. He was very popular. A great theologian, a theologian called a pneumatologist, who is somebody who studies the Holy Spirit, studies the power of the Holy Spirit. And one could argue that the crisis we have in the church right now is a crisis in living Pentecost, living our Lord's commission by the power of the Holy Spirit, going out and making disciples. And so he told the seminarians, I have a formula that is going to explain to you the secrets of the spiritual life, how to have the gospel come alive in power. It's going to explain also the role of the Virgin Mary and

how she's the spouse of the Holy Spirit. And so I have that equation, but I want, before I show it to you, I want to be clear that the equation is mathematical. It's to help me understand. But my relationship with God is not mathematical. It is a daily walk with a living person who has a say in my life. In all of my prayers, if they're good, they should help me to know God's will and give me the strength and the courage to do God's will. So this is the equation and I'll explain

it to you. So, Maximilian got on the chalkboard. He used the letter V for Voluntas because he's teaching in Latin. But essentially the capital W plus the lowercase W equals S. This S equals a lot of things, a lot of beautiful, powerful things. The capital W is God's will. This is the essence of holiness according to Maximilian Colby. The plus sign is the cross, a sacrifice of myself. The lowercase W is my will. My goal in life, besides receiving the sacraments, besides having a fruitful prayer life, the goal of all of that is to unite my will to the will of God.

If that happens, the S happens. And a lot of S's happens. The first S that happens is sanctity. To do God's will is the essence of holiness. In a way, God lives and acts through me. Teresa of Avila says that Jesus has no hands and feet except for my own. And in order for him to work in society, he will only work if I cooperate with what he wants to do. So it's very easy for a Christian, a Catholic, even a priest to live for himself, to do what I want to do when God has maybe a plan that is the narrow road. So my personal

sanctity, the sanctity of others. So let's say, I'll give you an example. I do not like washing dishes. Washing dishes for me is like, that's like a straw too many. I know it might seem very easy for some people. I believe that some people prefer different chores. I prefer ironing and vacuuming. Those are my preferred chores. Getting my hands wet, dealing with dirty food. I have children for many reasons,

but one of those reasons is so that they can wash the dishes. Let's say, God forbid one day my children are not home and my wife is not home and people are coming over shortly after my wife and children arrive and there's dishes that need to be done. That is God's will for me. If I say, yes, Lord, thy will be done. That act of doing those dishes is going to bring grace into my life and that grace is going to flow out into other people. A lot of times people think that conversions happen because I preach to them or they went to this retreat.

Conversion happens only through grace, and grace is given by prayer and by sacrifice. The greatest sacrifice you can give is the sacrifice of your own will to do the will of God. The S also stands for satisfaction, like peace of soul. When I do God's will, I do what God created me to do. St. John Henry Newman says that on this earth, God has a definite plan for you, something that only you can accomplish, and you will have peace of soul even if that is a difficult thing that

you've done if it was God's will. The S also stands for success. I know that a lot of times Catholics say, well, I'm called to be faithful, not successful. Maybe, but I believe that if washing the dishes is God's will for me and it's my sign of my love for God, I should wash those dishes the absolute best I can. And Catholics should be known for being the best. If you're a doctor and you're Catholic, your patient should say,

thank God that my doctor is a Catholic, because I know he's going to treat me well. I know he's going to work on my body as if he was the physician for the Lord. And so I should be striving with all of my efforts, if I'm a mechanic, to work on cars and be an honest person as if I was working on the Lord's car. So I should have a certain success because I'm pouring my heart out into my work. And then the final thing that doing God's will does is it provides for you a supernatural success.

So all throughout the Gospels, when Jesus works a miracle, He works a big miracle through somebody else's work. At the wedding feast of Cana, there had to be a workman who obeyed God, who filled those jars with water. 30 gallons, several trips to the well, back and forth, back and forth. There had to be somebody who provides five loaves and two fishes. There has to be somebody who casts their net out into the deep. And when you do God's will, yes, it makes you holy. Yes, it provides graces for your family and your friends. Yes,

it fulfills the longings of the human heart. But then and only then will the power of God be made manifest in His people. We do not control the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, we should be vessels of the Holy Spirit to work. So any devotion should bring me to a personal encounter with Christ so that I can know His will and then be given the strength and the courage to cooperate with Him, to do His work, and if it pleases Him to bring about supernatural means in my life. Like that is the essence of holiness. God's will.

How many rosaries does not matter. How many Divine Mercy Chaplets does not matter. It is not those who say, Lord, Lord, or Mary, Mary, who shall enter the kingdom of God, but only those who do God's will. This is inspired word of God, infallible word of Jesus Christ. That is a really great way to situate this discussion on the rosary. Yeah, it's the most important thing. I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one

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Fantastic. Hello.com slash match right. So any devotion should bring me to a personal encounter with Christ so that I can know his will and then be given the strength and the courage to cooperate with him, to do his work. And if it pleases him to bring about supernatural means

in my life, like that is the essence of holiness. God's will. How many rosaries does not matter. How many Divine Mercy Chaplets does not matter. It is not those who say Lord, Lord or Mary, Mary who shall enter the kingdom of God, but only those who do God's will. This is inspired word of God, infallible word of Jesus Christ. That is a really great way to situate this discussion on the rosary. It's the most important thing. And if we've got people watching right now who aren't Catholic but are Christian, they

might say, yeah, 100%, I'm with you. So my second question is, what's the importance of Marian devotion anyway? Mary's goal is to only satisfy that end. If that's my final end, my relationship with Mary is only to meet that end. She is to help to make me more like Christ and she's to help me to do God's will. And so, if I'm a member of the body of Christ and Catholics are, anybody who's baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, we believe you're members of the body of Christ and you're receiving the sacraments, you're one with Christ. And so, therefore, if you are a member of the

body of Christ, the mother of the head is also the mother of the body. And so therefore, if you are a member of the body of Christ, the mother of the head is also the mother of the body. And so Mary, I'm just going to share with you four things that she can do for you in your spiritual life. Number one, she is a real, true mother. And a lot of times Catholics, even myself, I will say it, I believe it here, but it does not go here. The best way to understand the love of Mother Mary is to look at the love of a natural mother.

So just as in the sacraments, natural things are supernaturalized, I can look at a natural mother and see Mary's supernatural role. I have four children. I wasn't necessarily in my right mind for the birth of the first three. I was distra—I was there. I was physically present, but I was like looking at the biological aspects. I wasn't recollected. With the birth of my fourth child, Bernadette, I was spiritually attentive to what was happening. They gave the baby to my wife, and I will never forget the way my wife looked at that child. Like despite the agony, despite the pain,

she looked at that child as if that child was the only person that existed. I disappeared from the room, the fact that she was cut open and half naked, the doctor, everybody disappeared. It was just eyes locked in on this child, gazing at the child, marveling at the child. And that's how the Virgin Mary looks at every single one of her children at every single moment. And just as a natural mother, naturally, she cannot help it when she has a child, her breasts fill up with milk. And the purpose of that milk is to console the child and to strengthen the child. That's all it does. The child wants the milk and little does the child know, it's

making it stronger. It heals it. You can put breast milk in a child who has an eye infection, the milk will heal it. But also, I just, you know, having, I didn't know this before I had children. When my children will cry, I'm a great father, but I'm a man and men have this ability to tune out the cry of a child to focus in on important things, whatever that might be, whether it's sports, whatever. I'm just kidding. I don't have a television, so I don't watch too much sports. But my wife would say, don't you know that the sound of that child hurts my breasts?

To hear my child cry and not be able to feed the child physically hurts me, causes me anguish and pain. And so too the mother of God. When she sees her children suffering, when she sees her children crying and in anguish, and she can't feed you, why can't she feed you? Because you have to call upon her name and ask her, blessed mother, help me. St. Bernard says something very beautiful. He says, are you suffering? Are you in agony?

Are you lonely? What is your problem? Call upon the name of Mary and do not stop calling upon her because never was it known that anybody who called upon her name was ever left unaided. She will console you. You're not the exception. A lot of times we like to think that's a great saying, but not me. I've put this woman to the test.

I've called upon her in times right before I'm supposed to go give a talk on our lady. And I'm like going through like desolation and despair. And I'm like, blessed mother, if you don't help me, I can't go out and speak of how good you are. And then sure enough, she comes to my assistance. And the good Lord is good. And so He gives us His life in the sacraments. He gives us His constant forgiveness in the sacrament of confession.

But He gives us His very own mother to be a mother to us. I'm often shocked. You know, we say that term, Jesus would have suffered everything just for you. Our lady consented to that. She would have suffered everything just to say, Matt, you're my son, and I love you no matter what. And so we have to accept that and trust that she's always watching over us and that not only is she our mother, but she's a queen.

Can I provide two pushbacks? Go for it. Yeah. One is, why isn't God sufficient to satisfy these things that you're talking about Mary doing? Right. Two, even if what you're saying is true, wouldn't that have to make Mary omniscient or something? Great points.

Very good points. So two things. We are wired to love our mothers. We're wired for that. So I again, I mentioned I have children. When my children get sick and I'm home and I go to my daughter, for example, I say, Louie, what's wrong? I don't feel good, daddy.

I've got a headache and my body aches. And I say, okay, I'll get you some medicine. And you know what she says? Even after I've given her the medicine and given her a hug and given her a kiss, she says, where's mom? So I have this wired desire to depend upon my mother for spiritual nourishment and for spiritual consolation. And so in the life of Christ, the life of every Christian is a model of Christ.

And so if I'm going to be another Christ, it is fitting that I accept His mother as He accepted her and loved her as He loved her. Now to the point of omniscience or... Real quick, I would also add to that that you could say, well, why do you need earthly parents? Isn't God sufficient to supply all of your needs? And the answer is yes, and yet He has chosen to set it up in this way. And so that doesn't usurp the power and authority of God.

We're just doing things the way he set it up. And that's how God works in all of creation. He has various insects and animals throughout the kingdom. He's got various choirs and hierarchies of angels because he likes to work through his intermediaries. He loves his children. He loves his children like a proud father looks at his children who are successful and good. He allows us to be evangelists when surely he could proclaim the truth a lot better than

we do. For sure. Oh, a hundred percent. I totally agree. Saint Alphonsus said that Mary, her role as mother to the entire body of Christ, is so integral to her sanctity, and so she has to do it perfectly. And therefore, to be a good mother, she has to be attentive to your every single need. Now how is she present? How does she know all these things? I mentioned that she's queen. Jesus is a king from the line of King David,

in the line of King David, the mother is the queen, and what belongs to the king also belongs to the queen, not by her very nature, but as a gift, a sharing in some of her and some of his riches. We call—this is the second point that we should consider about Mary that answers your question. We call Mary the Mediatrix of all grace. What does that mean? In her womb, she carried God, who is grace and is life itself, and she gave us, she gave the world all this grace.

