This article is taken from the booklet “Our Glorious Faith and How To Lose It”
written by Fr. Hugh Thwaites, S.J. It contains different stories of how
we can lose our faith but this paper will deal only with the Holy
Rosary. Fr. Thwaites’ words on this subject are as follows:
Without
delay now, I want to talk about my theme. It seems to me that a
principal cause of the loss of faith is the dropping off in the practice
of the family rosary.
In Austria, after World War
II, there was a complete collapse of vocations. One year, apparently,
no one at all entered the seminaries. So the bishops held a synod, to
find out how it could be that this had happened. The conclusion they
reached was that the war had so disrupted family life that the
centuries-old practice of the rosary in the home had stopped, and had
just not started up again. This is my experience, too; when the rosary
goes, the faith soon collapses.
I remember someone
telling me of a friend of his, a great Catholic, the pillar of the
parish, whose children had all lapsed, one after the other. They had all
fallen away from the sacraments and from attending Mass. So I said to
him, “I wouldn’t mind betting that your friend had been brought up to
recite the family rosary when he was a boy, and that his children
haven’t.” The next time I saw him, he said that this was indeed true.
His friend had recited the family rosary at home when he was a boy, and
when he had got married and started his own family they ll said the
rosary. But then, one evening when they were about to start the rosary,
one of the children switched on the television, and that was that. The
custom of the family rosary was dropped, and in due course, they gave up
the practice of the faith.
After this life, that
one unrebuked action will be seen to have affected the eternity of many
people. God sent His Mother to Fatima to tell us that we had to say the
rosary every day. There were no other prayers She asked us to say.
Accordingly, we should do what She asked.
A layman
I met once who did not say his rosary told me that he read the breviary
every day. That is fine. It is what priests have to do. It is the
prayer of the Church. So in a way it is better than the rosary. But it
is not what Our Lady asked for. She asked for the rosary. If a mother
sends her child to the shop for a bottle of milk, and he comes back
instead with ice cream, is she pleased? In a way, ice cream is better
than milk, but it is not what she asked for.
In
that most holy home at Nazareth, do you think that Our Lady had to ask
for anything twice? If we want in any way to be like Jesus, we must do
what His Mother asks. If we do not, can we expect things to go right? We
cannot with impunity disobey the Mother of God. She knows better than
we the dangers of this spiritual warfare. She sees more clearly than we
do the dangers that beset us. She warns us: You must say your rosary
every day.
If the garage mechanic warns you that
your car needs repairing or else it will break down, surely you would
heed that warning. If the gas gauge warns you that you need more gas, do
you do nothing about it? And if Our Lady comes to Fatima and tells us,
not just once but six times, that we must say the rosary every day, do
we disregard that warning? If we do, we have only ourselves to blame
when we find that our children have lapsed from the faith.
I
know that Fatima is only a private revelation, but nevertheless the
Church has endorsed it, and that makes it rash for us to disregard it.
If the Church informs us that Our Lady really did come to Fatima and
tell us these things, then we must harken to her words. It really seems
to me that those Catholics who do not take Fatima seriously and say the
rosary every day in their homes are very akin to the Jews who laughed at
Jeremiah. If God sends us His prophets and we do not take them
seriously – well, we have the whole of the Old Testament to tell us what
happens as a result. But at Fatima, God sent us, not His prophets, but
His Immaculate Mother. So I think that the abandonment of the family
rosary is a main reason why so many Catholics have lost the faith. It
seems to me that the Church of the future is going to consist solely of
those families who have been faithful to the rosary. But there will be
vast numbers of people whose families used to be Catholic.
In
my work of going round visiting homes, I have seen this conclusion
borne out time and again. Homes can be transformed by starting the
recitation of the daily rosary. I remember a woman telling me that she
could not thank me enough for having nagged her into starting it; it had
united her family as never before. And I remember another home where I
called. There was a strange tension there: the children were silent and
the wife seemed withdrawn, but the husband was willing to start the
family rosary. When I called back again a couple of months later, the
atmosphere was quite different. The children were chatty and the wife
was friendly, and the husband walked down the road with me afterwards
and said how amazing it was that the home was so much happier.
One
reason, I think, why the daily rosary makes for a happy home, is this.
From what some possessed people have said, and from what some of the
saints have said, it seems certain that demons fear the rosary. It makes
their hair stand on end, so to speak. Holy water certainly drives them
out, but they come back again. The daily rosary drives them out and
keeps them out. It is rather like living in an old house where there are
mice everywhere. The only way to get rid of them is to bring cats. If
you get a couple of cats, after a week or two there simply will not be
any more mice. Mice fear the very smell of cats. And in a home where the
rosary is said every day, after a time the demons realize they are
impotent in front of Our Lady, and go elsewhere.
This
must be one reason why, as they say, “the family that prays together
stays together.” In that home, utterly free of evil spirits, there is an
atmosphere one does not find outside. In a demon-infested city like
London, where I live, such a home is an oasis of God’s grace, and people
find a comfort and peace there which they enjoy greatly. We human
beings are not meant to live in the company of demons, but with God and
with the angels and saints in heaven.
So, as I see
it, in this effort we are making to keep the faith and pass it on, the
practice of the rosary is absolutely indispensable. Whatever else a
person may do, even though they go to Mass every day, they still need to
say the rosary in their home. It is the medicine our Mother has told us
to take, to keep our faith strong and healthy.
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