The "fast" rosary

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Robert_Caritas

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Hello all,

By the grace of God, I’ve recently started praying the rosary pretty much every day. I’ve also dedicated myself to the morning and evening prayers of the divine office.

This being a big change in my life, my schedule is not always adapted and I often have to stay up late to get this done. Sometimes I pray the rosary very quickly though because of time constraints (especially if I want to do some spiritual reading and the divine office afterwards). I get a sense of guilt from skimming over this deep prayer.

Do you think it would be better if I only did it when I had a proper amount of time to dedicate, like 30-45min – and I could use the 10-15 minutes that I have to do other prayers more carefully?

Though I have to say that I feel a strong impulse to pray it daily.

All the best!

Robert
 
http://www.catholicity.com/cds/rosary.html
You can order a free cd from this website ($1.00 handling fee) and it’s a 17 minute rosary. You can try it online before you order it. I pray with this cd when I don’t feel quite up to the 30 minute rosary with Mother Angelica on EWTN. I find that although it’s faster, I can still meditate upon the mysteries.
 
Thanks, I’ve never prayed the rosary with a recording before. Do you find it as beneficial as praying it simply alone?
 
Well, I find that praying the rosary with someone else leading helps me to concentrate on the mysteries/fruits of the mysteries better. When the leader is saying their part, I am concentrating on the fruit of the mystery (For the descent of the Holy Spirit I might be thinking, “Lord, help me to love you above all things”), then I just say my part.
 
I know that the main reason I tend to be SO slow at the rosary is because I have to refer to what the mysteries are, what they’re about, learn what they mean, then meditate on the meaning for a bit, the start with the praying. I also haven’t memorized the “Hail Holy Queen” prayer…so until then, I’m going to be pretty slow at it. I usually take 45min to an hour.

But, if you’re well experienced in praying the rosary, are familiar with all of the mysteries and what they’re about etc…you should be able to knock it out in 20 minutes…according to Ehow, on Youtube.
 
Robert_Caritas said:
Hello all,

By the grace of God, I’ve recently started praying the rosary pretty much every day. I’ve also dedicated myself to the morning and evening prayers of the divine office.

This being a big change in my life, my schedule is not always adapted and I often have to stay up late to get this done. Sometimes I pray the rosary very quickly though because of time constraints (especially if I want to do some spiritual reading and the divine office afterwards). I get a sense of guilt from skimming over this deep prayer.

Do you think it would be better if I only did it when I had a proper amount of time to dedicate, like 30-45min – and I could use the 10-15 minutes that I have to do other prayers more carefully?

Though I have to say that I feel a strong impulse to pray it daily.

All the best!

Robert
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You should most certainly give the Holy Rosary the time it is due, 30-45 mins, not a mere 10-15 mins. The value of the Rosary is that as the user’s faith increases, so does the virtue and graces which we receive from praying the Rosary well!!!

You will never receive the immense graces from the Holy Rosary, if you run through it like a race! You must take the time reflect over each mystery, saying the words slowly whilst reflecting over each mystery and its unending worth!!!

Take an hour’s time aside so you do not have to look at your watch, pray it slowly, pause and breath once after each stop. Here’s what I mean:

/ means ‘pause, deep breath once’

Our Father who art in heaven / hallowed be Thy name / Thy kingdom come / Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven / Give us this day our daily bread / and Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us / and Lead us not into temptation but Deliver us from evil.

Hail Mary full of grace / the Lord is with Thee /
Blessed art Thou amongst women / and Blessed is the fruit of Thy womb Jesus /
Holy Mary / Mother of God / Pray for us sinners / now / and at the hour of our death.

Do you see the depth of meditation and calm of body and soul which one receives from praying the Holy Rosary the right way? Those who pray it quickly lose the graces which one receives from praying it well!!! It is Our Blessed Lady’s Psalter!!!

I highly recommend that you announce the mystery together with the grace which it brings!
Using St. Louis de Montfort’s way, I shall give you an example:

“I offer Thee, O Lord, this first decade in honor of Thy Incarnation, and I beseech Thee, through this mystery and through the intercession of Thy Holy Mother, a profound humility.”

Then you would reflect upon the mystery’s humility, using the Blessed Virgin Mary as example to imitate or use Our Blessed Lord to imitate.

I highly recommend you get his book, St. Louis de Montfort’s Secret of the Rosary. He is the holy saint who defined the Immaculate Conception 150 years before the Church did!!! His other book True Devotion to Mary Pope Blessed John Paul II read every day, saying "Then I understood that I could not exclude the Lord’s Mother from my life without neglecting the will of God-Trinity, who willed to begin and fulfill the great mysteries of the history of salvation with the responsible and faithful collaboration of the humble handmaid of Nazareth.” Further, the Holy Father said that reading St. Louis de Montfort’s book marked a turning point in his life. During his recovery from the May 13, 1981, attempt on his life, Blessed John Paul II came to believe that it was the Blessed Virgin’s hand who guided the assassin’s bullet to barely avoid inflicting a surely fatal wound.