And so although God did not need to do it through Mary, and God does not need to distribute graces to each and every single individual soul. He does not need to, and He does at every single moment. He has chosen that Our Lady be the distributrix, distributrix of all of His graces, the mediatrix of all of His graces. Everything comes from God, but He chose to give us Himself through Mary. And so the theology is at every single moment, I receive grace to do God's will. That's why St. Therese, the child Jesus, would say, I do everything possible to leave my

past to God's mercy and leave my future to God's providence and just focus completely on the present moment because that's all that exists. But the beautiful thing that's the Marian dimension of that is that if she's responsible for giving you the graces that you need at every single moment, therefore she's attentive to you at every single moment. She knows your thoughts, she knows your pains, she knows your agonies, and she gives to you what you need. And St. Bernardine says that Mary gives what she wills, to whom

she wills, as much as she wills. And all of this, all of these titles, all of these graces are because of her primary title, Mother of God, that she's the Mother of God. The third and very important role that we should consider in Marian devotion is that she's the spouse of the Holy Spirit. Maximilian Kolbe being the pneumatologist really made deep strides in explaining this, even though we've always believed it, that wherever the Holy Spirit finds the perfect disciple, the most humble, the most pure, etc., that the Holy Spirit flies there. So I could say that the perfect disciple is Our Lady. So wherever the Holy Spirit finds a Mary-like soul or Mary in a soul or somebody calling upon the name of Mary, the Holy Spirit is

drawn there. So you could argue that if you wanted to have a charismatic renewal, a renewal of the Holy Spirit, there should be a strong emphasis on the spouse of the Holy Spirit who received the Holy Spirit perfectly at the incarnation, who was present at Pentecost. And then this equation again, of Maximilian Kolbe, of God's will plus my will equals sanctity, I could flip this upside down and I could say Mary's will, because Mary's will was perfectly united to the will of God from the very moment of her conception as a free gift from God, taking the graces of the crucifixion and applying them beforehand.

So God is her Savior. She's saved by the crucifixion of Christ, but she receives that grace prior to His incarnation. And so Mary's will and God's will are perfectly united. She was always united to the Holy Spirit. And God at the cross, and we could see this in Scripture from the book of Genesis, where God the Father tells the serpent, I'm going to put an enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. Then you take it to the Gospel of John, where now we're at the tree of life, and the man

and the woman are standing there. John calls Mary woman and Jesus gives Mary offspring. In the book of Revelation, chapter 12 verse 17, the dragon goes off to make war against the woman and her offspring and he clarifies, her offspring are those who believe in Jesus Christ and are trying to hold to the commandments. So God has willed that we have a helper. And so I would say take advantage of it if God gave it to you. The way I try to understand this idea of the saints not being omniscient and omnipotent, because what you said earlier makes it sound like that.

You're saying that this woman who isn't God, just a mere creature, has her eyes on us at all times. The way I try to understand this, because I accept it, is the way human technology works. Like I just got off the phone with my wife in Florida. That's weird. How did that happen? A hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, that would have seemed completely impossible. And yet things that seemed impossible are now possible. So if that's true of human technologies, maybe there's a way that God has established things such that though Mary is not omnipotent and omniscient, God makes it such that she can be aware of us? Or how would you explain it?

Yeah, I would explain it just like that, that God gives her a share in His blessings, and that anybody who's alive, and this helps to clarify the lives of the saints, anybody who is alive and then dies an earthly death, but is alive in Christ, is only alive in Christ, as being engulfed in God. And so, just as you're, and many Protestants that I know, they'll say things like,

my grandfather died, but I know he's watching over me. He's like my angel in heaven. I know they mean, like, they don't know the theology, but they mean they're saint in heaven. And he really is, if he's in heaven, he really is watching over you. And he really does know everything that's happening, because he is alive, more alive than when he walked this earth in flesh, because he's alive in Christ. in Christ is everywhere. I'm a member of the body of Christ, and so if I'm a member of the body of Christ and Grandpa Joe or the Blessed Mother is especially alive in Christ, we're like one body. Yeah, I see.

Yeah. He's not a God of the dead, he's a God of the living. Yes. And then one more point that people need to consider about why you should have a Marian devotion, and it's from Scripture that there's an enmity between the serpent and the woman. And this goes from the book of Genesis through the book of Revelation that God has set up a war between the woman and the serpent, and I have found, and in the lives of many saints, that sin is helped to be overcome, the war against the flesh, the world, and

the devil when Mary's alive. So you will not find a saint that did not have a love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament especially, and secondly, a love for the Virgin Mary. All the saints, all the people of God who we know are definitely in heaven infallibly through canonization, they started out on the Christian journey, found the journey difficult and maybe even almost impossible, called upon the mother of God and were given special graces and special strengths to fight against their vices, to fight against temptation and to become victorious and to receive the crown of everlasting life.

You see that book next to that thick blue one? Yes. It's a thin book, pull it out. This one? Yeah. This is a book, I don't know if you know if I wrote this, Father Pine and I wrote this book. Do you know of this book?

I don't, it's awesome. Yeah, I'll give it to you. It's my length right now, I love thin books. I'll take it. So it's called, Marrying in Consecration with Aquinas, A Nine Day Path for Growing Closer to the Mother of God. I love it. The way this came about was I found a beautiful prayer

from Thomas Aquinas in which he entrusts himself, his future, his past to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The reason I bring this up is that Marian consecration and Marian devotion, you need not be very attracted to a particular saint who speaks on Marian devotion to be devoted to Mary. Exactly. So if you've read Louis de Montfort or if you've read Bernard of Clairvaux or any number of saints, maybe one speaks to you more than another one, that's okay. You don't have to be huge into Louis de Montfort to be devoted to Mary. You can have given, many of the saints gave their lives to the Virgin Mary and never did the 33 day consecration. Many saints, I don't know if they would make it because it's a long 33 days sometimes.

Nine days of Sprint. That's why we put that together like that. I love it. Every day, just so people know. What matters is that you've given your heart to God. Every day involves a section of Thomas Aquinas' writings. He has a beautiful meditation on the Blessed Virgin Mary. If memory serves, he says, here are nine ways that Mary is like light. He's terrific. So, and I would encourage people because sometimes people have questions about consecration. They

say, do I do it again? Yeah, you can renew your consecration every year, but I would encourage you to renew it using a different guide, just so that maybe you did the demon for now you do Colby and you hear because we're all this is a beautiful thing. Sometimes people think that if I'm holy, I'll become a carbon copy, cookie cutter Christian, I have to shop at the Gap, etc. The holier you become, you don't lose your identity. You become more intensely you. And if my soul was a stained glass, my soul is different from Matt's soul. Matt's soul is different from the soul

of John Paul II, who's different from St. Faustina. And the holier we become, the more beautiful we become to the world, yes, true, but God shines brightly differently. And so different strokes for different folks, as they say. I have a devotion to Maximilian Colby. You might not like his militant language. You might like the sales or something. So 100%. I love that. Well, let's talk about the history of the Rosary.

How did it come about? How did it develop? Right. So the Rosary, they even say that in the Eastern Church, Our Lady appeared to a saint in the seventh or eighth century, giving the command to pray the angelic salutation and mix that with the life of Christ. That's in the Eastern Church. Through the monastic system, priests would pray the Liturgy of the Hours throughout the day. Lay people not having the ability to read would use beads to

keep track of 150 either Our Fathers, Hail Marys, various other prayers depending on where they grew up. The stronger, like full emphasis of the Rosary begins with St. Dominic in the 13th century. He was fighting against the Albigensians. He had a great desire to convert them and was not successful. He was like a great preacher but not bearing good fruit. He tickled the ears but not changed the heart. And so he offered himself to Our Lady as a victim soul, said, Blessed Mother, I'll do

anything. Can you please send down the Holy Spirit? Give me a tool, give me a prayer, something that I can reach hardened hearts, that I can save souls for Jesus Christ. So he fasted, he took the discipline, he didn't sleep. This is just outside of Toulouse. And after several days, he fell into a coma. The Virgin Mary appears to him, says to him,

Dominic, my well-beloved son, I'm so pleased with you. Don't you know that in this type of warfare, the battering ram has been and is now and forever will be the angelic Salutation the cornerstone of the New Testament that deserves a quick brief explanation a Battering ram in this type of warfare that calls to mind at least for me Jesus's promise to st. Peter upon this rock. I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail Yes, that meant that the church is indefectible, the church will not die, but Jesus is a powerful person.

He's a very aggressive person. He is instilling his apostles and his disciples with the Spirit of God that they will break down the gates of hell and the gates of hell shall not prevail against individual Christian that I can send an apostle full of the Holy Spirit into pagan territory where the devil is living large and by the power of the Holy Spirit they will break down the gates of hell and they will bring the light of Christ to dark places. And the Virgin Mary is saying, how do you break down the gates? The angelic salutation.

This is the cornerstone. This is the moment where the narrative changes in salvation history. Hail Mary, full of grace. That is how our Lord broke down the gates of hell on earth and brought light into the world and brought hope for all mankind, even those who are Gentiles. And so our lady's telling Dominic, this is a secret. Hail Mary, full of grace. And then she tells him, preach, promote my Psalter. So the 150 prayers representing the 150 Psalms using the angelic salutation and add to that the mysteries of the life of Christ for meditation. The Rosary was preached by the Dominicans and fell out of use about the early 1400s,

mid 1400s, 15th century. And blessed Alan de la Roche was inspired to promote the Rosary in prayer. He felt like, I should probably promote the Rosary. It's a Dominican thing. And he didn't. And so the story goes, according to blessed Alan, that he was offering the holy sacrifice of the mass. During the elevation of the host,

the host began to speak to him and said, Alan, Alan, are you gonna crucify me so soon again, so soon? And he had a prayer, I don't know, in a mystical moment. What do you mean I'm crucifying you again? Well you crucified me once with your many sins and you were saved from them. And now you crucify me because you have the means to promote Our Lady's Psalter, because for many years it wasn't called the Rosary, it was called the Marian Psalter.

You have the means to promote the Marian Psalter which would help to rid people of their vices and encounter me and yet you don't do it. And then so blessed Alan is said to have received many promises, many visions from the Blessed Mother, from Saint Dominic himself. The Rosary then changed again with Pope Pius V where many people don't realize that at the time of Saint Dominic, at time of blessed Alan the Hail Mary was only the first half there was not the invocation Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death the Hail Mary the beginning part of it was simply meant to be a stirring up of the spirit a calling to mind of the incarnation and putting myself in the presence of Christ in a gospel scene where He could encounter me and I could encounter Him in kind of like this whirlwind or this hedge of protection of Our Lady and of the Holy Spirit. So Pius V added it, added to it, and then John Paul II in modern times.

Before we get into what it is, I want to share with you some of the saints that had major devotions just run through the list Not because because they did it I should do it and not that Because they're saints they did this heavy lifting but because it is these prayers that made them who they were and we see a lot of these saints cropping up around the time of the Protestant Reformation. So Teresa of Avila, so I'm just going to say all the, and they all had a devotion to the entire 150. So they would pray a rosary in the morning or a rosary in the afternoon and a rosary

in the evening. So Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Charles Borromeo, St. Robert Bellarmine, St. Francis de, Saint Francis Borgia, Saint Francis Xavier. You know, basically, I have not found a saint who's been canonized after the Reformation who did not pray the entire Rosary. Even modern saints like John the 23rd, Pope John Paul the 2nd, Mother Teresa, all the Fatima children, Saint John Vianney, Saint John Bosco, Padre Pio, and Mother Angelica as well. She prayed all the mysteries of the, St. John Vianney, St. John Bosco, Padre Pio. Padre Pio and Mother Angelica as well. She prayed all the mysteries of the Rosary every day. But I found it unique that Padre Pio

and Mother Angelica both said when they were giving lessons, pray the Rosary as often as you can. So they did not have a number, but they would say, pray as many as you can. And then the biggest promoter of the Rosary is Our Lady herself. So at her apparition in Lourdes, St. Bernadette had gone to the grotto of Lourdes and began to pray the Rosary all alone. And it was in the praying of her Rosary that the Virgin Mary appeared to her. And the Virgin Mary had a rosary around her arm and she would keep track of the beads as Bernadette would say them. She wouldn't say the Hail Mary because she'd be talking to herself. And she appeared 18 times, each beginning the apparition with the prayer of the rosary.

