Thank you for that extended advice. Not the OP, but what you wrote helps a lot. For a while I prayed the 15 Decades and the Little Office daily, but I paused the Little Office since I felt I couldn't give it the attention it deserved. The Monastic Breviary has been sitting in the bookcase for months, still waiting for me. Maybe come winter, it will be the right season for turning inward from the daily noise. Listening quietly for what Our Lord wants me to do.

Let's face it. Prayer is brutally hard these days, precisely because so few are doing it. Liturgical prayer is even more difficult. Before Vatican II there was a massive prayer army in the monasteries and convents causing grace to pour down upon the world like a steady rain. Prayer in families was made easier, and even its value was bolstered by the secret prayer engine that kept the world from imploding. 

That engine is Dead. Cold. Silent. 

If I pick up the Breviary, I am an Atlas with the entire world upon my shoulders. I am trying to move a mountain with a stale breath from an unclean mouth. I am trying to hold back the sea with a seive. 

I find that there is no lonelier thing in the world, nothing more desolate and barren, than trying to pray the Divine Office without the monastic engine behind me. The Divine Office is the prayer of an incorporation - the Mystical Body. It is supposed to be prayed in community - both a material community and the mystical community of the membership of the Church. 

Those who pray it now - virtually alone - are certainly subject to all manner of suffering. The best antidote I find, is uniting myself with the Liturgy in Heaven, and the unceasing praise of the Angels. Certainly they are a prayer engine that never goes cold.   

When you pause before each mystery, this is obviously meditation.  But you are not meditating WHILE PRAYING the rosary, which is the normal way.

Maybe I wasn't clear in my last post but I do both.  The pause (usually 1 minute) AND while praying the decade of whichever mystery.  This helps set the "tone" for the decade.  

Not necessarily.  Because most people aren't including a *pause* before each mystery.  If you simply say the rosary in a normal conversation speed, without pauses before each mystery, and you meditate WHILE praying, (instead of meditating on the actual words of the prayers) then you save a lot of time.  Then 50 min or so is normal.

When I was going for the world speed record when doing these I didn't do the pause before each mystery at the time.  I wanted to be done as fast as possible with these at the time.  When I realized (was shown) my error and irreverence I started doing "normal conversational speeds" but still did not do the brief meditation before beginning the next set of mysteries like I do now and a steady pace was about 1 hour to 1 hour and 10 minutes.  It wasn't until later that I did the brief mediation before the mystery so I could focus on it better and then doing it more passively during the decades while also being more reverent with The Hail Mary prayer.

Again, i'm not saying your method is wrong, as it sounds like you are putting forth a lot of effort and you deeply care about Our Lady.

Thank you.  

But...i'm just debating your assertion that 50 min is too fast.  Typically, this is the norm.  You are saying the rosary quite different from the norm.  It's not good or bad, it's just different.

I still think 45-50 minutes is too fast and I won't change that stance.  

More responses in bold.  

No offense, but you're being way too dramatic here.  There are still monasteries and convents in the world; you're not alone.  The monastic engine still exists.

Also, let's not forget, that the Divine Office, however holy and pleasing to God it is, is not the greatest prayer.  That would be the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which if compared to the Divine Office, makes the latter as of little importance.  As St Padre Pio said, "It is easier for the earth to exist without the sun than without the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass!"

So as long as the Holy Sacrifice is continually offered around the world, then THIS is the true ENGINE of the Faith.  The Divine Office is simply an extension, an add-on, to daily mass, around which the entire Liturgical Calendar moves.

So please re-calibrate your spiritual compass towards the Mass, and unite your prayers with it, and you will not feel alone.  For the Holy Sacrifice is the Divine Engine which runs the world.  And it will be offered, continually, until the end of time, as Scripture infallibly tells us.

My goodness! What a strawman you are! I say nothing about the Holy Mass, and you come in with a storyboard around it, complete with a diagnosis of my various spiritual and emotional illnesses. Now that's drama! You've outdone me, for sure. Applause!  

OP certainly knows what he's talking about, and I know what he's talking about, and I'll bet he knows what I'm talking about. That will suffice. 

It wasn't a strawman, it was a correction.  The monastic life isn't dead and it's not the engine of grace, the Mass is.  And you're not the Atlas to hold up the world, the Mass is.

But isn't the montastic life much smaller than it was at one time?  And aren't priests more obligated to pray the Divine Office than to say Mass?

Of course.  What part of catholicism ISN'T SMALLER since V2?  That's beside the point, because I was responding to the allegation that the monastic life is *dead* and all hope is lost.  It's not dead, and hope is not lost.  Saying something is *dead* is vastly different than saying it's "smaller".

The Divine Office obligation is a personal obligation, for priests' sanctity.  The Mass is for the Church as a whole, and the whole world.

I think the above is where communication breaks down.  A woman who states something is "dead" is exagerrating her feeling on that.  It feels "dead"  It feels "hopeless"   It doesn't actually mean it is factually "dead" or "hopeless".  Women and men communicate differently. We should take into consideration, who is posting, before we make assumptions.

Thank you for the clarification on the second part.