Praying and Running

I have been praying the Rosary for several years now and I notice from time to time that things get just a little too routine. When this happens I feel like I miss the point of the prayer. On my run this morning I finished the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary and realized I hadn't been paying much attention to it. In fact, I finished it and it seemed as though I hadn't actually prayed. This is Lent and it is no time for zombie prayer! What to do? Pray it again and try harder to stay focused? Move on and try to get into some contemplative prayer? Just count it as a Rosary prayed and try again tomorrow? Then I thought of a new strategy. I would spend time summarizing, paraphrasing,  and analyzing each mystery before praying the prayers and then try to keep the fruit of that exercise in mind as I prayed the mystery. I have no doubt that this technique is not unique to me. If the truth were known, I probably read or heard about it somewhere but I can't really say wh...

The Rosary is a powerful prayer which offers a great deal in the way of spiritual growth. However, as with anything that is worth doing, committing to pray the Rosary on a daily basis is not without its difficulties. The Rosary is a long prayer of contemplation. To pray a full Rosary takes about an hour. For this reason many of people pray just one chaplet a day.Still, this is a 15 to 20 minute commitment. Most of us are very busy with work and school to attend to and kids and houses to care for. Finding a solid hour for prayer is very difficult. Even finding 20 minutes may take some creativity and/or sacrifice. Whatever it takes, you will be rewarded with the spiritual growth and closeness to God that we all seek as is our nature. So, what are some ways that we can find the time we need to pray the Rosary on a daily basis? I am a morning person so the first thing that comes to mind for me is getting up 20 minutes early. I have been doing this for a while and it works very well f...

There are several obstacles that someone who has committed to pray the Rosary will face. Since the Rosary is a long prayer one of the biggest challenges I face is staying focused. If you have read my other posts or if you are just familiar with the prayer, you know that the mental contemplation of the Mysteries is the main focus of the prayer. So getting distracted really detracts from the prayer. Even if I am only praying 1 chaplet of the Rosary, it still takes about 20 minutes. In that amount of time your mind is bound to wander some. I have found several different things to help me when my mind begins to drift off to the worries of everyday life. The first is to understand that this is going to happen and be watching for it. If I am not vigilant I can get through a whole decade and realize I have not thought one single time about the Mystery that I should have been contemplating. So before I begin the prayer I make a conscious determination to be watchful of my wandering mind. O...