And the apparition lasting the length of the rosary, although Bernadette would go in and out of ecstasy, and so sometimes the rosary lasts significantly longer. And at Fatima, which is a very large apparition that is recognized by the church that has liturgical feast days that all major modern popes have gone and honored and showed respect for, at Fatima, our lady, which is significant, told a seven-year-old, part of this group that she's appearing to, a seven-year-old that she must pray the rosary every single day. So it is a prayer that can be prayed even by children. So it's big.

So should Catholics force it? Absolutely not. Nothing should be forced. Especially we need to be careful because we can be overzealous. Like you got to do the rosary. For new Catholics, especially, like especially new Catholics who are just getting into this, you throw in them Marian apparitions and this and that, and they are so overwhelmed. Give people grace and give people time to be called to a devotion, to be open to a devotion, but be very careful about saying things like, if you're not doing this or that, you're not on the team, etc. Anything like that that would be exclusionary, one, because it looks ugly and it's not attractive

to anybody to be told, you must do this. Well, especially when it's a private devotion. As Catholics, there are things we must do. We must attend Holy Mass unless we have other things that would prevent us. I do believe that people should pray and obey our lady's request of Fatima, but we just have to be very careful about how we present that because our lady didn't force anybody to pray and even actually I'm really surprised also in more modern Marian apparitions like at Cabahoe, our lady didn't promote necessarily the traditional Dominican Rosary, but she promoted the Seven Sorrows Rosary, which is still a meditation rooted in the life of Christ mixed with the

angelic salutation. And then also in Akita, which is, I think happened in the 70s, again, it was be devoted to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and pray the Rosary every single day. But now what is the Rosary? This is important because some people say, well, it's not for me. Like what is the Rosary? How do I know if this is something that's going to be fruitful to me, especially considering the criterion that I said was important previously when you pick up a devotion.

So the first part of the Rosary is the cross. There's no doubt about it that to pray the Rosary takes about 15, let's say you're a fast prayer, 12 to 20 minutes on average, depending on what you're praying, how you're praying it, how many prayers you add. That requires a death to self. For many people, unfortunately, if they don't pray their rosary, that is their only prayer time and they've just gotten rid of all of their prayer time. What happens in those 15 to 20 minutes is absolutely essential because of this. This would be for making

a 20-minute visit to the Blessed Sacrament because I cannot be attentive to the voice of God and His will for my life. If I'm so busy doing my own will, I have to stop, put my life on hold for a moment and give God the opportunity to speak to me. So the first ingredient of the rosary is a death is a denial of myself to be attentive to the will of God. But then only when I do that can I be satisfied. That's why St. Augustine said, My heart is restless until it rests in thee, O Lord.

So that is 100% true. The Our Father, 100% scriptural, the prayer came from our Lord Jesus Christ himself. It's got the Holy Spirit behind it. It's a beautiful prayer. The Hail Mary, we discussed earlier how this is a prayer that the Holy Spirit loves because this is when He brought our Lord to flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary. This is a prayer that Our Lady loves. You know, they say this, Our Lady pondered all things in her heart.

And so sometimes I would ask myself, I wonder what she pondered the most. I bet it was the crucifixion. Or I'll think maybe it was the Eucharist. So I would have this like internal debate And then one day when I was praying the Hail Mary's over and over and over again It dawned on me that the thing that she must have pondered the most was the incarnation God became a man and therefore God became a man and therefore He gives me his body blood soul and divinity God a man, and I'm changing his swaddling clothing.

God became a man, and he hung on the cross. God became a man, and he rose from the dead. So all of the mysteries of Christ must be rooted in this idea that God became a man. Even if the rosary was only Hail Mary's, it takes about 50 times to get through my thick skull, because I'm always worried about something. It's human nature to fret and to worry. And so, Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace. By the time I'm done, finally it enters my mind. God loves me. He loves me so much that he would become a man. Things are going to be okay. Even if death is at my door, God loves me. And it takes that time for the Word of God to penetrate my heart and for the gates of

hell to be broken down even within my own soul. So that is an element. So it's a denial of self. It's 15 to 20 minutes of prayer, which is very good and structured and organized. Although we'll talk about it later, you can break it up throughout the day and do a decade in the morning, a decade on your way to work, a decade between meals. But then the most important thing, and this is what I feel like has been lost in modern times, is the actual meditation on the life of Christ. And one of the biggest issues with it is that word meditate. In my understanding growing up when I was learning and again, I didn't have great spiritual

advisors at all times. I was kind of just reading things. And so I understood the word meditate to mean consider, think about, you know, run the facts by your mind. In the lives of the greatest doctors of the church, especially—and we can talk about this more about how to pray the rosary well—especially Teresa of Avila, St. Francis de Sales, and St. Alphonsus, to meditate was to, one, put yourself in the presence of God, be aware of the God who is in my soul, who is in my flesh, who is all around me.

Then to put myself, if possible, mentally in the Gospel, if possible. Sometimes our imaginations are not working and therefore this is that word meditate or consider, consider some fact of the Gospel if my imagination is not working that I can use to strike up a conversation. So for example, this morning I was praying with Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth. Blessed Mother, I believe you're here with me. with Mary visiting her cousin Elizabeth. Blessed Mother, I believe you're here with me. Just as, Arley, you spoke to your cousin Elizabeth and inspired her and the Holy Spirit flowed out of you

and sanctified the child in the womb, today, when we're speaking, have the Holy Spirit come out of us, speak to the listeners, and do what only the Mediatrix of the spouse and the spouse of the Holy Spirit can do. So relating my personal requests in conversation, but using that consideration as a spark. So what happens in the heart of the rosary, because it is repetition.

It's not vain repetition, but it is repetition. But the fruit and what I think the genius of the rosary is, is putting yourself in the presence of Christ who's really present all around us, who's really present in my soul, putting myself in the presence of Christ in the gospel for Him to train me. So I said earlier, through prayer, the Lord will give you graces of sanctification and help you on this journey to become like Him. But that's not even on my mind if I don't spend time with him, spending

time with him at the wedding feast of Cana, where I'm imagining, okay, well, there's empty jars here, Lord, I need a miracle. I need my wife is sick or my children are struggling with something. Can you please help them? And then telling the Lord this, and then he kind of looks at you and this is, this is your imagination, but it feels right. He looks at you and looks at those empty jars. says, well, somebody's got to fill these jars if you want a miracle. Well, how do you want me to fill them, Lord? With prayer, with sacrifice, with good deeds, with going out of your way to help this or that person. But that— It's like Alexio Divina as you pray.

Exactly, yes. And so that is, there is no other prayer like that, that I'm aware of. So that is, there is no other prayer like that, that I'm aware of. There's no other prayer where I have a pattern of the segments or a whole section of the life of Christ where I'm going through, like, and it's not like I'm just going to dwell on one place. It's like we're going to go on a little tour. You're going to get on the train and we're going to stop by this exhibit on the birth of Christ. And now we're going to move over here to where the temple and then we're going to get on the train and we're going to stop by this exhibit on the birth of Christ. And now we're going to move over here to where the temple and then we're going to go visit

Jesus as an 11 year old boy and see what advice he has for you. Yeah. There's just doesn't exist a prayer like that. That's a good point because I mean one could say, well, I'll just, I'll just do that every day. I'll read those sections of the Bible every day, which great do that. Most of us don't, you know, and that is so the rosary kind of gives us an easy way to do that.

Right. What does the word rosary mean? Little rose, garland of roses don't. Right. So the rosary kind of gives us an easy way to do that. Right. What does the word rosary mean? Little rose, garland of roses, collection of roses. So there's the idea, I think it was originated with a Franciscan, that when you say the angelic salutation, it has multiple effects. So your relationship with Our Lady impacts your relationship with the Father, with the Holy Spirit, with the Son, with Our Lady, and with the demon. So many exorcists say that when you pray the Hail Mary, it is like taking a sledgehammer

to the head of the demon. It humiliates him. It reminds him of the time he was defeated by a 14-year-old girl, can't take it, I'm out. And I've got many testimonies on my YouTube channel of people who had an oppression and by the name of Mary, them it they were relieved. So it's a hammer to the to the demon but to Mary it's like a rose. Blessed Mother you remember this beautiful moment? How could I forget? I think about that all the time. I'm only here because of this beautiful

moment and so I'm just like offering over to her rose after rose after rose after rose. All right. Yeah. Awesome. So we've talked about the history of the Rosary. Why is it so powerful? We've touched upon that a little bit because we're meditating upon these prominent scenes in the life of Christ. But anything else to say on that? That it is so powerful because it increases your charismatic graces. It increases your union and your openness to the Holy Spirit.

So if you are a preacher, it will help you to preach. If you are a teacher, it will help you to teach. If you are in charge of providing a meal for a family that's coming to visit you, when you pray the rosary and you say these words of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will inspire in you what you should cook, what this person likes, what this person doesn't like. It kind of gives you an ear to taking care of the people of God. It also helps for people who have diabolical obsessions or who are struggling with sin,

because what you're doing, not just the words, but if you're surrounding yourself in the life of Christ and you're saying the words of the Incarnation and you're saying the prayer that our Father gave us, you don't have to worry about the devil. You don't have to... Nowhere in the history of the lives of the saints were the saints sitting around praying deliverance prayers because they were afraid of the devil. They were meditating on the life of Christ.

They were basking in his love and in His mercy, and that—did the devil pop his head in every once in a while? Yeah, but get away from me. So your diabolical fears should go. You will have increased peace of soul, increased peace of soul. You will sleep easier at night. One of the things I struggled with before taking up the rosary is I could not sleep at night.

I would go into a depression, I would drink some hard liquor, I would drink Crown Royal, take a couple shots, and then maybe I could fall asleep, and maybe I'd wake up at four o'clock in the morning, and then I'd just be like, I can't sleep. I started taking my sleeping pills, and I fall asleep like a baby.

I take these bad boys, I take these sleeping pills, Hail Mary, full of grace. Yeah, and the devil himself is trying to get me to sleep. So I'll stop praying Uh-huh. Yeah, so it's very very very powerful I got a quick I want to dwell on this for a little bit and I have some ideas and then I'd like you to Please say some more here's some here's what I would advise Protestants Yes, you're watching this you know, what I kind of I'm attracted to it But I'm afraid I shouldn't pray it because I don't believe everything Catholics believe

what I kind of I'm attracted to it but I'm afraid I shouldn't pray it because I don't believe everything Catholics believe Here's what I would suggest. Here's how I would suggest a Protestant begin praying the rosary. All right, so you're a Protestant So you don't yet believe In the intercession of the Saints maybe although I think you could be a Protestant and still accept that just like in Revelation We have Saints receiving the prayers Of of Christians on Earth. So I think you could be open to that and still be a Protestant. But here's how you could do it.

You could pray the first half of the Hail Mary, as St. Dominic did, and you won't have to say the second half yet that says, Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of her death. Because that would require you to do two things. It would require you to acknowledge Mary as the Mother of God, which again I think you should do, but if you're not comfortable doing that yet, you don't have to say that. And then you don't have to ask her to pray for you because you're not yet comfortable with the intercession of the saints. But surely you're comfortable just saying, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou

among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus, because this is scriptural. And when you say this, what you're doing is recalling, as Gabi just said, that most important moment where the devil was overthrown and the incarnation took place. So you could pray just that half of the Hail Mary while meditating in your mind on the life of Christ, on a particular decade. You don't have to pray the Hail Holy Queen at the end if you don't want to. So there you go. You've got the Our Father, the three, when I say the Hail Mary in this context, I'm talking about the first half. So the Our Father, three Hail Marys, Glory be, you can pray that, Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the

beginning is now and will be forever our men. And then you're meditating, you're off to the races. There doesn't seem to be anything objectionable in that except that you might believe this to be a matter of vain repetition. So before you give your answer, which I'm sure will be excellent, what would you say just to kind of wrap up what I'm saying about why this doesn't mean, need to mean vain repetition? Okay, well first of all, what you said is 100% gold. That's saying about why this doesn't mean, need to mean vain repetition. Okay, well, first of all, what you said is 100% gold. I know many Protestants who do that, and they all claim I have so much peace.

