I am going to take a short divergence from my rosary meditation to offer up some thoughts on WHY I think prayer is such an important part of life. Thank you for reading my meditations on the mysteries of the rosary and there will certainly be more to come. However, I know that there are many out there that ask, “why should I pray the rosary at all?” While there are more reasons to pray it than you and I can possible know (and definitely more than what I can put into one article) I want to try to explain the importance of the rosary by comparing it to exercise.
First of all, why do we exercise physically? It is hard, sometimes painful, takes time, and often we do not see any immediate, tangible results for our hard effort. However, many of us exercise because we understand that it has many benefits:
- Keeps us in good health and decreases the chances of illness.
- Increases our strength and endurance for those times when we need it (like sports or work).
- Improves our physical appearance.
- Relieves stress.
Many of us, no matter how busy we are, make the time to exercise because we know that it is an important part of healthy living. Not only is exercise important enough to schedule into our daily routines, but it is also important enough to spend our hard-earned money on gym memberships, equipment, clothing, and diet foods and supplements.
It is amazing how much time, money, and effort we put into physical exercise and how little we put into spiritual exercise. Many of us somehow find an hour of our day to “hit the gym” but we cannot find one hour a week to go to church, 20 minutes to pray a rosary mystery or even 30 seconds to say a short prayer of thanks before a meal. If the exercise analogy does not work for you, then replace that with work or a hobby (and go for a walk). How much time do you spend browsing the Internet or playing video games compared to how much time you spend in prayer and mediation?
It is important to work out our spiritual muscles just as much as our physical ones. When you build up your spiritual muscle you will be much more prepared when you are challenged. Whether the challenge comes as a problem of faith or just handling day-to-day complications, you can better handle any challenge when you pray regularly. Trying to handle difficult life challenges without a deep faith is like trying to run a marathon with only minimal training. Sure, you may finish the race but it will be more difficult and painful than if you were adequately prepared. But more likely, we tend to just give up when the going gets tough because we have not conditioned our heart, mind, and soul to work through life’s obstacles.
Like exercise, you only need to put in small, but constant effort praying in order to feel results over time. It takes 20 minutes to pray a mystery of the rosary which is shorter than the time it takes to watch a sitcom. You most likely will not feel like a saint after a week of prayer (or a month or even longer) but it will start to change you over time. It will change the way you see the world and your life and really puts into perspective what is really important. I have a hard time explaining how praying the rosary has changed me. Unlike exercise I cannot point to a certain metric that tracks my progress. Unfortunately there is not a faith ranking I can improve. But I know the rosary has affected me positively as seen in the way I interact with others and in just my overall outlook on life. It has also brought me closer to my Catholic faith by making it a priority in my life. Now my faith is every bit as important as my physical health, my finances, my family, and my career.
I could draw out the exercise/rosary analogy longer (since I love analogies) but hopefully you get the idea. I hope these words might encourage some of you to give rosary meditation a try.
And like many exercise programs advertised on television (like this one), I’m going to end with my prayer sales pitch:
