The Rosary Is Not Vain Repetition

There is perhaps no more distinctively Catholic prayer than the Rosary. I have heard that other Christians pray it too, but these are few and far between. The vast majority of Protestants have major theological issues with praying to Mary, and while the Orthodox venerate her just like we do, they have their own distinct forms of Marian devotion. For the most part, we Catholics are the only ones who pray the Rosary.

Because of that, this devotion is often a bone of contention in Catholic-Protestant discussions. Not only do most Protestants think that praying to Mary is problematic, but many of them also have another issue with it, and this one is directly based on the words of Jesus in the Gospels:

“And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)

Many evangelical Protestants contend that when we pray the Rosary, we essentially “heap up empty phrases” (or, in some translations, “vain repetitions”) and “think that [we] will be heard for [our] many words,” making it exactly the kind of prayer Jesus told us not to offer.

How can we respond to this charge? Is it really wrong to pray the Rosary or are we “babbling on like the pagans” when we do?

The Basic Objections

To answer those questions, let’s think about the logic behind this argument and see if it really holds up. There are three reasons why the Rosary might fall under Jesus’ condemnation in Matthew:

First, it could be because any pre-composed prayers are just “empty phrases,” and we should pray spontaneously instead. Second, it could be because the Rosary repeats the same prayers over and over again, seemingly making it a bunch of “vain repetitions.” And third, the problem could be its length. Maybe we should be succinct in our prayer and just say what we need to say rather than draw it out for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Those are all substantially different arguments, so in order to thoroughly defend the Rosary, we need to go through each one of them and show where they go wrong. Let’s start with the simplest one.

Some Protestants believe that any pre-composed prayers are tantamount to “empty phrases,” but that can’t be right. In the very next verse after the passage we are looking at, Jesus gives His disciples the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9), and those exact words have been a staple of Christian prayer for 2,000 years. Jesus composed a prayer for us to pray, so He could not have been condemning all pre-composed prayers.

Repetitive Prayers

Others suggest that the real problem with the Rosary is its repetitiveness. They say that Jesus doesn’t want us to repeat ourselves when we pray; instead, we should just say what we want to say and then be done with it.

That may sound convincing at first, but if we know the Old Testament, this argument is just as obviously erroneous as the first one. For example, take a look at these verses from Psalm 136:

“O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
  for his steadfast love endures forever.
O give thanks to the God of gods,
  for his steadfast love endures forever.
O give thanks to the Lord of lords,
  for his steadfast love endures forever.” (Psalm 136:1-3)

In this psalm, every other line is exactly the same: “for his steadfast love endures forever.” I quoted only the first three verses, but the other twenty-three verses stick to this pattern without deviation. The second half of every verse in this entire psalm is exactly the same, so it is highly repetitive. It can’t be wrong for us to pray it.

The book of Psalms is a divinely inspired prayer book, and God’s people have been praying with psalms since before the time of Christ. The ancient Jews used it in their prayer (so Jesus Himself would have done so); the early Christians prayed the psalms; and the Church still draws from it today in the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.

The psalms are the Church’s prayer book par excellence, so, since it employs this kind of heavy repetition, Jesus couldn’t have condemned it. Consequently, this version of the argument is a dead end as well.

Long Prayers

Finally, some people opposed to the Rosary might say that the problem is actually its length. Since it is so long, we wrongly think that God will hear us because of our “many words.” So what can we say about this third line of reasoning?

Again, let’s turn to the psalms. Some of them are short, like Psalm 117 (it is only two verses!), but others are long. And when I say long, I mean it. The single longest chapter of the bible is Psalm 119, which contains 176 verses.

Again, Jesus could not have been condemning long prayers per se. If He did, He would have been condemning the divinely inspired prayer book that He Himself used. It’s certain that He would not have done that.

Jesus’ Real Message

In the face of all this, we might be tempted to conclude that Jesus’ condemnation of empty prayer doesn’t include the Rosary and then pat ourselves on the back for successfully defending the Catholic faith, but we should not be so quick to declare victory. Refuting incorrect interpretations of Jesus’ words is only half the battle. The other half involves explaining what those words really mean, and when we do that, we find an important lesson for our spiritual lives.

Jesus’ real point in this passage is that we need to pay attention to what and how we pray and truly mean it. Merely saying words, whether it be the Rosary, one of the psalms, or anything else, isn’t praying. That is simply “heap[ing] up empty phrases as the Gentiles do,” and that is what Jesus condemned.

To truly pray, we have to say words and genuinely mean them. If we do that, then whatever we choose to pray, we are doing it the way Jesus desires.