And so if you're a Protestant and you're listening to this and you're like, maybe I should, maybe I shouldn't, ask yourself, do you have a prayer that is this saturated in the Gospels? I don't know of one that exists. I'm not somebody who is committed to the rosary just as like a pious devotion. I genuinely don't know a way to submerse myself in the life of Christ with these sacred words that are 100% powerful because they're scriptural. So objectively, if you can just put a Protestant, your Catholic aside, I don't see anything contradictory to what Matt says. The vain repetition thing would come to mind, but it's not vain. Like, it is 100% repetition.

But the angels of God say, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, and that's all they say. And if there was any greater words that they could say, they would utter them and not stop. Just as I tell my wife and my children, I love you, and sometimes I can say I love you just out of a habit, but it doesn't mean that I love her any less or I love my children any less. And we say, I love you, I hope, on a regular basis or try to show our love. So I don't see what the problem would be of repeating the most important words in salvation history. Yeah, that's good.

And a child who wants its mother's attention says, Mama, Mama, Mama, Mama. The first rosary. Exactly. This is repetition. It's not vain repetition. So I think like if I think that way, I've set up the rosary there. If you can just sort of see that this is in vain repetition, then I don't know why you couldn't pray it. Now, you might hear me say all this and say, I still don't want to. That's different. What I'm saying is if you wanted

to, you could be a faithful Protestant, you know, not accept what the Catholic Church teaches. Obviously as Catholics, we want you to. Don't misunderstand us. But what I'm saying is you could pray the Rosary in that way and, you know, not be afraid of becoming a Catholic or afraid of offending God because of how you currently understand these things. Right, and don't be discouraged or turned off by the way Matt and I so easily call upon the name of Mary. So sometimes I've heard Protestants tell me things like, you just feel way too familiar.

It seems like you're way too at ease just to be uttering out these prayers to other people. So two things just to be uttering out these prayers to other people. So two things on just to give you some perspective. Like we've been drilled in since I've become a Catholic that when we die, we're still alive. We're more alive. So just as I speak to a living person and ask their prayers who are holier than me and are better than me, I look to those who I know are in the presence of God and ask them

for prayers. And Catholics don't have a problem with that. I think this is really the crux of the matter is that that's not how I worship God. Like so from a Protestant, you might like the highest for some, the highest form of your worship may be speaking from the heart to God, telling them how much you love them, asking him for petitions. But for Catholics, we take it several steps forward and we believe that we are at the crucifixion, at the holy sacrifice of the mass, and I'm offering the eternal father

the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I'm eating the second person of the Holy Trinity. So, talking to a saint is like, that's nothing. That's like saying hello to my neighbor. It becomes so natural. So, there could be like that is probably why it doesn't bother most Catholics. But I have, and my friend, your friend, Jimmy Akin has, I like when he does studies on after death encounters, and he was talking about a study amongst Americans that said that 50% of Americans have had an after death communication. That is a huge number. That's wild. Yeah.

Meaning that after a person died, they felt the presence of their loved one or even that their loved one whispered to them, I'm okay. Or they smelt their loved one, their particular smell. Yeah. So I don't think that Protestants have a problem with believing that your loved ones are alive and can communicate with you. I think it's just have to get over that little hump of, can I ask them to help me? Like it's not about, if yeah, it's just, I just, that's just a minor thing that I think

you spend some time thinking about it and our Lord will open your heart to it. Okay. Next question. What are some practical benefits of praying the Rosary? So I'll just give you the practical benefits as I've seen them through my life. When I was a young man in my 20s, I found that the rosary helped me to overcome sin because it gave me a sense of the presence of God. When I was discerning my vocation, I would pray the rosary and I would have a keen sense.

I would not have a revelation. It would just be a, I went into prayer with a question and I had an understanding in my heart of where I want to go. So for young people who are at a pivotal moment in their life who are wondering about who should I marry? What job should I take? You can have consolation in knowing that your mom, the Virgin Mary, loves you more than your earthly mother.

And she has the ability to impact the outcome of human events if you are open to God's will. So that's one practical. As a parent, one of Mary's charisms is to crush the head of the serpent. And so when you begin to pray the rosary, prophetic gifts do come up. I'll just give you one aside. You mentioned Jordan Peterson earlier. His wife, Tammy Peterson, had a terminal illness and she had a prophetic insight that she didn't know where it came from, but she was praying the rosary on a daily basis, you would say,

religiously. And she told Jordan, I'm going to be healed by our 30th wedding anniversary. And for him, he was like, you know, chemo brain or something. She's just, you know, wishful thinking. And the day of her healing was her 30th wedding anniversary. So the Holy Spirit must have been stirred up because she was in this place of openness to the presence of God and the Holy Spirit in your life. Now back to the parenting aspect. One of the charisms is to crush the head of God and the Holy Spirit in your life. Now, back to the parenting aspect. One of the charisms is to crush the head of the serpent.

And there's been times in my life where I was praying and then I fell asleep shortly after and I had a very vivid dream and it was horrible. It was a nightmare. And I had dreamed that one of my children was in the bathtub and had their mouth to the faucet and the faucet was running and they were like bloated in blue. It was terrible. It was very, it was

very, it was vivid. I don't have dreams like this. So I woke up and I prayed and in prayer, I thought the Lord was saying that was not a coincidence. That is what's going to happen to your child on a spiritual level. If you do not monitor what's coming into your house through screens. So I have an open faucet that can kill my child spiritually, which is the iPad because we don't have televisions but we have iPads. So just because I put it on something that seems harmless, I just can't leave my kid there unattended just like I wouldn't leave my child in the bath. So by praying the rosary, Mary, whose role it is to crush the head of the serpent, will help you to crush the head or to be aware if there's any snakes sneaking into your garden

for priests or as a spiritual father, because I'm not a priest, but I am a spiritual father to many children because I'm a youth minister. Again, the evil one will crop up. Unfortunately, I have seen in the lives of some priests, because I work with a lot of priests, I've worked with a lot of priests in my life, and I've seen some things sneak into their lives. So for example, and I'm sure if I mention this, you're going to hear it, I've seen priests who a person will come to them for confession and they'll say, not going

to hear your confession. We've got a confession scheduled. Just come when we're scheduled. And then I noticed the person walking out with their head down and their shoulders slumped and they're not coming back. Like that was their one chance. They might not have ever stepped foot in a church, but they had the courage to walk into a church office and they just got rejected by somebody supposed to be their spiritual father. And so I've seen that happen too many

times, just different places that I've been, and my heart breaks, but that didn't happen accidentally. A bad habit, an excuse was made somewhere along the line that I can make these excuses and not be attentive to God's will for my life in this moment. And so from experience, when I've done bad things, and I've done many bad things, when I pray the rosary and I start saying, like I've done something bad and it's not even on my conscience,

Hail Mary, full of grace, Hail Mary, full of grace. I say the full prayer, of course, and I'm thinking about the life of Christ. I'm in five beads and I feel super guilty. I just can't face the Mother of God. She's a real person and nobody guilts a son like a mom. Nobody makes a person feel guilty and is not, it's not a bad guilt. It's an inner conviction to be better, son.

I love you. You're capable of better. Look what you've done. Go apologize. Do the right thing. And that's very important for spiritual fathers. Also I mentioned preaching, teaching, my scripture verse for today, because I do a little app that tells me the scripture verse, it's 1 Peter chapter 4 verse 11, let he who speaks

speak with the words that God provides. Let he who works work with the strength that God provides. Let he who works, work with the strength that God provides. Often, as a speaker or as a presenter, because I'm a youth minister, it's very easy, okay, what do I need to talk about? What do I need to teach these people? God, will you bless this? God doesn't have to bless my work, but if I go and say, Lord, what is your message? It's already blessed. It's anointed. And we have to give God the opportunity to work and to speak and to act through us. And that happens for me most easily

by praying the rosary. What are some practical benefits that you've found? Well, I'll give you some practical benefits, but they're not as lofty as yours. I've been thinking about this like every day since we've imagined it. For me, I like not having to be creative. Oh, yes. You know, it's like I like not having to be creative. Oh, yes. You know? It's like I'd like to pray. OK, there's this formula here and it's not a heartless formula.

That's not what I mean by formula, but it's just it's there for me. So I can do that. I like that. I like going for a rosary walk. Yes. You know, it's like, come on, Cami, my bride, let's go for a walk. So just to get to walk together and say a rosary, it's again, you don't have to be creative. I think this is something that spouses sometimes find difficult.

They think they have to be effusive as they pray for each other or creative or come up with something every time they pray. That's exhausting and you don't have to do that. That's nice. I also like, I don't pray the rosary a lot, but when I do pray it with my family, I like that very much because it's a way to settle the children. Come on, let's pray the rosary and it's a nice end. It kind of calms everybody down. It's very rhythmic. And I've mentioned this before, but I'll do it again. I'm very chill with my

family rosary. I'm okay with kids getting up for the fourth glass of water. If someone's like, I'm tired, I'm like, okay, well, go to bed. Yeah. My rosary, and I think I'm getting this from Jose Maria Escruz, with the, in the family, is like a warm fire that should attract the kids and the family and it's not like, get on your knees, we're doing our rosary and getting angry. You committed more sins.

Yeah, exactly. And I used to do that. They're going to hate you. I used to do, I didn't demand that they kneel, but I used to get frustrated with them if they weren't, you know, perfect. Right. And that's just nobody wants to be in an environment like that. So I think we just have to be chill, relax, calm down a little bit and accept that you're human and your kids are human.

And that, you know, if your son is five, he's allowed to act like he's five because he's five. Exactly. So those would be some practical benefits. The other benefit I would say is, like I mentioned earlier, yes, it's possible that you would read the important lives of Christ throughout the day, but do you do that? Do you do that if you don't actually pray the rosary? Well, you might do it occasionally and good for you. And maybe there's the odd person out there who does that every single day. Wow, praise the Lord. But the rosary is like this excuse to meditate on the most important lives, important events of Christ. And you don't have to be creative. You don't have to come up with anything new. And it's also portable. I like that. That's another kind of practical benefit.

And it's a physical reminder of the Blessed Mother and our Lord. And so having that with you on an airplane or you know that. And it's also an excuse. I keep going, man. I got like 800. It's got 100 reasons. That's great. The other reason is, you know, like we can all in this day and age, I think, get addicted to things like doom scrolling or checking my email for the 800th time, even while we're in the car, you know? And it's like, okay, well, here's an excuse to put away that distraction and to bring

your attention to Christ and His blessed mother. So that would be another practical benefit. And I'll stop there. And I want to echo the idea of peace in the family after you pray, but also peace in all circumstances. I've been on rowdy buses on the way to retreats after you pray the rosary. Everybody's so calm. The bus driver's like, your kids are really well behaved. Yeah, because I soothe, I let our lady soothe them.

I let our lady nurse them. If you're ever in like a, you know, life or death situation, you're in a bunker because of a hurricane or a plane's got a lot of turbulence. You pray the rosary and it's like you're just at your mother's breast and she calms you and she pats your head and her presence is undeniable. All right. There are obviously many devotions in the church and a lot of these devotions have promises attached to them.

