For the Rosary

Is the Rosary Just "Vain Repetitions"?
Jimmy Akin | 21.IV.2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlegxTFTyWY

I

0:55 In fact "repetitions" (whether vain or otherwise) is not in either Latin or Greek text of Matthew 6:7.

Battologein may involve tedious variations around the same point, but hardly to judge from extant Greco-Roman prayers, repetitions of same words.

Pervigilium Veneris (or The Vigil of Venus) is a Latin poem of uncertain date, variously assigned to the 2nd, 4th or 5th centuries.

Either way, after Christ spoke, and perhaps in 5th C (if such) also influenced by Christian prayer repeating words and phrases.

It exists in four heavily corrupted manuscripts, including the Codex Salmasianus, as part of a collection of later Latin poetry compiled around the 6th Century AD.

The Pervigilium Veneris
A New Critical Text, Translation and Commentary
By: William M. Barton
https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-pervigilium-veneris-9781350040540/

But even more, you don't have straight repetition even twice in a row of "cras amet qui nunquam amavit, quique amavit cras amet"

A real prayer by a Pagan from the very year in which Christ spoke (on concentional dating, 16th year of Tiberius) is the ending prayer in Velleius Paterculus' Roman History. Not one phrase is repeated. It's all very vain, but especially wordy.

That the prayers for Rome were not warding off Odoacar in the long run is vain in retrospect, but that they were wordy is immediately observable. Book II, chapter CXXXI goes, in English translation:

Let our book be concluded with a prayer. O Jupiter Capitolinus, O Jupiter Stator! O Mars Gradivus, author of the Roman name! O Vesta, guardian of the eternal fire! O all ye deities who have exalted the present magnitude of the Roman empire to a position of supremacy over the world, guard, preserve, and protect, I entreat and conjure you, in the name of the Commonwealth, our present state, our present peace, [our present prince[104]!] And when he shall have completed a long course on earth, grant him successors to the remotest ages, and such as shall have abilities to support the empire of the world as powerfully as we have seen him support it! All the just designs of our countrymen * * * *

I cited that here:

somewhere else : Two of These Quoted (Silent Historians Argument Revisited)
https://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.com/2016/04/two-of-these-quoted-silent-historians.html

Vulgate has Orantes autem, nolite multum loqui, sicut ethnici, putant enim quod in multiloquio suo exaudiantur.

I think Velleius Paterculus (II - CXXXI) is the real illustration of what that means.

II

3:01 Clau-Clau-Claudius did, but it got better with the age ... [wiki] (1er août 10 av. J.-C. - 13 octobre 54)

I wonder if it got better after he got to age 40 - that would indicate Christ could have cured him at a distance with this word me battologesete.

III

3:35 This morning I got a coffee by using many words. The guys in the hotel did not know the full extent of my plight until I had explained it.

Now, obviously, while God approves their generosity, He's not them. He does not need long explanations.

And obviously, Velleius Paterculus illustrates fairly perfectly how he viewed the gods like if they needed explanations or convincing arguments to get on one's side ...

He's like "look, I'm not asking you to give success to ALL plans of the Roman rulers without exception, JUST the just plans" ... his gods needed convincing, as he imagined them.

8:50 for his mercy endureth forever

One possible source for the literary form in Pervigilium Veneris.

On that coffee.

I'm not sure the pagans praying were not much more insecure than I when asking for coffee.

I just risked not getting coffee.

But Velleius in a sense takes "stutterspeech" to a level where I at least ask if he is really ... like the squirrel (or fox?) stuttering a salute to "Queen Jadis" - stuttering because the squirrel (or fox) knew Jadis was in fact cruel.

It's the approach to a tyrant one is trying to please and afraid to displease, not because of a known taste in that person, but because that person is so alien, even sth good could displease, even sth bad could please - under circumstances not to be lightly dared.

After reading Greek Tragedy - if you take that as factual, I do, most of it, it means Apollo, Venus, Neptune, perhaps also Diana in that connection (Hippolytus) - certainly Diana Trivia in a connection outside tragedy, these were façades for demons. And the pagans had some hunch of that. So, I guess, they were very insecure, at times, especially in their heart, at adressing for instance Zeus when knowing he was son of Kronos.

IV

10:24 You could have used the encyclical of an undispited real pope to illustrate that:

If in all this series of Mysteries, Venerable Brethren, are developed the counsels of God in regard to us--"counsels of wisdom and of tenderness" (St. Bernard)--not less apparent is the greatness of the benefits for which we are debtors to the Virgin Mother. No man can meditate upon these without feeling a new awakening in his heart of confidence that he will certainly obtain through Mary the fullness of the mercies of God.

Iucunda semper expectatione
https://www.ewtn.com/faith/teachings/marye3.htm

Now obviously, this introduces a red herring to some Prots ... "that's what Muslims do with 99 names and what Hindoos do with mantras, that's how heathen do it" ... except that type of heathen was not around then. And there. Again, Velleius.

10:47 It seems the "encyclical" you cite is going too far to accomodate Protestants.

If a "pope" goes that far to do so, he and his men could even be willing to listen to Protestant doctors about a mental patient (or sth like that, someone in a similar position of constantly being judged by them) and conclude on their words that the Catholic is running that risk, not meditating properly etc, etc just because a Protestant was sharing the usual Protestant misconception on Matthew 6:7 and abusing his position as a doctor to reinforce it about a particular somewhat marginalised Catholic.

12:01 specifically if questions of rhythm (externally observable) are allowed to intrude on questions of whether meditation is absent or present.

I could easily be reciting the rosary too quickly to meditate on each word in Hail Mary, BUT that doesn't stop me from meditating on the 15 mysteries.

(Also, I am obviously keeping the weekly rhythm, when I pray the rosary, which hasn't been for a while, of 15 mysteries in 3 groups, monday-tuesday-wednesday - thursday-friday-saturday - sunday). (In other words, 20 mysteries - "no thanks").