A story for every day...
The Rosary is the most powerful rescue in times of danger
It is not so much a question here of the evils of the soul as of those of the body. However, since the soul and the body are so closely united, Heaven has the custom of using the wonders it works in the temporal order for eternal salvation.
At the end of the 19th century, Bishop Claude Marie Dubuis of Galveston reported that a young American girl of fourteen years of age had been kidnapped by a group of Amerindian savages and taken into their camp. The child was Catholic and so was her mother, but her father was an unbeliever.
Determined to free his daughter, he was preparing his weapons, when his wife begged him to hang the rosary received from the missionary around his neck and to recite the little prayer that he had been hearing every day for several months. The father consented and set out on the trail of the kidnappers, his revolver at his side, his rosary around his neck and his rifle on the pommel of his horse’s saddle. When night came and mixed its gloom with the darkness of the forest, he thought of the rosary, tried to recite it, then hesitated. Finally, overcome by the sad and double memory of his captive daughter and his grieving wife, he began again and continued to recite the Ave Maria with perseverance.
Eight miles, or a little more than three leagues, separated him from Mary, his daughter, who was being held in the Comanche camp. There, in a sort of agony, the poor child kept imploring the Mother of God while saying the rosary. At about two o’clock after midnight, Mary saw a young man with a light approaching her, who looked exactly like her older brother who had remained in her father’s home. He said to her softly, “Mary, follow me; your father is eight miles away in this forest.”
Indeed, before dawn broke, the girl was in her father’s arms, and the young man had disappeared. The whole family is persuaded that the Guardian Angel of the poor captive was sent by the Blessed Virgin, and that, to inspire her with confidence, he took the form of her brother. Since then, the whole house has never failed to recite the rosary together every day, and we did not need to instruct the father any longer before baptizing him. Who will not admire in this circumstance the visible protection of Mary, in return for the recitation of the Rosary? What confidence should this example not inspire in us!