I know that's true of the Holy Rosary, so what are those promises? So I'll give you three because there's a lot of promises. have promises attached to them. I know that's true of the Holy Rosary, so what are those promises? So I'll give you three because there's a lot of promises. There's some 15 promises explicitly that many people focus upon, but there's also many in the other writings of the various saints. So I'm going to give you the three first ones from the 15. And where do they come from? So these came from Blessed Alan through private revelations that he received. He's a Dominican friar, lived in the 15th century. And the ones I'm going to share, I've experienced in my own life, and I'll share little stories with each.

So the first promise of those who are faithful to the Rosary is that you will receive signal graces. Now, I have to clarify. When you pray the Rosary, ideas will come to mind. You will receive consolation, which in the spiritual sense is that you will receive ideas or inspirations from God that strengthen your convictions to Prayer to sacrifice to be good to resist sin you will get rid of desolation So Mary's considered the one who crushes the head of the serpent the serpent is the one who brings desolation She's the spouse of the Holy Spirit who's the consoler? So if you're in desolation according to Ignatius of Loyola, the answer isn't to abandon whatever ideas or prayers you have, but to fight back, and in this case with the Rosary.

So in the Rosary, you will begin to hear the voice of God. You will begin to have consolations, knowing what God's plan is for your life. But in addition to that, you will receive signal graces, which are little signs from God, not that you make your life about it's 11 11 and there's a blue J and two Cardinals have arrived and landed in. No, you've discerned God's will. You have strong intuitions and convictions from prayer and through discernment. And in addition to that, as a loving mother, our lady will give you tangible signals,

tangible signs that you're on the right path, that you've made the right decision. What do these signs look like? One in a million type chances. Like what are the odds that, you know, whatever your circumstance might be? So for example, the scripture verse, this was just a small little God wink, some

people might call it, that I was thinking about coming into our interview was, let he who speaks speak with the word that God provides, let he who works work with the strength that he provides. And then the fact that I was thinking about that and then saw that as my one in a million chance Bible verse, as my Bible verse for the day was God's way. I've already discerned that that was His will, but God's way of being like, yeah, bro, I got you. Just do this and you'll be fine. Um, so you will receive signal graces. A lot of times people say, Gabe, your story seems so fanatical, so fanciful. None of that stuff ever happens to me. I don't control these things. They do happen. I could not come up with stories on my own if I tried,

uh, but, but I can only credit the signal graces and the signs and the coincidences that God puts before my feet as little encouragements to go forward. So the first promise for those who are faithful to the Rosary specifically is she promises signal graces. The second promise is that you will receive a special protection. I want to be so clear because some people, in comments to my videos especially, will say, I prayed the rosary and my life got worse. There's several things to this. Number one, the Christian life is not an easy life.

There is no promise of financial security and good times. In fact, the children of Mary, last I checked, the prototypical child of Mary ended up on a cross. And so you're going to get crosses. But what our lady is going to do, according to St. Louis de Monfort, is your crosses will be dipped in honey and she will show her face to you and she will console you and she will, she doesn't need to do this, but she will help you to have some glimmer of the good that might come about so that you won't be overwhelmed and you will

receive a special protection. I'll give you one example. Pope John Paul II prayed all the mysteries of the Rosary every single day in 1981 on May 13th, which is the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, who said, pray the Rosary every day. He was in St. Peter's Square and hired assassin and expert marksman, the best you can hire, pulled out a gun and he was no farther from me to you. And I don't shoot guns, but if I had a weapon,

I would not miss my target. I can't imagine missing my target from here to there. And I'm not an expert marksman, even though I'm from Texas. And the bullets were perfectly aimed, but they missed all of his vital organs. They just barely grazed them. And he was healed in record time. He had no death anxiety.

And when they asked him, Holy Father, how do you explain this? It's a miracle that you're alive. It's very simple. One finger was pulling the trigger and another finger was guiding the bullets. It happened on May 13th at the exact minute that it was said that Our Lady of Fatima had appeared to those children. There is no coincidences in the providence of God. Pope John Paul II had special protection.

Did he die a painful death? Yes. Everybody's going to die. You're not going to be protected from all crosses. But the inspired word of God says, all things work for those who love the Lord. How much more so that those who put their special trust in a mother who can only provide consolation. Our Lady will offer protection.

You will never be overwhelmed in a crisis. She'll always be there for you if you call upon her name. And again, I've never known somebody who's persevered in calling upon Mary's name that was ever left unaided. Maybe the assistance came the day after, maybe you didn't recognize the assistance in the moment. But as I mentioned with my daughter when she's sick, even though mom doesn't do much, I've already given her the Tylenol.

Mom comes in, kisses her head, holds her. Something in that child changes. Her circumstance doesn't change, but something in her soul has changed and she can move forward. The third, and this will be the final promise. I have it written here. I want to read it exactly. The Rosary shall be a powerful armor against hell. It will destroy vice.

It will decrease sin and defeat heresies. For me, this is the number one reason why I promote and I preach the Rosary is because anytime somebody has come to me in sin and they were desperate and they felt like slaves and they couldn't get out. And they were doing the practical things, but they lacked an interior strength that would overrule their fall. When they brought the rosary into their life, and with addicts I have found that when they brought the full rosary into their life, they received a supernatural strength, but also a rule of life to live by.

And I have seen people who had been on drugs since the seventh grade totally reform their lives. And this is so important, you mentioned praying the family rosary. I've had many situations where women would reach out to me. I'm thinking of one particular situation where a friend of mine was married to a man, not Catholic, good Christian man. She came to me because she caught him looking at bad videos and pictures on the internet and she didn't know what to do about it.

She caught him. So I said, what do I do? I was like, is he remorseful? Does he feel dirty about it? And she said, yeah, he was very ashamed. I said, well, just ask him, like, you can't babysit him. If he really wants this stuff, he's gonna get it. And there's nothing you can do about it.

I was like, ask him to pray the rosary with you every night as just as a sign of his goodwill. And after several weeks of praying the rosary with her husband, he relapsed. And she didn't catch him though. He came to her and said, I fell last night and I'm sorry. He admitted this and then she asked me like what other advice? I was like ask him if he really wants help. Like I've seen it happen. Our Lady will liberate you from the chains of sin. Our Lady and the devil

cannot coexist. Mortal sin and Our Lady's presence and the Holy Spirit cannot coexist. One will give up. Ask Him if He's willing to, just for a while, to pray all the mysteries of the Rosary as a sacrifice. I know it's difficult. And He was willing to do it, and He overcame it, and not only did He overcome it, he became a great spiritual leader in his church. He became a Catholic, made his first Holy Communion on his knees in a place where this wasn't done. And so we can't always be with our children. We can't always be with our spouses.

But when we pray the rosary as a family, the presence of Our Lady doesn't leave us when we're alone. And you can be assured that our lady will go with your children and that you could intercede on their behalf. One more, just a quick story that will give people a lot of hope because I know that there's parents who had conversions later in life, look back on their lives with regret and say, I wish I did things better or differently, but I didn't know better. I feel guilty even though I didn't know better.

So I was giving a talk in Texas and the talk was not directed at adults. It was directed at teenagers and the teenagers weren't listening. So of course I was pulling out all my knives and just trying to spiritually stab them and try to get their attention in any way possible. And I left that night thinking, woof, that was rough. Like I think I was on, my son was there. He was like, that was awesome. You should bring that to us, to our teens.

I was like, you really came swinging. And I was like, I thank my son, but that's some consolation. Couple weeks later, I got an email and the subject line read something to this effect. I can't remember the exact words, unconventional testimony. And this woman pours her heart out in this email and she says, I have a daughter who ran away from home, who was on drugs,

had an ankle monitor on her ankle, and she's just a wild child. I raised her right, we're Catholic, we do all this stuff, but she's just out, she's just a person who's just wild. And so, I had heard about praying all of the mysteries of the Rosary for a specific intention from another priest online, and I didn't do it. But then when I went to your talk, it really struck me in my heart that I have to commit this and that I will offer it for the salvation of my daughter and that I will pray this every single day for the rest of my life just to save her soul.

And so she said three nights ago in the middle of the night, I woke up, it was like 2.30 or 3 o'clock in the morning. I didn't feel right. The cat was making all sorts of weird noises. I go up to my daughter's room and my daughter's not home. And so I freak out. I immediately think the worst. I get on my knees and I begin to pray the rosary.

When I finished the rosary, I heard a lot of banging on the front door and it was a police officer who said, you have to come. Your daughter was in a terrible accident. She's not going to live. You need to come as soon as possible. So of course she gets on the prayer line, calls everybody possible, tells them to pray the chapter to my mercy, tells her to pray the rosary. She arrives at the hospital and the daughter dies. Afterwards,

of course, you're a wreck. You're a wreck. You just can't even fathom your life crumbling like that. A wreck. I can't just, I can't imagine. And she said, I was praying the rosary in desperation. I couldn't focus. I wasn't, I wasn't doing it right. As you know, as the world would say, doing it right. She was just praying to get peace. And in the middle of the rosary, she said, I heard a voice that said, I love you. Do not be afraid. Your prayers have been answered. The father has been merciful and she's with us. And you know, how do you know if it's God or how do you know if these are the wild hallucinations of a desperate mother?

St. Teresa of Avila says a sure sign is when God speaks, He acts. So when she said, be at peace, a peace flooded her from head to toe, she just felt the warmth and the love of God in her soul. I believe her because she wasn't... She, when her communication to me, I could just feel the presence of the Holy Spirit in this communication. And after when we spoke afterwards, this was a woman who went to battle and won, and was deeply convicted of this in her soul.

And so, I am convinced that when a person prays the rosary, even if they have not made a total consecration or done a 33-day or done a 9-day or done anything, that daily death to myself and allowing Mary into my life, you become hers. And everything that you have, everybody that you love, also becomes hers. And none of her children, St. Alphonsus says, no child of Mary shall ever be damned, because

that is the essence of union with Christ, because if you're a child of Mary, it is in Christ. And I firmly believe that if, and again, I have no other basis to say this other than anecdotal evidence and my own deep convictions that I firmly believe that your children will be saved if you give your life to the Virgin Mary and you pray the rosary faithfully for them. I just haven't seen, I haven't seen her lose. I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography.

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there's comments from men all around the world encouraging each other, offering to be each other's accountability partners and things like that. Strive21, that's strive21.comcom slash Matt or as I say text Strive to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it. You mentioned this fella who started praying the rosary. So that makes me think what are some practical tips to pray the rosary well, but not just that, but also what about the person watching going,

you know what, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to listen to Gabby speak enthusiastically about the rosary and I get super pumped and I know in two days from now, I'm not going to pray it again. And I'm going to, you know, so, so not just tips to pray it well, but how does one persevere realistically with the rosary? So number one disposition, anytime we enter into prayer is humility. I have to, for me personally, I have to remember that I am a wretched individual and left to my own devices, I will persevere in my wretchedness and I need God and I need prayer.

So I have to have that coming into prayer. If I'm seeing prayer as a burden that I have to get done or as things that I've got on a checklist, that's not a good disposition. So first, I'll talk about the best dispositions and then I'll give you practical tips because really like these practical tips, I can't imagine anybody surviving without these practices. This looks very Trumpian how you're doing this. Forgive me, Juan. This is very, this is the best tips.

These are the best tips. Let me tell you. Okay. So number one, the rosary has to be all prayer should be an encounter with Jesus Christ. So every decade, I encourage you to make an active faith in the presence of Christ. Make this a habit, second nature. You can say it intentionally at first, but simply saying you don't have to feel anything. Just say it.

