C
atholic prayers are repetitive; inescapably so. Protestant-style prayer is more spontaneous and personal, intended to be expressive of an intimate one-on-one relationship with the Lord, but the prayers of the Old Church emphasize formula, habit, and tradition. Obviously, personal communicative prayers are an important part of every spiritual life, but the importance handed-down words to call out to God mark an important distinction between the Sacramental and non-Sacramental denominations.
Let's assume there is practical spiritual meaning in this traditional approach. How can we interpret why it is good to, say, pray the rosary every day -- which consists of predominantly of saying the one short prayer fifty times, while meditating one by one of five of fifteen events from the New Testament?
Perhaps the Ave Maria and the events from Christ's life are so complex and deep that it takes a long time of meditating upon them to unpack their meaning. Which is to say, the purpose of the prayers is to learn something about these subjects.
Or maybe they are meant just as a sort of mental drone that occupies the mind and mouth, in order to lead us into a tranquility in which God can work without our spirits flitting from one thing to another.
Or perhaps by continually consciously attempting to experience these events, colored by a call of love to our universal Mother, we teach our heart to love more the God who works such things.
Or maybe we are not praying as ourselves, but as a community; a community that exists over a very, very long time, and has a particular way of communicating and expressing itself; and by using its words, rather than our own, we bind ourselves to that community, and the One she loves.
Or it could be that we are called to slow down, to spend some time thinking about the actions of the Lord and His Mother, rather than our own concerns and our self, and that this deliberate braking of our internal momentum allows the Creator to re-direct us, ever so slowly, toward Him, rather than our own vain agendas.
I leave it as an exercise for the reader which they find convincing.