This all should help you very much, and if you pray this way, there’s no telling what heights of sanctity God may have you reach! God Bless You!
 
If your going to do it fast then its better if you don’t do it at all. You are just wasting your time. If you are speaking to a friend you make sure you are speaking clearly and in a speed that your friend can understand you and prayer should be the same. Prayer is you talking to GOD so their is comunication with him.

I think it would be best if you did another devotion when you feel that their isen’t enough time for the rosary. I suggest THE DEVINE MERCY Chaplet would be a good one. it is a powerful chaplet.
 
jesus4ever said:
If your going to do it fast then its better if you don’t do it at all. You are just wasting your time. If you are speaking to a friend you make sure you are speaking clearly and in a speed that your friend can understand you and prayer should be the same. Prayer is you talking to GOD so their is comunication with him.

I think it would be best if you did another devotion when you feel that their isen’t enough time for the rosary. I suggest THE DEVINE MERCY Chaplet would be a good one. it is a powerful chaplet.
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There is a difference between fast and inattentive.

My boss at work takes possibly half the time to read a document that I do, but you can bet she still manages to read it more thoroughly than I, and absorb and attend to more of the detail.

That would be down to the fact that she has had much more practice.

On the other hand, strangely, she sometimes has more difficulty when writing than I do - sometimes I can convey more meaning more clearly in fewer words than she. That is because writing is a love of mine.

So I can see that some can pray faster than others yet be equally effective and attentive in their prayer, or even more so. The Our Father is quite short, yet packs pretty much everything you could want to say into a prayer in those few words.
 
I plan to say part of my rosary when I’m awake in the middle of the night.

I usually wake up at around 3:00 in the morning. Instead of struggling to get back to sleep like I used to I now treat the next 40 minutes as useful time. I get out of bed, have a glass of water, read for a bit, and finish my rosary from the night before. I can usually say between one and three decades in this time. Then I return to sleep for another 2 hours.

I’ve been doing this for about 6 months and find that I am sleeping better than ever before.

Five decades, with the opening and closing prayers, takes me about 20 minutes.
Robert_Caritas said:
…
Though I have to say that I feel a strong impulse to pray it daily.
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Excellent! I believe that making a habit of saying at least one decade daily is a short path to spiritual growth. Sometimes it’s easy, and we can say more, but other times, when very tired, if we say at least that one decade then we are keeping the spiritual flame burning.
 
Instead of praying a whole set of mysteries at once, you could try splitting it up and praying a decade or two at a time throughout the day. I’ve done this before, and loving Jesus and the most beautiful woman God ever created in little breaks of 5 or 10 minutes… they’re like life preservers. 🙂
 
St. Louis de Montfort councels us to say it very prayerfully, so I would say, pray no faster than you can do well, and don’t neglect to meditate on the mysteries and offer them to Our Lord and Lady, asking them them for the virtue exemplified therein.
 
Try the Franciscan Crown Rosary. It has 7 decades, prayed with 2 addition hail marys (to bring total to 72, commemorating the age of the blessed virgin, plus a hail Mary and an our father for the popes intentions.

The mysteries are all joyous:

Annunciation
Visitation
Nativity
Adoration of the Magi
Resurrection and assertion combined
Assumption and coronation of the virgin

No opening our father or apostles creed, no Fatima prayer, no holy queen or closing prayer, therefore often takes less time than Dominican rosary…and as others have suggested, you can break it up if you don’t have time.
 
YoungCatholic21 said:
You should most certainly give the Holy Rosary the time it is due, 30-45 mins, not a mere 10-15 mins.

I highly recommend you get his book, St. Louis de Montfort’s Secret of the Rosary. He is the holy saint who defined the Immaculate Conception 150 years before the Church did!!!

This all should help you very much, and if you pray this way, there’s no telling what heights of sanctity God may have you reach! God Bless You!
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Thank you! I will definitely look up that book. In effect, the rosary is an extraordinary prayer. It really boggles me how much of a difference it makes in my life. I would live to read what this great saint said about it.

I should precise that most days I take my time when praying the rosary. 30 minutes is a typical time.
Don_Jackson said:
Try the Franciscan Crown Rosary.
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This is an excellent suggestion – a shorter prayer for less time. I’ll look into it.

Thanks to everyone for the advice!
 
Well, I pray it in about 17 minutes. At times, the spoken prayers are done without deep thought, but my attention is entirely on God, God and the mystery, etc. So it is mental prayer or a communing prayer which I consider to be a more advanced prayer than recitation. (From what I’ve read, many saints and spiritual writers have made distinctions between different forms of prayer as well.) At other times, I can feel my spirit crying out to the Holy Spirit. And finally, at other times, my mind is on the words of the prayers.

I am satisfied by all of my types of experiences while praying the Rosary. I wouldn’t get too hung up on the time frame of how long it should take you. But if you feel rushed so you can get in some spiritual reading, I would re-think those additional activities.

Regardless, fit in what you can at a pace you’re comfortable with. If you can’t get everything in due to time constraints, don’t feel bad about skipping something.
 
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