Like the liturgy itself these prayers our our birthright in the new birth in Christ. This neo-Protestant post-conciliar focus on engagement or “Pentecostalism” is pure self-deception.

First, that all religions have taught and encouraged the repitition of rote prayer as a means of entering into a relationship with the divine. Buddhists and Moslems have their prayer beads even as we have our rosaries and chotkis. This form of prayer is common and well practiced because of its simplicity. How often do we, when all else fails, pick up the beads and reach out to God? In the midst of anguish and turmoil we turn to the beads not only for our Mother’s help, but also precisely because it takes no thought, no book, no ceremony. Whether it is the Rosary or the Jesus Prayer, (or any other) the rote prayers we say become more and more a part of our very being. They enter deeply into our hearts and souls.

To illustrate: A man was standing on a bridge preparing to jump. In his pain and agitation he couldn’t think, couldn’t talk. The police on the scene called a priest, for the man himself was a priest. He began to repeat over and over “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.” After a while he climbed back over the railing to safety. Later when asked by the priest what he had been saying he said, “I could think of nothing. No words would come. Then I saw the rosary in your hand and all I could do was repeat over and over ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.’ And Mary gave me the courage to live.” His rote prayer saved him.

The other thought that came to mind is that we feel as though we have to be constantly engaged in prayer, that our minds must be on the prayers. This is the ideal, but it’s a rare grace to accomplish this. What is important, as St. Alphonsus tells us, is that we set aside the time to pray and are faithful to it. We designate the time as God’s time and offer it as a sacrifice to Him. Sometimes it will be full of insights and consolations. Other times it will seem as though all we did was realize we were distracted and turn our thoughts again to God. As long as we offer the time to God and return our minds to Him when we realize we are discracted then our prayer is fruitful. Why? Because we were faithful, we offered it all to God, and we did our best. And we know we did our best if we keep returning to God when we realize we are distracted.

All the saints prayed with rote prayers. Many also rose to the prayer of union. But they didn’t abandon rote prayers. It was only with the reformation that this way of praying was equated with hypocracy. Clearly the protestant reformers did not understand that Jesus, as a Jew, was a rote pray-er. Let us never abandon this form of prayer which is good for the body as well as the soul, for it calms and relaxes us and disposes us to the Holy Ghost.