God, I believe you're present. I'm a temple of the Holy Spirit. You're holding me into existence. I'm a member of the body of Christ. Just saying that changes things, that God is so close to me. Tip number two, step number two, what is the mystery? Let's say the birth of the child Jesus in Bethlehem. In your mind, try to imagine, if possible, the face of the baby Jesus

and look into his eyes and be there, if possible, the face of the baby Jesus and look into his eyes and be there if possible. Sometimes our imaginations are very fertile. Sometimes we're distracted, but try to be there. If you can't be there, consider something even for five seconds, some fact, some tidbit that might spark a conversation and then converse with him about whatever it is that you want. Petition him.

Don't be shy. Sometimes Catholics want to pretend like, oh, I want to talk to the Lord. I don't want to make it all about me. Get it off your chest and then let the Lord speak to you about what's on your chest. So I'm, uh, Lord, I believe you're here. How close are you? So close. I'm imagining a fat chubby baby in my arms.

This baby is only goodness. This baby is only goodness. This baby is only humility and vulnerability. This is God who loves me. I can trust this child. He's a child in my arms, but I'm a child that's in his arms. Lord, you know my needs. You know my financial problems that I have. And then ask, so that would be the best disposition. And then the

Our Fathers and the Hail Marys kind of become like background noise that are kind of like, like I said before, a hedge or a whirlwind of protection that is stirring up the Holy Spirit in you and just trying to keep that presence and be present, just looking at Christ and letting him look at you. Maybe he says something, maybe he doesn't. That is an encounter with Christ in his infancy. And then I move on. Okay, the presentation in the temple and I move on and I move on and I move on. Very fruitful.

If you're doing the carrying of the cross, you're upset with your spouse and you're like thinking about how irritated, how inconsiderate of a thing. Your husband never thinks about you. What? And I have, I'm doing the dishes. I should never do the dishes. He doesn't think about me. I'm not going to think about him. And this is kind of like the battle in our heads, but you pause to pray. Okay. Jesus is carrying the cross. All right. I'm imagining the cross, cross dragging. I'm looking up at the thorned face of Christ. He's kissing the cross. Jesus, my husband, he's so inconsiderate. I don't love him.

He doesn't love me. I'm sorry. I love him. He doesn't love me. It's so unfair. And then you just look at Jesus. He didn't even say anything to you. He's just looking at the cross. He kisses the cross and holds it.

And he says more in that action. And you know it's not here because it goes straight here. And Jesus is like, you're not a peach yourself, you know. This cross that I'm embracing is you. I'm loving you. You love him. And so these, that's the best way to be in the gospel. That's, that's ideal, but let's be real. And I want to be very clear. I'm not telling you to pray poorly, but GK Chesterton said, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly. It GK Chesterton said, if something is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly.

It's better to do something poorly than to not do it at all. Because if you allow your desire to be perfect to keep you from starting, well, you can't win a race you haven't started. Or if you believe you have to have a deep emotional experience or a mystical experience every time you pray the rosary,

then you'll feel like a failure every time and you will give up that thing because you don't like doing things that make you feel like a failure. One of the secrets to growing in the spiritual life, because it's a constant ebb and flow, there's a secret word called constancy. It's a commitment and that's what love is, the training in love. I've got to love even when it doesn't feel good.

And actually it's when it doesn't feel good that I'm showing greater love because it's a sacrifice. So practical tips, tip number one, this is just so practical. You're not going to pray the rosary faithfully if you do not have a rosary or carry a rosary with you. I encourage people to buy a nice rosary. We spend a lot of money on our phones. We spend a lot of money on a lot of things.

And when you spend 50 or $60 on a rosary that you find attractive, you're going to carry it with you and you're not likely to lose it. So number one, carry a rosary with you. I am from Texas. Even though I don't shoot guns, I open carry my weapon, my spiritual weapon. So that's tip number one, carry the rosary with you. Tip number two, have an intention that you care so deeply about that at the end of the night, if you haven't prayed, you're willing to get out of bed and try and keep that intention

for nine days because you recognize in yourself, this isn't fun. But if I can commit to nine days and I have a specific intention that I'm going to pray for a novenvena for example, that gives me enough time for it to become habitual. I have a why that will help me to do the what. At the end of the nine days, I can reassess my spiritual progress or am I a better person for having prayed the rosary? Have I noticed more peace in my life?

Have I noticed God working? Did I hear the voice of God in this prayer? Should I keep this or should I abandon it? All discernment about prayer, and we'll talk about this hopefully in a moment, should be, you should have a consultation with God. Like as you mentioned, you're not always going to feel it. So therefore you should not quit when you're in desolation. You should quit when you really feel like God is like, no, I have a plan for you and this is your plan. Like you mentioned, you're listening to this and you're like, man, Gabe's got me fired up. Gabe getting you fired up is not going to help you persevere unless God himself says,

I want this from you. And you have that deep interior conviction. Tip number three, this is where I have to be careful. Don't be scrupulous about praying the rosary. Ideally, you do your best, but often your best isn't very good. And don't overwhelm it with a whole bunch of other prayers that are not necessary. Throughout the history of the promotion of the Rosary, many saints allowed for the meditation of many different mysteries.

As long as they have the life of Christ, our Father, 10 Hail Marys, that would be the core, the essence of the Rosary. So your Rosary can take 25 minutes if you're doing the jump on prayers and then you're adding a Sacred Heart Prayer, an Immaculate Heart Prayer, and a Holy Spirit Prayer, and a Saint Michael, and a Deliverance Prayer, and every decade. I used to joke that maybe at the end of every decade we should pray another rosary before moving on to the next decade. Yes, that is not necessary. It's not necessary.

Give us the simplest way to pray a rosary and it be a rosary to the person watching out there who's like, I'll do it. I want baby steps. I want to pray the rosary. I just want to pray a decade, but give me this simple. What's the bare minimum I need to do now bare minimum doesn't mean bare minimum What I mean by those bare minimum meaning will be a rosary Well, what I mean is bare minimum the sense of prayers I have to pray that doesn't mean I'm not gonna put my heart

Entirely into it. I'm sure someone holy somewhere has once said better to pray one. Hail Mary I don't like that. It makes me want to fight with the sword Well, you can fight me in a second. But there's truth to it in the sense that our prayer, it's hard to just quickly jump over that one. You know, if I'm not investing my heart into the things that I'm saying and I'm merely rattling them off, that's that's clearly not good. OK, you can get to the sword thing in a minute, but give people the simplest way

to pray the rosary if they've never done it. And this is very important because when I left our program last time I mentioned that I was like, oh, this one thing, there's no way anybody's going to try this and persevere. I've left out the most, the thing that I found to be the biggest cross. Okay. All right. When the rosary was originally introduced, we have this thing. It was originally 150. You see this tail at the bottom? This is a lot like NASCAR. I only have to do the jump on prayers one time. The Apostles Creed, I don't know if it's ever happened, but sometimes I feel like if I have to do one more Apostles Creed, I will die. So to do the Apostles Creed before every time I find it necessary to go around

the track, absolutely unnecessary. So you can, let's say if you're going to pray multiple rosaries, you could pray your Apostles Creed and your jump on prayers just in the morning and then spend the entire day like I'm going to, okay, I'm just going to do a decade of the Annunciation. And then maybe this day you've got a lot going on and you're going to pray all the way to the crucifixion or it's, you know, good Friday. You want to do sorrowful mysteries all day long and just keep going around. That's fine.

You don't have to keep doing the Apostles Creed. Don't burden yourself. And you only have to do the conclusion prayers once if you want to. The most important thing is the life of Jesus Christ, our Father, Hail Mary's, 10 of them. I personally add the, Oh my Jesus, forgive us of our sins, save us from the fires of hell because Our Lady in a Church to Prove Apparition requested it. Also Our Lady is very wise. There's that saying, I know you know it, Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, Lex Vivendi.

So how I pray impacts my beliefs, impacts how I live. Our Lady is very brilliant. In 1917, there was not this mass movement of everybody's going to heaven, so Our Lady could foresee our lack of preaching about salvation. And so people who pray the rosary on a daily basis will meditate upon the fact that I've got a choice to make. Oh my Jesus, forgive us of our sins, save us from the fires of hell, lead all souls to heaven, especially the... So I have this lesson that kind of it's teaching me, these words are teaching me. So I do that. And then personally, I do the St. Michael, but you don't have to do anything after.

So back to the initial question, someone's like, okay, I'll give it a shot. I'm asking you give me the bare minimum. Yeah. So you could, if you wanted to do an Our Father, 10 Hail Marys. Good. Yeah, that's it. If you wanted to. But the meditation is necessary. I think the meditation is the most important thing. St. Alphonsus said, without mental prayer, without meditation, it's very hard to be saved. Yeah, because Jesus said, you know, not everybody who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of God. And you have to have an encounter with him.

All right. So we've talked about kind of practicalities. I'm going to give you two or three more practicalities. If you're going to be successful at any prayer, and I know that we don't like to put everybody in the same box, but you have to have a prayer schedule. You need to make a rule of life. You need to look at your life and say, who do I wanna be?

What do I wanna accomplish? What steps do I need to have in place? Make a plan. So have an alarm on your phone to the best of my ability. If nothing comes up, I'm praying at 9 a.m. I'm praying at noon. I'm praying etc Because if you don't if prayer is something that you shove in wherever you have free time One that's not putting the Lord your God above all else

But to it's not gonna happen because you will never have free time It's it's like I liken it to a date night with my wife Yes If a couple are only going to go on a date when they feel like it, they may not be going enough. It might be important that they set a date night every single week or twice a week or whatever. And when they don't feel like it, what does that have to do with anything? And you might even be like, Oh, we got this stupid date night. We've got so much to do. And then you're at the date and I am like, this is nice. I'm so glad that we do this,

which is often how prayer is. And one last tip, do not save your road. If you're trying to pray the rosary daily, do not save it to the very end of the night, especially do not lay down in your bed with the rosary. There's a little saying I like to say, never was it known that anybody who fell asleep or held the sleep, held the rosary in their hands did not fall asleep unaided. Like you will go to sleep. And by all means, if you have insomnia, get your rosary, lay down in bed and pray a couple of Hail Marys, you'll be asleep before you're done with the rosary. Will Barron I want to give a massive shout out to our friends at Hallow.

Will Barron Yes. Will Barron Because I have talked to multiple people who said they began praying the rosary because of Hallow. Hallow.com slash Matt, you get three months for free if you sign up over there. The reason I bring it up is that's actually something I've been doing lately. If I have a difficulty going to bed, they actually have a sleep rosary. It's terrific. Sure. Fair enough. It's a rosary with Nyquil. Yeah, I'm not I'm not contradicting you.

If you want to pray the rosary every day, then praying in the morning or maybe that's a better idea. But certainly what a beautiful thing to lay down in bed and to listen to these prayers as you fall asleep. So I've got this wonderful woman. She's got a beautiful voice. She just gently prays the rosary. It's a great way to go to bed. Hello dot com slash is a slash matter slash Matt Fradd Thursday. Josiah, I always forget.

Anyway, check it out. It's. Matt Fradd and it's you get three months for free, so sign up on and then if you choose to quit after 90 days, you don't get charged. It is a fantastic app. I know they're paying me to say that, but I 100% mean it. They do such a great job. It's touched a lot of people. A lot of people are touched by it. So the sword, do you want to get to that sword real quick?

