Mkipp~
Welcome! How exciting to have you entering the Church!
The Rosary is a wonderful prayer to learn as you are entering the Church as it contains the entire Gospel. It incorporates vocal prayer and meditative prayer, but as you’ve noted, it requires discipline to keep from being distracted. What helped me as I was learning it was what a previous poster suggested - pick up a “Scriptural Rosary” book that gives you Scripture verses/passages for each mystery. Another great resource is from the Dominicans of the Western Province - their Rosary Center publishes a book, “Praying the Rosary Without Distractions” that gives you a facet of the mystery to meditate on for each “Hail Mary” of the Mysteries. This is also available online at:
rosary-center.org/howto.htm (just click on the set of mysteries you want to pray).
Another prayer I’d highly recommend is the Liturgy of the Hours. This is the official prayer of the Church and is liturgical prayer, like the Mass. The full Liturgy of the Hours is composed of seven separate times of prayer: the Office of Readings (which can be done anytime throughout the day), Morning Prayer, Midmorning Prayer, Midday Prayer, Midafternoon Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer. At each prayer time, there is a hymn, three psalms, a short Scripture reading (with the Office of Readings, it is longer and there is a second reading from the saints and Church fathers), and additional prayers with that.
Besides being the official prayer of the Church, what’s wonderful about the LOTH is that it can help keep you in a spirit of prayer throughout your day and gives short Scripture passages, etc. that you can meditate on as you continue about your day. However, for most laity, the full LOTH is too much. As was suggested, getting your feet wet with the Shorter Christian Prayer (which is just Morning and Evening Prayer) or a subscription to Magnificat, which also has supplemental meditaitons, readings about the saints, and the daily Mass readings, would be prudent. Then if you want to add some of the other hours, say the Office of Readings or Midday Prayer, you can invest in the four-volume set.
A third method of prayer you may find very fruitful is an ancient form of prayer in the Church called “lectio divina” (“Divine reading”). It is a way of reading, meditating, praying, and contemplating Scripture and ultimately God. For more on this, check out:
op.org.au/voc/lectio.php .
There are many, many other devotions that you can incorporate into your prayer life, but remember these are meant to be tools to draw you into a deeper relationship with God. As tools, they are helpful, generally for a time, but as you progress in your spiritual life, there may be times when they actually get in the way of further growth. Eventually, you may want to find a good spiritual director who can help you sort out when you should persevere with a particular devotion or when you might need to set it aside for a time. For more on developing your prayer life and relationship with God, two books I found helpful are “Deep Conversion/Deep Prayer” and “Fire Within: St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, and The Gospel on Prayer”, both written by Fr. Thomas Dubay, SM.
