The Second Vatican Council asks "all the children of the Church to foster with generosity the cult of the Blessed Virgin (...); to esteem highly the practices and exercises of piety towards her recommended by the Magisterium in the course of the centuries". And we well know how insistently the Church has recommended the recitation of the Holy Rosary. Concretely, it is "one of the most excellent and effective common prayers that the Christian family is invited to pray", and in many cases it will be a goal of Christian life for many families. Sometimes it will be enough to begin with the recitation of only one mystery, perhaps taking advantage of such singular occasions as the month of May, the visit to a shrine or hermitage of the Virgin.... Much is gained if one begins to teach it to one's children from the time they are small.
The family Rosary is a source of good for everyone, because it attracts the Lord's mercy to the home. Both the recitation of the Angelus and the Rosary," said John Paul II, "should be for every Christian, and even more so for Christian families, a spiritual oasis in the course of the day, a source of courage and confidence. And a few days later, the Holy Father insisted once again: "jealously preserve that tender and trusting love of Our Lady which characterizes you. Never let it grow cold (...). Be faithful to the traditional exercises of Marian piety in the Church: the Angelus prayer, the month of Mary and, in a very special way, the Rosary. May the beautiful custom of praying the Rosary as a family be revived".
Today we can examine in our prayer whether we use the Holy Rosary as a "powerful weapon" to obtain from Our Lady those graces and favors that we need so much, whether we pray it with the necessary attention, whether we try to delve into its very rich content, particularly by pausing and meditating for a few moments on each of the mysteries, whether we try to get our relatives and friends to begin to pray it and thus to treat and love our Heavenly Mother more.