So what do you like about someone saying, better to say one Hail Mary? I don't like that. Yeah. Um, one, because our lady requested to pray the rosary. What do you like about someone saying, better to say one Hail Mary? I don't like that. One, because our lady requested to pray the rosary. She did not say pray one Hail Mary with lots of love. Two, because as a parent it irritates me. If I were to tell my son, your room is a mess, clean your room. And I go by his room four hours later and there's a mess. And he says, but dad, I moved my pillow with a lot of love.

I would say, I'm going to beat you if you don't. And I'm, I'm a patient man. I haven't hit my children yet, but I would be darn tempted if he said, I did a little bit with a lot of love. So that part as a parent. What I love about what you're saying is it's actually more merciful. Like to say, no, no, don't just pray one Hail Mary with a lot of love. Pray the rosary. That's actually more merciful because what you're saying again, back to what you said earlier, is it's not about intensity, it's not about perfection, it's about just doing the thing.

Right. And at the end of the day, did you do it? So the devil who's the accuser of the brethren will say, you prayed it badly, what's the point? Don't do it. I don't know because I haven't been there, but I feel like at the judgment, Our Lady's not going to be like, he prayed it badly. If the devil's accusing me, she loves her child and she says, did he pray the rosary? Yeah, but he was bad. Did he pray the rosary? Yeah, that's all that

matters. He did his prayer. He did the best he could. He's a fallen, weak individual. It could be also a false pride to think that I have to be meditating in a mystical encounter. Yeah. Like, have you met you? Yeah, sounds about right Yeah, that's again. I'm always quoting Peterson. What's something you could do that even you would do exactly make your life better Yes, that's really good Well today in that regard, I mean, maybe there are people out there. They're into the rosary. So let's talk numbers. Yeah What are your suggestions for a daily rosary or a full rosary? How does somebody even know if that's something they should do?

Yes. So one, I want to, I'm very careful of ever talking bad about somebody else's prayer. Like I might not do certain prayers. I might not find it part of my life, but I would caution other people from discouraging other people's devotions on how they're encountering God, because God could really be using that and you could be doing damage by, you just don't know, just be very careful if you discourage, etc. And I'll bring, why I'm saying that in a moment, I just didn't want to forget. So I would encourage people, if you do not pray the rosary at all and you found this interesting, to try it for nine days. Try one. Don't try, you can try

four, I guess, if God is calling you to that. See, again, I don't want to like, I don't want to get in the way of what the Lord wants to do. But try one and try to pray it using the methods of mental prayer that I suggested. And in that mental prayer, one of the questions should be a prayer of consultation. Like in deep prayer, Lord, do you want this for me? Do you want me to keep coming back here and visiting you in these various stations of your life? And take stock of where that is in your life. That's one thing. If you have situations in your life that are dire, St. Alphonsus says, he who prays more,

if all things are the same, he who prays more gets more. Big favors require lots of grace. Sometimes our Lord has us to petition him time and time again and knock and knock and knock and knock. It could be that you have a serious circumstance in your life where you have children who are away from the faith, you feel like you failed as a parent, and you want to do more. You want to make some sort of reparation. Or you just see how the world is going, and you notice your mother Mary has come throughout history and said,

you know, children are falling in—not children, but my children are falling into hell like snowflakes because there's nobody to pray and do penance. And you feel a special call to a more rigorous prayer life, consider praying three. Consider praying three. I say that because Saint Dominic, Blessed Alan, Louis de Monfort, all of them made a big deal about the 150. How do I know if I should go from three to four? And let me take a step back. If you're going to do three, I don't think you should abandon the Luminous Mysteries. Just because of what I said earlier, Lexarondi, Lex Credendi,

another very, very important theological concept is a grace remembered is a grace renewed. Being present at the institution of the Eucharist mentally and emotionally will renew your confidence in God, will renew your faith in the real presence, being present at the wedding feast of Cana. It fills in a large section of Jesus's public ministry. So I don't think that you should abandon it. And also those, there are some people who are so rigid that they are not open to anything new, and this is why I offer that extreme utterance of caution, that they will go so far as to say, the Luminous Mysteries are not part of the Rosary.

Do not pray it. You better be very careful. There's a story from the life of St. Louis de Monfort where St. Dominic was preaching and a priest had gotten possessed because he was preaching against the rosary and discouraging people from praying the rosary. And in an essence, by saying, don't pray the luminous mysteries, you're telling somebody not to do something that God might want them to do. And you could find yourself opposing God. So just be very careful when you discourage something that doesn't harm them in any way,

shape, or form that if they're praying for, they're praying more than three, and Louis de Montfort, who prays more, gets more, I would just leave them alone. Let them discern their own life, don't come out. Yeah, so I just wanted to utter that caution. In prayer, again, all of this in consultation with God, in prayer, if you feel called to pray all of the mysteries of the Rosary, four, be open to it.

And that would be starting off your morning in the joyful mysteries, maybe scheduling a Rosary around lunchtime at noon, praying the Luminous, praying the sorrowful in the evening, maybe on your way home from work, which people can do, or praying at night before bed. But again, people might be called to do more. There's been seasons or there's been situations where somebody has had a medical emergency and they're like dire and you need an emergency. There's been times where I've just spent the whole afternoon

just begging God in prayer. So it's really something that each individual should discern and consult with God about. I have, and as I mentioned in our previous interview, I have noticed in my own life and the lives of many people that many graces happen with the fourth Rosary. Just one quick miracle story because I know you like miracles. Big fan. Big fan. Love miracles. You've never met anyone who's a bigger fan than me. Miracles are huge. So, and this is available on my YouTube channel

if somebody wants to like background check what I'm telling you. So I've got many friends who pray the full rosary and they're very lovely people. And there was a seminarian who was struggling with his vocation, did not wanna be a priest. There's something going on in his heart. He signed up to go to seminary for some reason, even though he didn't want to be. He felt like it was God's will, but he was really angry at God. I don't, I don't

want this vocation. I feel it. I'm being obedient to, but I don't want this. And so he was bringing down all the other seminarians. And so he was going to discern out and a friend of his said, I know you're going to turn out. How about you do a novena? You're praying one rosary. It sounds like you're ha you're in desolation. You're not, you don't have the presence of God. You're very frustrated.

How about do a novena of four rosaries for the next nine days? And if at the end you feel like God, it is literally God's will and you feel the presence of God about you leaving. So be it. So on the ninth day, he prays his fourth ros you feel the presence of God about you leaving, so be it. So on the ninth day, he prays his fourth rosary at the end of the fourth rosary. He's overwhelmed with the sense of the presence of the Virgin Mary and he receives a prayer in his heart where he feels like the mother of God says to him, hide in my womb. If you're going to be a priest, you must be a holy priest.

And the only place you can be a holy priest is in my womb. There I'll form you into another Christ." It was like a very specific, theologically sound, filled them with consolation and confidence. So he was filled with such a consolation and confidence that he wanted to share the rosary with everybody. And so he went, he saw a bunch of homeless people underneath the bridge. He went to the homeless people, brought them food and encouraged them, like, well, I'm going to be your friend. I'm going to come and bring you food often and taught them how to pray the rosary. You have this testimony on your channel?

Yeah, it's called Virgin Mary's Military Man. Would you send that link to Josiah so we can make sure that's in the description? Because it gets really crazy. So he teaches the rosary to these homeless men, and one time, and he's convinced them to pray it, and they're wearing miraculous metal, and they've got combat rosary, so you're like driving by, like,

this homeless guy is my kind of homeless guy. And so he's praying the rosary with them on a regular basis. In the middle of the rosary, one of the homeless men starts crying, weeping very hard. And so after the rosary, he's like, what's going on? Is everything okay? And he says, the Virgin Mary said that she loved me. I heard the most beautiful voice and she said that she loved me.

And I'm not sure if this gentleman, the seminarian, was aware or not, but this man had cancer eating up his leg and he didn't have the funds or the means to get it checked out. But he was going to a nearby hospital just randomly. And so he went into the hospital and the doctor was in utter shock and disbelief. And he says, your cancer, the guy, the homeless man's name is Joe. And I got the footage of him talking to Joe. Your cancer is gone. What?

Wow. It's incredible. Are you doing anything different? He's like, well, I'm still doing crack, but I started to pray the rosary. And this guy's cancer's completely gone. But even more miraculous than that is it after persistence in the rosary, this homeless man got off of crack, which is a very, very difficult drug. It's a, it's a, it's a. Bless him. It's a terrible drug.

Oh my gosh, it really ruins people. And so much so that the drug dealers who were selling to him came and beat him up one night because he refused to buy any more drugs. And he became an outcast among the other homeless people. And it was just like him and this other guy who prayed the rosary. So that's the Virgin Mary's military man.

So the promise was it'll help you to destroy vice, even serious vices. And I've just seen it when people take on the four that the grace of the fourth, it's very powerful. But again, our life is not easy. Your life is not going to suddenly change. If you have a diabolical obsession, you might even feel more attacks. If that's the case, persevere a little bit longer because a lot of times a diabolical obsession, it's like a mental problem where it feels like there's another force trying

to steer the steering wheel of your life off of the road. And if you have that, it will die out if you persevere in prayer. So if things should get worse, I would still pray a little bit longer just to see. Yeah. So that's my advice. Man, have you checked out Exodus 90 lately? If you've heard of Exodus 90 before, you're probably thinking of cold showers and Lent, but the Exodus 90 app offers so much more. It's a daily companion to help you grow closer to God and to become the man you want to be. This summer I'm following along with the app's daily scriptures, reflections and prayers. It's awesome. On the app you can

join the enthronement to the Sacred Heart, the Exodus 90 Summer Book Club and St. Michael's Lent, which starts August 15th and leads up to the feast of St. Michael the Archangel on September 29th. St. Michael's Lent is an ancient tradition of prayer and fasting popularized by St. Francis in the Middle Ages that's been lost in our time. Let's bring it back. Join the men of Exodus 90 and Father Carlos Martins, Catholic priest, exorcist and host of the exorcist

Files who will serve as our spiritual guide for St. Michael's Lent this year on the Exodus 90 app. We will awaken to invisible realities and enter into the spiritual battle that rages around us all the time. Go to Exodus90.com slash Matt for a 14 day free trial to the Exodus 90 app and to learn more about Saint Michael's Lent. That's Exodus 90 dot com slash Matt to join us for Saint Michael's Lent starting August 15. That's good. All right. Well, here's the final question. Suppose somebody's listening to

this and they say, look, it's great. I appreciate the road. I don't really want to pray the rosary too much for me right now, maybe one day. But are there other ways that I can develop a devotion to the Blessed Mother? Beautiful, beautiful question. So the key is to remember that Mary loves you and that Mary is your mother. And one of the first things that she did in a church-approved major Marian apparition was she gave the tilma to Juan Diego. And the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe is, are you not here?

Am I not your mother? Are you not wrapped in the folds of my mantle? And her image is a sign of her motherly love for you. And this image in particular, wow, it speaks to the Aztecs, it speaks to the Spaniards, it speaks to modern man with all the marvels that you can find out because of technology. So I would recommend that if you just want to open the door to having a relationship

with Mary, let's get a picture of her. Buy a picture, put it in your home. You don't have to say any prayers, but like the gospel of John, the wedding guests, they invited Mary into their home. Just say, blessed mother, I want you in my life. I'm going to put a picture of you there. I might not feel comfortable praying to you blessed mother, I want you in my life. I'm gonna put a picture of you there. I might not feel comfortable praying to you yet, but I want you here.

I want you in my home. And no doubt that she will begin to work and be active in your life. I like the Marian apparitions because they're inspired by the Holy Spirit. My friend, St. John Paul II, would say that even the best programs of evangelization are worthless if they don't have the cooperation of the Holy Spirit.

