The most important reason for strongly encouraging the practice of the Rosary is that it represents a most effective means of fostering among the faithful that commitment to the contemplation of the Christian mystery that I have proposed in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte as a genuine "training in holiness": "What is needed is a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of prayer." Inasmuch as contemporary culture — even amid so many indications to the contrary — has witnessed the flowering of a new call for spirituality due also to the influence of other religions, it is more urgent than ever that our Christian communities should become "genuine schools of prayer."
"The Rosary is my favorite prayer," says Fr. Anthony Gramlich, MIC. "It's easy and simple to pray, a meditation on the life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Mary. If you want to know the Son, you go through the mother. That's why I love it, because through the Rosary, the Blessed Mother gives me tremendous insight on how I can lead a better life."
Jesus invited us to turn to God with insistence and the confidence that we will be heard: "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you" (Mt 7:7). The basis for this power of prayer is the goodness of the Father, but also the mediation of Christ Himself (cf. 1Jn 2:1) and the working of the Holy Spirit who "intercedes for us" according to the will of God (cf. Rom 8:26-27). For "we do not know how to pray as we ought" (Rom 8:26), and at times we are not heard "because we ask wrongly" (cf. Jas 4:2-3).
When in the Rosary we plead with Mary, the sanctuary of the Holy Spirit (cf. Lk 1:35), she intercedes for us before the Father who filled her with grace and before the Son born of her womb, praying with us and for us.