https://open.spotify.com/episode/6BvBIj0QFN6tbzkjZ2EZYU?si=EIwTWATRQGSv0wGpDqJYuw
Most people think that “praying the rosary” is praying five decades of one of the sets of mysteries. If you go to a public rosary in a church, they will very likely be praying five decades of the mystery assigned for the day, i.e. the Joyful Mysteries on a Saturday. But, the rosary has always been considered as all 15 mysteries (Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious) and it was formally defined as this in 1569 by Pope Pius V in his papal bull, Consueverant Romani Pontifices. It wasn’t until 2002 that Pope John Paul II added the Luminous mysteries, but he stated that these mysteries were optional, so the rosary was still the original 15 mysteries.
So, we have the choice of praying 15 or 20 mysteries of the rosary each day. The Fifteen Promises of the Rosary still apply only to the original rosary. Nothing has been changed here. So always pray these and you can add the Luminous after.
I’ll show you one way to pray the entire rosary daily which will only take around 50 minutes. You might think that you don’t have enough time to pray that long. You can probably do five mysteries, but not all 15 every day.
Many articles and podcasts tell you how to do this. Most give the typical advice to schedule 3 slots per day where you can quietly pray and focus on the mysteries. Great advice for very disciplined people with good time management skills. Most people won’t be able to maintain this on a long term however.
One of the problems people have is that they don’t want to do something unless they can do it well. This must be especially true with prayer, so you need perfect focus and attention. Since you can’t give perfect focus to the entire rosary, they think that it’s better not to pray this at all.
G.K. Chesterton said that “if a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly”. Our Lady in many apparitions asked us to pray rosaries. She never asked us to pray perfect rosaries. So, it’s ok to pray a rosary if you’re distracted.
Praying an entire rosary every day is so easy that it should be against Canon Law. You might be thinking that you don’t have time to pray for 50 minutes, but you do have time. You have an enormous amount of time that you may not be aware of. You can pray 5-10 decades of the rosary on your commute to and from work. You can pray 5 mysteries on your lunch break. You can pray mysteries when you’re waiting in a line. You can pray mysteries while your grocery shopping with your wife and your pushing the cart (your wife prefers you to be silent anyways while she’s spending your money). There are many idle times throughout your day when you can be praying.
If you can only pray a few decades and not all five, then mark this down in your phone’s notepad so you know where to continue. You have more than enough time to pray rosaries. If holding a rosary while driving is a problem, then play a rosary audio, and you can follow along and pray.
It may take a while before you can consistently pray the whole rosary every day. If you don’t complete the rosary for the day, don’t bank the remaining mysteries to pray the next day. A rule I make for myself is that if I don’t finish the rosary for the day, I start a new one tomorrow and never continue what was left from the previous day. If you start banking rosaries, eventually you’ll have too many decades to pray or you’ll just want to give up. The rosary is to be prayed while you are awake, if you fail, acknowledge this and examine the reason why and do better next time. The rosary is an optional devotion, and there is no sin if you don’t pray it.
You’re holding in your hands beads that have enormous power and have brought many miracles and graces throughout the centuries. Make this devotion a priority in your spiritual life.
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