Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. My first rosary was a beautiful rosary that my Godmother gave me. I believed it originally belonged to someone in her husband's family. I think I used it once during a summer camp retreat. During the retreat, I remember holding my rosary and fumbling with the beads.
Prayer is a powerful thing.
The Rosary has been a major influence in Roman Catholic thought for over 500 years while paving the way for a greater understanding of the mystery of Christ celebrated within family prayer. The Rosary is the tradition-distilled essence of Christian devotion in which vocal and mental prayer unite the whole person in effective and purposeful meditation on the central mysteries of Christian belief. The Rosary thus joins the human race to God through Mary whom God chose from all time for the specific purposes of mother and intercessor. The historical development of the Rosary begins with the desert fathers and their need to find a system to ease their laborious and repetitive prayer life. It is generally agreed by scholars that a system for counting repetitive prayers began with the Hindus some nine centuries before Christ.