The Rosary: The Ultimate Life Hack
“The holy Rosary is a powerful weapon. Use it with confidence and you’ll be amazed at the results.”
— St. Josemaría Escrivá (1902-1975)
Santuário de Fátima, Portugal
There’s a low-effort, rewarding way to verify whether Catholicism is true: Pray the Rosary for assistance with life’s challenges and for lasting joy and peace. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
By Chris and the Editorial Staff
No one is guaranteed tomorrow. I was reminded of this a few weeks ago when my mother recounted an incident to me. As she drove that morning through a park, a large tree suddenly collapsed within several yards of her car, startling my mother and causing bystanders to scream. I’m vastly grateful no one was harmed, especially my mother, as it’s easy to consider how differently things could have gone down (the tree, specifically!).
Our mortality is an ever-present concern, even if it’s sometimes easy to forget our time in the world is short and unpredictable. If you were to die today, where do you think you would go? And how sure are you of the answer?
While this website presents evidence in favor of Catholicism, it doesn’t provide any hard proof. As a data scientist who grew up with a strong appreciation of mathematical and scientific rigor, I’ve tried to apply this same mindset to the topic of religion. Like any probabilistic argument, however, the collective evidence is only suggestive of the truth and cannot provide absolute certainty. Some of us might wonder: Are all these miracles merely a combination of coincidences, elaborate hoaxes, or other phenomena with a naturalistic explanation? We could speculate how future scientific breakthroughs might fully explain the conundrum of the fine-tuned universe and demystify our seemingly transcendent qualities, like morality and free will.
But is there a non-trivial chance that Catholicism is true? We may find its doctrines counterintuitive, complicated, and possibly even unpleasant—but truth often is. Is it remotely plausible that the one-billion-plus believers worldwide—including highly intelligent Catholics like Harvard professor Karin Öberg and mathematician Evan O’Dorney—are correct that a god created us and the cosmos? That this god is the source for our deeply ingrained desire for meaning and purpose? Perhaps it isn’t entirely absurd to believe our eternal fate hinges on how much love we’ve given to this god and our neighbors, a love measured according to a moral code that values humility, charity, mercy, and justice.
“When we walk the streets, in whatever part of the world, the sisters carry in their hands the crown of the rosary. The Virgin is our strength and our protection.”
— St. Teresa of Calcutta (1910-1997), recipient of the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize
Even if you believe in atheism with, say, 95% certainty and estimate that Catholicism has only 1% odds of being true, the most rational move is to immediately verify whether this belief system is true or false. After all, Catholicism asserts that following Christ’s teachings and living a Christian life, to whatever extent permitted by our circumstances, is the only path to Heaven, the place of eternal union with God: “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me’” (John 14:6). And, once again, we’re not guaranteed tomorrow. So unless we have virtually 100% certainty that atheism is true and Catholicism is false, it’s easy to see that inaction is dangerous, and increasingly so the longer it lasts. (By the way, if you think the evidence presented by other religions is also compelling, then it certainly makes sense to carefully evaluate them as well).
Fortunately, you can verify Catholicism’s claims with only modest effort by praying the Rosary, a meditative prayer introduced by St. Dominic in the 13th century. And—as people usually do with prayer—you can request assistance with challenges in your life through prayer, no matter how difficult they may seem.
First of all, what is prayer? The Catholic Church defines it as “a vital and personal relationship with the living and true God”:
‘Prayer is the raising of one’s mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God.’ But when we pray, do we speak from the height of our pride and will, or ‘out of the depths’ of a humble and contrite heart? He who humbles himself will be exalted; humility is the foundation of prayer.
An important takeaway is that when we pray, we aren’t mindlessly reciting some magic formula while pondering what we’re going to have for dinner. Effective prayer requires speaking humbly from the heart. Furthermore, praying is analogous to talking to a parent. After all, the god of Christianity is the creator and “father” of mankind. Just as a parent is not a vending machine that gives children whatever they ask, the outcome of prayer depends on the moral goodness of what’s being requested. Prayer may yield unexpected results that are sometimes of far greater benefit than what we had originally hoped for.
“St. Dominic Receives the Rosary” by Plautilla Nelli (1524-1588)
“Our Lady has never refused me a grace through the recitation of the rosary.”
— St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina (1887-1968)
The Church has promoted the Rosary as the most powerful and effective prayer aside from the Mass (which practicing Catholics attend every Sunday) and the Liturgy of the Hours (which is typically prayed by the clergy). In various Marian apparitions such as at Fátima, Portugal, Mary, the mother of Christ, was said to entreat mankind to pray the Rosary daily to achieve world peace. Pope St. Leo XIII (1810-1903) commented:
The Rosary is the most excellent form of prayer and the most efficacious means of attaining eternal life. It is the remedy for all our evils, the root of all our blessings. There is no more excellent way of praying.
