Rosary Struggles....

"This is many people's real experience in praying the rosary. 

So if you have ever felt this way, know that you are in good company. 

Thousands of devout Catholics—young and old, men and women, lay people, priests, and religious—have told me how they love the rosary but struggle from time to time in praying it.

I've had numerous bishops, men with the great gift of apostolic succession, tell me that they don't pray the rosary as well as they'd like! 

As one bishop in the Midwest told me many years ago, "Oh, the rosary! It's hard. I struggle all the time!"

Even the esteemed Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, admitted that praying a whole rosary is often too much for him to do in a single sitting: 

'I am too much of a restless spirit; I would wander too much. I take just one [set of mysteries], and then often only two or three mysteries out of the five, because I can then fit in a certain interval when I want to get away from work and free myself a bit, when I want to be quiet and to clear my head. A whole one would actually be too much for me then.'

1. Here's one crucial thing to keep in mind: 

Whatever struggles you may face with the rosary, never walk away feeling discouraged. 

If your mind wanders, if you don't feel the fervor, or if you're very sleepy while praying, remember that the words you are reciting are biblical and holy. 

Simply pulling out your beads and saying the sacred words is giving something beautiful to God, even if your heart or mind is not as into it as you'd like. 

Moreover, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught, the intention to pray is itself the beginning of prayer. 

In fact, he wrote in his Summa Theologiae, "It is not necessary that prayer should be attentive throughout; because the force of the original intention with which one sets about praying renders the whole prayer meritorious."

2 If we sincerely desire to give God our best in the rosary, but we lose attention and fervor, that foundational good intention is still a beautiful gift to God. 

So even if our performance of the rosary is not as great as we'd like it to be, that doesn't wipe out the foundation of a good intention."

Keep at it!!  :)  Stay STRONG!!