What gets converted in conversion are all the fractured aspects of our past, present, and future.
What does the Rosary have to do with conversion? Ever since the addition of the luminous mysteries to the Rosary in 2002, the theme of conversion stands out more prominently in the recitation of the Rosary. For example, the third luminous mystery is "The Preaching of the Kingdom and the Call to Conversion."
And even though in the past we may have experienced a conversion committing us to the Faith, ongoing daily conversion remains an essential element of every Christian’s life. For authentic conversion entails more than just turning away from sin. As Pope Benedict XVI explained, conversion to Christ means “exiting the illusion of self-sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need — the need of others and of God.”
The mysteries of the Rosary directly reflect this. For example, we need God to send us his Son in the flesh to save us from our own inability, to strengthen us to carry our cross, to feed us with Himself in the Eucharist, and to bless us with the intercession of the Mother of God, Queen of heaven and earth. When we pray the Rosary united with the Blessed Virgin Mary, our illusions of self-sufficiency drop away as we accept our own need for what the mysteries of the Lord’s life uniquely provide.
What gets converted in conversion are all the fractured aspects of our past, present, and future. One spiritual writer describes conversion as “the transformation of all our fragmented experiences, all our disjointed and painful memories, all our divisive and frustrating moments of unachieved hopes, yearnings, and dreams, as well as our failures and loss of self-esteem or sense of worth resulting from the destructive power of evil” (M. Gaudoin-Parker). The Mother of God accompanies us in the Rosary to walk us away from all that darkness.
If, as Pope St. John Paul II claimed, a converted person returns to God “through evaluating earthly realities in the unfailing light of his truth,” then the Rosary is the ideal way for us to evaluate our own individual earthly realities through the light of God’s truth it gives. For conversion is not merely about “being better” — real conversion consists in conversion to the design of God. Conversion means accepting that, in the design of God — as the mysteries of the Rosary exemplifies — sometimes we get lost … moments of want often precede the outpouring of God’s lavish generosity ... suffering has meaning and is redemptive … and out of death God raises up new life. Daily conversion intensifies our embrace of divine Providence.
An astonishing conversion
A truly astonishing Rosary conversion story is that of St. Bartolo Longo — today hailed as the “Apostle of the Rosary.” Bartolo Longo was born in 1841 to a well-to-do Catholic family in southern Italy. After his mother died when he was ten, his life began to disintegrate. As a university student, Bartolo got caught up in anarchistic fads. He abandoned his Catholic Faith and embraced the occult, becoming a satanic priest.
Yet, that decision plunged him into a state of severe depression and anxiety. A friend urged him to talk to a Dominican priest, who encouraged Bartolo to pray the Rosary. After a few weeks, Bartolo returned to the Church. He spent the rest of his life promoting the Rosary, caring for the poor, and evangelizing through the Rosary, especially by building the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin Mary of the Holy Rosary in Pompeii, Italy. Bartolo Longo was canonized a saint in 2025.
St. Bartolo once wrote: “Just as two friends who often meet together end up resembling each other even in their way of life, so too we, by speaking familiarly with Jesus and the Virgin through the meditation of the mysteries of the Rosary, can become like them and learn from their sublime examples to live humbly, poorly, hiddenly, patiently, and perfectly.” Conversion to the designs of God.
Amazingly, St. John Paul II discovered the idea for the luminous mysteries reading the writings of Bartolo Longo, whom he beatified in 1980.
“Every day at every hour we must be converted — turned back to God from whom the impetuous current of life continually turns us away” (A. Sertillanges). The Rosary does that for us.
One graced way to deepen your devotion to the Rosary is to attend the upcoming annual Dominican Rosary Pilgrimage to be held on September 26, 2026, at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. As in past years, thousands of pilgrims from across the country will gather to pray the Rosary together, to listen to talks, to celebrate the Eucharist, and to entrust their intentions to Our Lady, asking to be led more deeply to Christ through her intercession.