The Rosary lasts about 15-20 minutes, often achieved with the aid of a string of prayer beads. It consists of verbal petitions to God and Mary (in the form of a prescribed number of Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and Glory Be prayers), and is done while mentally contemplating various events in the lives of Mary and Christ. But why Mary? The Catechism of the Catholic Church says of her:
By her complete adherence to the Father’s will, to his Son’s redemptive work, and to every prompting of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin Mary is the Church’s model of faith and charity. Thus she is a ‘preeminent and ... wholly unique member of the Church’; indeed, she is the ‘exemplary realization’ of the Church […] We believe that the Holy Mother of God, the new Eve, Mother of the Church, continues in heaven to exercise her maternal role on behalf of the members of Christ.
It is in praying the Rosary that we can benefit from Mary’s exalted status to obtain powerful, compassionate help. Catholics recite this particular prayer to bolster their faith and enlist God’s help with their struggles in life. 101 Inspirational Stories of the Rosary, for example, provides a compilation of non-anonymous testimonies from people who witnessed the power of the Rosary during troubled pregnancies, marital strife, gruesome accidents, financial distress, severe illness, and other challenges.
The outcome isn’t always necessarily a miraculous cure, but it can still be vastly beneficial; sometimes we obtain the strength to gracefully persevere through desperate circumstances. This is exactly what Tammy Peterson, wife of famous Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, prayed for after she was diagnosed in 2019 with Bellini duct carcinoma, a rare form of kidney cancer with an exceptionally high mortality rate, and given 10 months to live. Inspired by a Catholic friend, she prayed the Rosary every day not for physical healing but for the strength to bear the illness gracefully. That said, she told her husband she believed she would get better by their 30th wedding anniversary that year—and she did. Tammy Peterson was eventually baptized in the Catholic Church on Easter of 2024.
“It would be impossible to name all the many saints who discovered in the rosary a genuine path to growth in holiness.”
— Pope St. John Paul II (1920-2005)
The power of the Rosary is also visible in historic events. In WWII, four Jesuit priests survived the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, Japan, despite living at the hypocenter of the attack, and they did not even suffer from a trace of radiation poisoning. Although doctors who cared for them after the attack warned the radiation they’d received would produce serious lesions and premature death, the diagnosis never materialized—even though the priests were examined by dozens of doctors some 200 times in the years that followed. In 1976, Fr. Hubert Schiffer, one of the priests, shared his story at the Eucharistic Congress in Philadelphia and confirmed that the other Jesuits still lived without any serious ailments. “We believe that we survived because we were living the message of Fatima,” he explained. “We lived and prayed the Rosary daily in that home.”
Since my conversion to Catholicism in 2019, I’ve prayed the Rosary daily. I’ve successfully leveraged it to break free from unhealthy, addictive habits and navigate complex challenges at work and home. My wife uses it, too, even as an aid for finding breakthroughs in logistical problems, e.g., to find affordable accommodations in Manhattan for her relatives during peak travel season. Most importantly, the Rosary has strengthened our Christian faith, which gives us lasting joy, peace, gratitude, and fulfillment that cannot be provided by anything in the world, including financial status, career achievements, or relationships. To echo the words of Pope St. Pius X (1835-1914):
The Rosary is the most beautiful and the most rich in graces of all prayers; it is the prayer that touches most the Heart of the Mother of God … and if you wish peace to reign in your homes, recite the family Rosary.
Naturally, you might still be skeptical as to whether the Rosary has any supernatural effects. Is it anything more than a meditation? Are these success stories a result of correlation and not causation? The result of coincidences?
There’s only one way to find out. Try it for yourself.
It’s as simple as following along on YouTube, on an app like Hallow (much of the content requires a subscription but the Rosary section is free), or even via a simple PDF. You don’t have to recite it all at once, and you can pray it anywhere. Even if you’re a staunch atheist, try to suspend your disbelief for just a few moments. Begin by humbly asking for help with whatever challenges have been weighing you down, and then say the prayers with sincerity and an open mind, to the best of your ability.
For maximal effect, try it out every day. Christ promised persistence in prayer pays off, and the Rosary is no exception:
“There is no surer means of calling down God’s blessings upon the family ... than the daily recitation of the Rosary.” — Pope Ven. Pius XII
At the very least, you’ll gain therapeutic benefits through meditation that are well worth a small investment of time. And if Catholicism is true, then your devotion to these prayers will also be answered in ways that cannot be easily chalked up to mere coincidence. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
The fruits of practicing the Rosary have convinced me, along with many generations of its practitioners worldwide, that it is by far the greatest of all life hacks. It’s a reliable method for obtaining the peace that surpasses all understanding (Philippians 4:7), along with the certainty of God’s love for us.
This website can’t prove to you that Catholicism is true, but the Rosary can. Don’t wait to give God a chance. Your life is about to change.
Fr. Hubert Schiffer left, with Enola Gay aircraft commander Robert A. Lewis in 1951
“There is no problem, I tell you, no matter how difficult it is, that we cannot resolve by the prayer of the Holy Rosary.”
– Ven. Lúcia dos Santos (1907-2005), the last surviving visionary at Fátima