So, I like the Marian evangelization. An easy devotion to have to Our Lady is the brown scapular. Especially if you're nervous, maybe you're a cool kid at a cool university and you don't want to be the Jesus Mary freak, you can wear a brown scapular underneath your clothing, and the message of the brown scapular was very simple one. Anybody who wears this as a sign of their consecration shall not suffer eternal fire.

And for a Protestant that might sound, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is a very superstitious. It's not actually because a consecration means you're giving your life to the Virgin Mary. The first person to wear Mary was Jesus Christ. The second person of the Holy Trinity loved Mary so much that he put on her flesh and allowed his blood to float through his veins. And so for me to wear the brown scapular underneath my clothing on my bare naked skin is to say to Mary, Mary if I could have your blood flowing through my veins and your flesh on my flesh like Jesus I would, but I can't.

So please accept me as your child. And again, San Alfonso says, no child of Mary shall ever be damned. And I have seen, if you've got a child who's away from the church, I've seen this miracle repeated many times where there is an individual who's been away from the church. You introduce to them or convince them to wear the brown scapular. And in a hidden subtle way, like a mother, like our lady would do when feeding a child,

their faith begins to strengthen. I've seen this happen in my own life before I was religious whatsoever. I received a brown scapular and I noticed that after that, my disposition towards religion and towards God began to change and also in the lives of people who I've given the scapular to. So if a parent has a child who's been away from the faith for a long time, I'll share with you one circumstance that might work for you. So in one particular case, I had

a very good friend of mine who had been away from the church for whatever reasons for many many years and for Christmas I gave him some AirPods Pro and I put a really kind card about how much I love him and how his friendship How important he is to me and I included a well-made quality brown scapular and I said I know that you are not Inter-religious things and this means nothing to you, but it would mean a lot to me if you would wear it. And shortly after wearing it, uh, when he was invited to go to mass at Christmas, he went to mass at Christmas and around the time of adult confirmation, because I teach adult

confirmation, I was like, buddy, you don't really know Catholicism in order for you to reject it. You haven't looked into it. I know because you don't have a religious education. Where would you have gotten it from television? I was like, consider just coming to my class and hearing the church and how reasonable it is. Objectively, you don't have to become Catholic. You just go and you hear it and tell me what you think I'd like. I would like to know as a teacher what I could improve upon. And around that time where everybody else in the class was confessing and preparing to receive the sacrament. I said, you know, you go to confession one time, a life of sin is gone.

And he made his confession, received the sacrament of confirmation, lives a life of profound grace. He's a very devoted Catholic, loves his Catholic faith. He's one of the most generous people I know. But it all started because Our Lady got her foot in the door and slowly but surely provided him the necessary graces because as she promised, no child of Mary shall ever be damned. Of course, it's not a superstitious thing.

Some people will say, well, you got to get enrolled in order for it to take the full effect. Sure. Getting enrolled is good. I recommend people getting enrolled, but our lady isn't a legalist. If you're wearing a scapular as a sign and you say, blessed mother, I give my life to you or I, not even I give my life to you or I, I, not even I give my life to you. I accept you as my mother, take care of me.

Um, I use the analogy of my wedding ring. I'm married. If I take off the ring, I'm still married. This is a sign of a deeper relationship. Should I wear this because it's important to me and it's important to my wife and it's a good reminder. Absolutely. But it's not a superstitious thing. This is just a symbol of my relationship. And then besides putting up a picture in your home, besides considering wearing the brown

scapular, the Virgin Mary appeared to Catherine Labere in 1830 and showed her an image of the Virgin Mary stepping on the head of the serpent with her hands outstretched with rays coming out of her fingers with a prayer around it saying, Oh, Mary, conceive without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. And on the back is a cross with an M at the bottom and two hearts and 12 stars. This is basically a gospel. The book of Genesis, the woman against the serpent, and then the book of Revelation, the woman clothed with the sun with the crown of 12 stars, the Gospel of John, the crucifixion with Mary at the foot of the cross, the sacred heart, the immaculate heart, and Mary said to Catherine

that anybody who wears this medal, especially if they wear it with confidence, will receive great graces. So, it doesn't necessitate any extra work. We, wearing it with confidence. That word is very important. Confide confidence. So that would mean if I'm in a bad situation saying, blessed mother, I know you got this. I know you're watching over me. I know you're taking care of me. I know you know the scriptural reference of the arc of the covenant and how the Israelites would take the arc of the covenant into battle.

And when they would circle Jericho, which represents a city of sin, uh, of the covenant and how the Israelites would take the arc of the covenant into battle. And when they would circle Jericho, which represents the city of sin, uh, after they had the arc of the covenant, circlet that city of sin, these walls were torn down. They would win their battles against the pagan God or the demon Dagon. Uh, the false God was crushed. Uh, the, the Philistines died of hemorrhoids, which is a very humiliating way to die. Our Lady humiliates her enemies.

I bring that up because when you bring an image of Our Lady, it's like you're kind of bringing Our Lady into the circumstance. And so this is a very good sacramental. Not, I don't remember that I'm wearing this. Like do you know I gave a miraculous medal to one of the band members of Cradle of Filth? I did not know that, but I'm wearing this. Like do you know I gave a miraculous metal to one of the band members of cradle of filth? I did not know that but tell me about this.

No cradle of filth sounds like a bad band. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I I'm not going to I'm not going to kind of give anything away because I don't want this person to be called out. Of course, if there was an individual member of the band cradle of filth and I had just bought this beautiful antique French miraculous metal that was sent to me from France. And I just felt I should give it to this person. Got to obey.

And I did and they received it and apparently wear it. That's incredible. That's the end of the story. I've heard. Or maybe it's not, but I don't know what the end of the story is. Exactly, no, I've heard many success stories. Maximilien Colby would give out miraculous metals.

Mother Teresa would carry bags of miraculous medals. And I have seen friends giving out miraculous medals and the people receiving them, it touches their heart. The Holy Spirit comes upon him, they'll start to cry. But I find that this is a good symbol, not necessarily for me, but for other people. So I bring up the story of the Israelites because we live in a culture where it is not common to see religious images in public places.

And although I might not be able to proclaim my faith at the bank or in the grocery store, I don't necessarily need to. If I'm wearing a religious symbol, and in this case, the image of Our Lady, and there's an atheist behind the cash register, maybe somebody who is struggling with their identity, if you know what I mean, and they see my medal, they experience my love and my kindness, and I don't have to preach to them. It's like they're taking this as a symbol, Mary is a Catholic symbol. They're taking this as a Catholic loving them. And maybe for them, they are desperate and they're in despair and they need a sign from

God and their life is falling apart. And Mary just used me smiling as a means to communicate to them. And I've had my life saved by wearing the miraculous. I would not be, I don't believe I would be alive if I wasn't wearing this miraculous metal. I went to world youth day in Brazil in 2013 and I was supposed to give a presentation on the media. And remember I had mentioned previously that at my world youth day in Spain, I felt a strong

call from St. Dominic to promote the rosary. I had not done it yet. So when I was at World Youth Day in Spain, I was given an opportunity to present and I chose to present on the media and Catholic's role in the media. And I worked in the hotel lobby all night long. And the moment I finished my presentation,

a hand reached across my table, took my cell phone, I turned my head and there was a hard force on my head. This person, I didn't know it, but they had a gun to my head. And so when you don't know what's on your face and I have a very choleric temperament. And so when there's an injustice, I like a righteous indignation for better or for worse fires up inside of me. So I look and I was like, Oh heck no. Was going through my mind. You are not going to rob me.

And so there was a force in me without thinking that began to fight and struggle for this weapon and you know, they say when you're about to die, that your life flashes before your eyes. I always thought that that was something flaking movies, but my life flashed before my eyes. And before I leave the house, my wife always says these words. I wish I could testify to it. Everybody who knows my wife knows that she says these words. Don't embarrass me.

Don't do anything stupid. And my response is always if I'm leaving this house, I can assure you I'm going to do stupid things. And if you found out about them, you would be embarrassed. So I've got a gun and this thought and me leaving my house for like the last time is like in my mind and I've got a young son at the time. Uh, all that's in my mind and I'm, I'm trying to kill another man. And if I don't kill him, he might shoot me at this point because I've already started like testosterone is flying endorphins. All the stuff is charging through our bodies. So I realized like this is not good. I'm going to die or he's going to die. And if I kill him, that's also not going to be good. Like it's not going to end well for me. I'm in Brazil. All of a sudden

it came to my mind, Mary, I let go of it. And I thought to my mind, Mary, and I did not purposely let go of the gun. My hands released from the gun. I dropped to my knees. The gun goes straight to my chest. I begin to sing the Ave Maria. I do not sing. Oh, I cannot sing. I began singing this.

The man looks at my chest and takes off running I I believe that it was the miraculous medal that kept me alive Because it would look very bad for the Virgin Mary to believe this story I how is it only hearing this story now if I were you like hi, this is about the rosary Here's what happened to me in Brazil. I've got a lot of stories That's amazing. I even told our lady after that. I was like, great story. Please, can you give me stories that don't necessitate almost dying? But I learned a very valuable lesson specifically about doing God's will because after that, this was the hand of God.

I finished my presentation. I hit save. The moment I hit save, you send in a gunman to steal the presentation. So I went to a church nearby. I went in there. I was like, what are you doing? Like I recognize the fingerprints of God. What are you doing? You stole my presentation. And again, I'm not hearing voices, but in the depth of my soul, I felt like he was saying, yes, whose presentation were you giving? Yours or mine? Like my presentation?

Okay. How about you talk about what I want you to talk about, which is my mother and the most Holy Rosary. And again, all good things work for those who love the Lord. The hotel reimbursed me more than enough in cash for all of the things that were stolen. Financially, I was fine because I had insurance on that stuff as well, but they were just trying to keep me silent, so they gave me more cash. I'm not going to turn it away. I had bills to pay, so that was very nice. That was the

first time that I began to preach the Rosary publicly and Marian devotion publicly and to great success. Because at that point, I could only share what I had experienced in my own life, which was liberation from sin, particularly vices like lust, and the audience that I was speaking to, although a very small audience, they really resonated with them. And so it was just very clear, you have a choice to make. Do you want to live for yourself or do you want to possibly follow this plan that I might have for your life?

That's amazing. So I would say if you're nervous about Our Lady, give her a chance. She's not going to take you away from Christ. That would be like me saying, Matt, does loving your wife take you away from Christ? How often do you talk to your wife? Are you talking to her too much? That would be the most absurd question. Talking to your mother, if I ask you that, do you talk to your mom too much?

Is it getting in your way with your relationship with Jesus? Is it possible? Maybe, I guess. I'm not sure. I haven't even thought about that. Our Lady does not want to take you from Christ. She wants to lead you to the heart of God. That's her whole desire.

She formed him. She lost him. Her ability to call you my son or my daughter cost her Jesus Christ. She wants nothing more than for you to be conformed to him. Do not be afraid. Accept Mary into your home as the angel said to St. Joseph. Amen. Let's close it on that because that was, you can't beat that, I don't think.

That was very powerful. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Where can people find you? Gaby After Hours on YouTube. Link in the description below. And I've already mentioned two books, my little book on the Rosary

and Mary in Consecration with Aquinas that I wrote with Father Gregory Pine, that people can get 10 books, Amazon, wherever. Is there another? I am also writing a book. It's going to be called the power of the rosary and my desire for it, even though we'll see, cause I haven't finished writing it is to kind of fill in the gaps where Louie de Monfort left off introduction of these various saints, what they taught the apparitions and many

of the things we covered today, but in a little bit more detail. Excellent. Gabby, thank you very much. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Thank you very much.