Wow, I just came here because I finally built up the confidence to basically beg for answers to the same problem (so you posting this is a wonderful “coincidence”)!
First, for UnityofTrinity, here’s some sites that help me pray the rosary:
newadvent.org/images/rosary.pdf (this helped more at first when I didn’t know the prayers by heart, but it still helps occasionally when I forget something)
these are very helpful; they keep you on track for each individual Hail Mary:
rosary-center.org/sorrow.htm
rosary-center.org/joyful.htm
rosary-center.org/glorious.htm
rosary-center.org/luminous.htm
Now I guess I’ll talk about my prayer problem in case anyone has some advice. I may have a little streak of ADD, I definitely have some heavy OCD (I don’t know if that’s relevant), and I sometimes have depression (partially due to this prayer problem, probably). I’ve been praying the rosary for a few months now, more sporadically at first, and I’ve been really trying for the last month to pray it daily, but it feels tremendously difficult to do so. The stress from procrastination is almost as painful as the stress from the thousand distractions I have while praying it – the stress from knowing how much I have to do yet knowing I probably won’t get the important prayers or my daily tasks done. I guess it’s sort of a self-perpetuating problem. I think the shortest rosary I can remember ever praying was about an hour. Sometimes it takes me a couple hours. Sometimes I’ll spend an afternoon on and off trying to complete it and get a mystery or two done, although sometimes I do have some good success. I don’t remember from what Marian apparition or wherever this came from (hopefully it’s from an approved one), but I remember hearing that Mary (I think) said that one
good rosary is worth a thousand bad ones. That quote plus what Jesus said about meaningless prayer haunts me whenever I pray it, so unless I’m sitting in front of a computer staring at the site I linked above, the rosary will take me well over an hour because I feel the need to re-pray each prayer many, many times until I fully “meditate” or reflect on every part of the prayer or the associated mystery. I would really like to be able to pray a good, meaningful, fully-meditated twenty-minute rosary. And (I can) forget about praying a fully-meditated rosary while multitasking, even thous others seem to be able to do it; I can barely do the opening allegiance of faith prayers while doing something else, unfortunately. Any advice?
P.S. I just read this article (
catholicherald.co.uk/features/2011/06/20/%E2%80%98sometimes-god-works-in-funny-ways%E2%80%99/) and, if their figures are correct, I have absolutely no clue how this man prayed that much. 35,000 rosaries over 121 (presumably 12-hour) days is roughly equal to 24 rosaries an hour, right?
Thanks for reading my poorly written plea :]
