“Dear children! Today I invite you again to put prayer in the first place in your families. Little children, when God is in the first place, then you will, in all that you do, seek the will of God. In this way your daily conversion will become easier. Little children, seek with humility that which is not in order in your hearts, and you shall understand what you have to do. Conversion will become a daily duty that you will do with joy. Little children, I am with you, I bless you all and I invite you to become my witnesses by prayer and personal conversion. Thank you for having responded to my call. ” April 25, 1996
PRAYER FOR HUMILITY By St. Frances Cabrini Lord Jesus Christ, I pray that you may fortify me with the grace of your Holy Spirit, and give your peace to my soul, that I may be free from all needless anxiety and worry. Help me to desire always that which is pleasing and acceptable to you, so that your will may be my will.
Grant that I may be free of unholy desires and that, for your love, I may remain obscure and unknown in this world, to be known only to you.
Do not permit me to attribute to myself the good that you perform in me and through me, but rather, referring all honor to you, may I admit only to my infirmities, so that renouncing sincerely all vainglory which comes from the world, I may aspire to that true and lasting glory which comes from you. Amen.
Fasting prayer and alms; self-denial, devotion and charity; these are the principal good works at this and every time; but they are more urgent now than usual, if we wish to obtain the special fruit of this holy season.
- Father George Mary Searle (1839-1918), Paulist priest
Author and Website Designer Fr. Neil Buchlein, Pastor of Ascension Catholic Church, Hurricane, West Virginia
Pray for priests. Love them. Support them. Help them to be holy. We are weak and fragile. If your knees are not bent in prayer for us, we stumble and fall. We need your prayer. • Fr Jozo Zovko ofm
“O my Jesus, I beg you on behalf of the whole Church: grant it love and the light of Your Spirit, and give power to the works of priests, so that hardened hearts might be brought to repentance and return to You, O Lord. Lord, give us holy priests; You Yourself maintain them in holiness. O Divine and Great High Priest, may the power of Your mercy accompany them everywhere and protect them from the devil's traps and snares, which are continually being set for the souls of priests. May the power of Your mercy, O Lord, shatter and bring to naught all that might tarnish the sanctity of priests, for You can do all things. I ask You, Jesus, for a special blessing and for light for the priests before whom I will make my confessions throughout my lifetime. Amen.” (Diary, §1051)
I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child - a direct killing of the innocent child - murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love, and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts.--Blessed Teresa of Calcutta
God saw all things only in the face of His Son. This was to give them their natural being, bestowing upon them many graces and natural gifts, making them perfect, as it is written in the book of Genesis: "God saw all the things that He had made: and they were very good." To see all things very good was to make them very good in the Word, His Son.... And thus in this exaltation of the incarnation of His Son, and the glory of His resurrection according to the flesh, the Father not only made all things beautiful in part, but also, we may well say, clothed them wholly with beauty and dignity.
- Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), Spanish mystic, Carmelite friar and priest, Doctor of the Church