Is it okay to pray the rosary without the mysteries?

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Simply put, you can pray the sequence of the Aves without mystery, and being contemplative by contemplatively pray the Aves.
No different from praying the Jesus Prayer.
 
LJL5 said:
If you are asking for an opinion, then I would say that it is contrary to what the Rosary is meant to be, to pray without contemplation on any aspect of the life of Christ and his Mother. If you have prayed it without knowing what the mysteries are all these years, I suppose your ignorance is innocent enough, but at some point I suspect that you were contemplating the gospel you heard at Mass or some passage of scripture. Keep in mind that those who aren’t Catholic consider the Rosary as vain repetition. Although it is repetitious in form, it is never vain if you are praying with contemplation - it’s a skill you acquire, not one that comes easily without practice.
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However, you can pray with contemplation on the words of the prayers themselves and that is still a very good prayer.
 
Viola_Incognita said:
Didn’t that Fatima children get in trouble with the Angel for saying a shorthand rosary?
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No, they didn’t ‘get in trouble with the Angel’; it was after their first vision of Our Lady. It was Blessed Jacinta who said that they should be saying the Rosary properly, with all the words of the prayers instead of just saying, ‘Our Father’ and ‘Hail Mary’.

Our Lady didn’t come right out and say that the children had to stop saying their ‘shorthand Rosary’ (good term, BTW). They figured it out themselves, through the grace of God, of course.
 
Corki said:
16th Century. The practice of praying the Our Fathers and Hail Marys (and even Kyries) on beads started sometime in the 12th century with the structure of the prayer evolving through the 15th C. St Dominic, to whom Mary gave the Rosary, died in 1221 but the mysteries were added by later Dominicans.
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So probably it’s OK afterall, unless you all want 4 centuries of rosary invaidated, plus those rosaries performed by those (probably) countless millions of us that didn’t know the fuller versions subsequently 🙂
 
The rosary contains the prayers for Mary’s intercession the first Apostle.
As long as we undestand Mary’s role in salvation I"m sure it is OK.

God Bless
🍕
 
Nope. Rosary is a true prayer IF and ONLY IF
there is a mental/spiritual engagement of the prayer.

Otherwise, without the internal meditation of the ‘mysteries’ (or mystical events),
it becomes a repetitive mumbling of words. Not what Jesus wants. He said so somewhere in scripture (working on finding where exactly).

The rosary mysteries come in four categories:


  1. *]Joyous msyteries
    *]Sorrowful
    *]Glorious
    *]Luminous

    👍
 
This is a useful question, something I have wondered about myself. I pray the rosary with the mysterious. Sometimes if I am not home my wife will pray with the kids and not use the mysteries. I get irritated by this because I believe that we have been handed down the method to pray the rosary and my family should pray that way.

I am not saying it is wrong to pray the rosary without the mysteries but I think if one does that will they continue praying the rosary like that everyday? I feel that the mysteries help keep me focused in prayer but that is only my opinion.
 
Tradition has it that the Rosary was bestowed unto St. Dominic by Our Lady in the 13th Century.

It was Pope St. Pius V in the 15th century who appended the meditation of specific mysteries per the vantage of Our Lady.

This must mean that for 200 years Catholics weren’t “really praying the Rosary”.
 
Ok, I hope we can agree on this: any prayer, Rosary or another, must be from the heart and sincere.

We know that our prayers must come from sincerity because Jesus made it clear when he spoke about how to pray.

For example, in Mattew, chap. 6, verse 7, Jesus gives an example of what prayer is not:

[bibledrb]matthew 6:7[/bibledrb]

Overall, it is not the quantity of words, but the sincerity, the engagement of the heart and mind in our prayer that will be the key to our dialogue, our relationship to God.

Furthermore, when we meditate the mysteries, not only are we engaging our minds
  • and hopefully our hearts - making our prayer a sincere one, but:
We are giving up on our own demands and preoccupations :yup:
​
**and : **

turning our minds and hearts to the life of Jesus, Mary, and the disciples.

​
Opening our hearts to God, and to others.

In my humble opinion, that’s why the meditation of the mysteries is so important to the Rosary.

Without the meditations, the Rosary becomes 50 (or 150, depending) of ‘incantations’ :eek: to Mary.

Best way to pray the Rosary is with a scripture passage of the mystery:

For each decade,
1- Before starting the decade, verbally
offer it to Our Father: for example,
“Father, I am
offering you this decade to honor the mystery of
[name of mystery].
Please grant that by the meditation of this mystery and by Your Son Jesus Christ, that I may receive the grace of [name a grace that fits the mystery (these can be found in any good prayer booklet)]”

2- Read out loud the scripture passage corresponding to the mystery. Again found in a good prayer booklet on the mysteries.

3- Our Father

4- Ten Hail Mary

5- Glory be to the Father, the Son…

6- "Grace of [verbally say the grace that was asked in the beginning of the decade], descend in my / our heart.

Thank you for reading me to the end.

Your comments are welcomed.
👍
 
I just read the relevant passage of scripture instead of actually meditating on the mysteries. I believe this particular form of the Rosary has a name, but I’m not sure what it is.
 
Oneofthewomen said:
The rosary is a private devotion, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to say it.
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While this is true in a sense, the Rosary is a certain method of prayer. Part of it is the meditations on the mysteries. To pray a Rosary is to say all the prayers of the Rosary and to meditate on the mysteries.

Not meditating on the mysteries is just praying a bunch of Hail Marys, Our Fathers, and Glory Bes, it is not (technically) the Rosary.
 
Oneofthewomen said:
The rosary is a private devotion, there is no “right” or “wrong” way to say it.
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Mostly true. However, if you are praying the Rosary with the intention of gaining an indulgence for your self or another soul, there is a “right” way.
ByzCath said:
While this is true in a sense, the Rosary is a certain method of prayer. Part of it is the meditations on the mysteries. To pray a Rosary is to say all the prayers of the Rosary and to meditate on the mysteries.

Not meditating on the mysteries is just praying a bunch of Hail Marys, Our Fathers, and Glory Bes, it is not (technically) the Rosary.
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No, that’s also a Rosary. It would "technically’ not be a Rosary if you substituted the Hail Marys, Our Fathers and Glory Bes with other prayers - then it would be a chaplet. 🙂

However it is still a legitimate way to pray the Rosary meditating on the prayers themselves or on other parts of the life of Jesus. In fact, the Luminous Mysteries were inspired by JPII’s meditations on the life of Christ that was not already contained in the 15 existing mysteries.
 
Umm, I didn’t know you could do that. Pray the Rosary without at least briefly recalling the mysteries, I mean.
 
UnionOfHearts said:
Wow, just wow :eek:
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my g/f who is a cradle Catholic didn’t know about the mysteries until I started praying the Rosary too, I had a similar reaction

I can’t imagine trying to pray the Rosary without the mysteries…it just wouldn’t be the same.
 
[sign]

**Don’t just say the Rosary,
*PRAY *the Rosary! **

[sign] [bibledrb]matthew 6:7[/bibledrb]

Meditate (or replay in your mind)
a joyous / sorrowful /
glorious / luminous mystery
as you recite your decades of Hail Marys !

:harp:

[/sign]

:amen:

[/sign]
 
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