My phone buzzed 11 times yesterday morning before I even had a sip of coffee. All those notifications before I had even started my day, full of calendar events and emails and all sorts of other things. And amidst all of that were these really bizarre email chains that had started regarding a meeting to plan another meeting. Must there be a slower gear?!
In all the research I did for this week, I noticed that I kept thinking of the Rosary in terms of slower living, rather than as a specific set of prayers that one would typically associate with quiet Sunday afternoons after church. A Rosary, it turns out, is a modern tool for very slow living. It is an anchor against the usual tidal wave of information that pours down our throats every day and night.
The rhythm is the whole point
Here’s something that most people miss about the Rosary: the repetition of the prayers is not a bug, it is the feature.
In our world of excess and novel stimuli (virtually all of which are either attempts to make money or to annoy us), we’re fed a constant stream of new information, almost all of it negative and provocative. It’s a thirty second cycle that is inescapable, until we’re numb and helpless. The Rosary is the antithesis of all of this, the same words over and over again, the same prayers on the same beads. It’s a practice of deliberate circularity of the same prayer over and over again. Which allows the mind to settle, whereas a mind constantly flooded by new things is always restless.
Sitting in silence for inner stillness whilst scrolling through my phone was impossible. My mind was racing and I was struggling to keep my focus and my attention on the task at hand. It was like trying to have a conversation in a very loud concert and being unable to be heard. But sitting quietly with a Rosary is like going into a different room. The familiar words of the Hail Mary become like a slow, steady heartbeat that underlies all the other noise in your head and gently coaxes you into calm.
The repetitive activity of focused attention, again and again, has been shown in numerous scientific studies to decrease cortisol levels, the ‘stress hormone’, and to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, the ‘rest, digest, recover’ arm of the brain. The Rosary, used for centuries by monks and others for prayer, has been proven by modern science with sensors, to have real physical benefits for the body and thus could be of great value to people of all walks of life.
What it actually asks of you
So much for the myth that it requires great preparation to practice the Rosary. All you need to start is to have a set of Rosary beads kept in a convenient place for you to pick up at any time to start your practice (e.g. on your nightstand, in your bag, in the console between the seats of your car).
- You don’t need silence (though it helps at first)
- You don’t need a special space or a particular time of day
- You don’t need to be in a perfect headspace before you begin
- You just need the beads and a few minutes you’re willing to protect
A convenient place to store a Rosary is in close proximity to you. Having the Rosary beads in your nightstand, your bag or your car’s center console will make it so easy to go through the Rosary practice on regular days instead of saving it for special occasions.
Mindfulness, but older than the word
Mindfulness. It’s super trendy at the moment. And for good reason. Research has shown that being more fully present in the moment (intentionally paying attention to and focusing on the experience at hand) can have a very positive impact on a person’s life. As a result, it’s become a big business. And I’m not just talking about all of the apps that have popped up in the App Store recently that promise users a more mindful life. There are also a ton of books on the topic as well as a plethora of yoga pants sporting various sayings that are meant to inspire the wearer to live more mindfully in the moment. And while I really think that this practice of being more intentionally attentive to the present moment is a great thing and can have a very positive impact on a person’s life, I have a hard time seeing it as a practice that is native to the West. As a matter of fact, I see it as being a practice that is far more at home in Eastern cultures and I think that it’s been ‘discovered’ by the tech geniuses of Silicon Valley between product launches.
The Rosary was meditating long before the term was coined by someone in Silicon Valley between new products.
Each decade of the Rosary is associated with one of the “Mysteries” of the life of Christ or his mother Mary. These are scenes from the Bible that help the person praying the Rosary to reflect on their own life. For example, the first Mystery of the first decade is the Annunciation in which Mary is told that she will have a son. The second Mystery is Mary’s visit to her cousin Elizabeth when Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist. The third is the presentation of Jesus in the Temple when he is a baby. The fourth is the finding of Jesus in the Temple when he is twelve years old. The fifth is the Resurrection of Jesus after his death and burial. Praying a decade of the Rosary helps the person to sit with each of these scenes and to think about how they apply to their own life.
That’s the shift. From being reactive to being more reflective. Sounds small. Isn’t.
It doesn’t fix everything. But.
Note that this is not a cure all for the things that plague modern man. He will be anxious, and worried, and unhappy in spite of his Rosary. Sometimes his mind will be so far afield that you will have to refocus yourself after each decade. I have no answer for this sort of thing, only to go back to center, say my prayer, and continue on with the next bead. We are all imperfect creatures in an imperfect world. We can strive for better in our practices, but the best we can do is decent.
It’s not about to concentrate perfectly. No one can focus completely and it is actually rather unhealthy to pursue absolute concentration. The Rosary is a practice of coming back to center again and again. It’s a way of returning to your steady hand while you’re losing your grip on life. You won’t reach absolute perfection but you won’t fall as far as you otherwise would.
| What the Rosary offers | What it requires | What it’s not |
| A repeating, calming rhythm | Willingness to slow down | A quick fix |
| Meditative focus on Scripture | A few consistent minutes | Passive or mindless |
| Grounding through touch and prayer | A physical rosary nearby | Only for quiet retreats |
| Connection to something larger than daily stress | Patience with distraction | Complicated or exclusive |
The real argument for it
Most people’s search for focus is outward. They attempt to be more focused by using the many tools, systems, and planners available to organize their time. Many people explore effective tools for staying organized and focused to handle their responsibilities better, but true focus often begins with developing habits that create clarity from within. Some of these tools and systems work very well for people. But there is another way of focusing. Instead of organizing our time to be more focused, we organize our time to focus on what is most important.
The world is not going to get any quieter. In fact, it will likely continue to get louder and more chaotic. Therefore, we need to develop habits that allow us to deal with the chaos that already exists. The Rosary has been a tool for countless people throughout the centuries to deal with difficult circumstances. Wars, famines, personal loss and uncertainty have all been managed with the help of the Rosary.
That’s not nothing. That’s actually quite a lot.
