Now, how is this considered NOT vain repetitions?
Have you read what I've written on the subject in this thread and in my recent answers to your question? The mysteries are extraordinarily full of meaning. I have recently been asked to write a book on them. IF I do (and I think I probably will, D.V.) you want to buy a copy? I'll sign it --- how about with flammable ink?
Here, I wrote this to a dear (but pagan) friend:
Of the new set of mysteries -- the Luminous Mysteries -- suggested by Blessed John Paul the Great the first is the Baptism of our Lord. Here goes:Empty?Jesus was baptized in the Jordan. The Jordan rises in Syrian marshes, flows through the Sea of Galilee, and winds -- 100 miles as the crow flies but treble that length were we to walk along its banks -- to the Dead Sea.
And you know why the Dead Sea is dead. It has no outlet. It does not give. What water it loses is torn from it by the sun's heat. "If you give, you live." It does not give. It is dead.
Swamps are so alive! You can see the haze and hear the susurration of insects. Crawling things creep among the clumps of sedges, and small creatures crabs, worms, eels, minnows live in the water.
The Sea of Galilee was so fertile that communities could support themselves on the fish that lived there.
The Jordan flows between generous life and grasping death. And there, between Life and Death, our Lord comes down to be bathed.
He came from Life itself, and he call himself life. And yet he came to us to die. He is between Life and Death. And we are between Life and Death -- tired of living and afraid of dying, as even one of the poets has said. :-)
He comes to us where we are, and he comes as we are, in need of washing. In the winding way between life and death, he meets us as we seek forgiveness of sin.
It is always asked; John asked it first: Do you come to ME to be baptized? Why does he come to be cleansed who is himself purity?
He comes to make clean. His descent into the Jordan makes it holy, as his descent into our lives makes us holy. In the tea you may now be drinking, in the water you splashed on your face this morning, why, in the humidity of the air we breathe, there may be a drop, a molecule of the water which once ran through our Lord's hair, down his face and body, and back into the Jordan from where it sanctifies and vivifies all the water that ever was.
Between life and death, you are in the stream, the stream which washed the Lord. It may, it certainly does, draw us to death, which of its own accord gives up nothing. But the light of the Son compels it to yield us up, and draws us with might into the heavens from which we too may help to spread life.
As for the 'what ifs': You obviously haven't been to my parish. A couple of weeks ago the leader got mixed up and did one mystery twice. A Filipina lady always bellows the prayers and does her own private version of the Fatima prayer, at what seems like the top of her lungs. WHATever ...
Anyway a lot of pray the Rosary at home as well.
If that prayer is performed as a means to please God, with all the repetitions, then it is a VAIN repetition.
What if it is not done with that intention at all -- as I just said at length a few posts above?
As far as your book goes, include some recipes. That always draws a crowd. Do you have a title yet? Perhaps I can help:
Repetition Recipes and Rituals.
In a rush.
Won’t read that mass of text unless you ask me to.