A while ago I wrote a 15-part series about Mary’s promises to those who pray the Rosary. Those promises alone should be reason enough to pray the Rosary with unceasing regularity. But I came across this article on the National Catholic Register laying out 10 reasons why the Rosary is so powerful. They are reasons not often mentioned when talking about the benefits of Rosary prayer.
You should read the entire article. It’s a light read; short and to the point. But for the TL;DR crowd, 10 additional reasons to pray the Rosary are:
- It Engages Your Will
- It is Physical
- It Engages our Linguistic Functions
- It Involves Our Imagination
- The Rosary Occupies the Language Facility
- The Sub-Linguistic is Accessed
- The Healing Mysteries are Applied
- Spiritual Warfare is Engaged
- The Battle Against Evil in the Word in Opened
- It is Accessible and Easy for All
Like I said in my book, The Rosary Prayer Guide for the Rest of Us, the Rosary has many facets that, when combined, make it exponentially more powerful than each aspect alone. The NCR article touches on that same idea. The Rosary combines physical, conscious, subconscious, and imaginative elements making it a rich prayer. Each of those elements is good on its own, but each one is incomplete. For example, what good is engaging your linguistic functions if your mind is occupied on something else? You’re just mindlessly reciting. But when combined, you are fully engaged with God’s miraculous power.
Engaging all these aspects of Rosary prayer also fills every aspect of our being with God’s grace. And if you’re filled with God’s grace, you don’t leave any room for Satan to infiltrate your soul. Satan will try to infect your mind, but that’s occupied. He’ll try to infiltrate your imagination, but that’s will also be busy. Someone committed to deep, meditative Rosary prayer doesn’t leave room for temptation. You become a spiritual fortress Satan cannot conquer.
The Rosary is a hard prayer to master. I’ve been praying it for years and yet I still often struggle to find the motivation to pray it and the will to focus. I know all the benefits and yet, Satan’s pull to drive me away from the Rosary is still there. Satan doesn’t give up easily. But it’s the fact that the Rosary requires so much engagement that makes it so effective. Like how a full-body workout is exhausting but beneficial, a full body-and-soul Rosary prayer is also exhausting. But you stand to lose so much by not investing in this spiritual exercise. And you gain so much more than what you put in if you stick with it. So please, in this season of Easter, invest in your spiritual well being and pick up those beads!