Mother Teresa's Fragrance Prayer

Mother Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu, honoured in the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta, was an Albanian-Indian Roman Catholic nun and missionary. She was born in Skopje, then part of the Kosovo Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. Wikipedia

Born: August 26, 1910, Skopje, North Macedonia

Died: September 5, 1997, Kolkata, India

Full name: Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu

Title: Superior general

Awards: Nobel Peace Prize, Bharat Ratna, Order of the Smile, Golden Honour of the Nation, More

Parents: Dranafile Bojaxhiu, Nikollë Bojaxhiu

Siblings: Aga Bojaxhiu, Lazar Bojaxhiu

Mother Teresa's Fragrance

Prayer

Mother Teresa took a well-loved prayer poem by Cardinal John Henry Newman (1801-1890), changed the singular to plural, and prayed it every day after Communion with her Sisters of Charity. Here’s the prayer poem.

Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance everywhere I go.

Flood my soul with Your spirit and life.

Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.

Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul.

Let them look up and see no longer me, but only Jesus!

Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to others; the light, O Jesus will be all from You; none of it will be mine; it will be you, shining on others through me.

Let me thus praise You the way You love best, by shining on those around me.

Let me preach You without preaching, not by words but by my example, by the catching force of the sympathetic influence of what I do, the evident fullness of the love my heart bears to You.

PRAYER TO SAINT JUDE FOR HEALING

Prayer to St. Jude for Physical Healing 

" St. Jude, you witnessed the healing power of our Lord Jesus. You saw His compassion for the sick and dying. You yourself touched the sick, shared the sorrows of the mournful, and encouraged the despairing. You received this authority and healing power to work wonders, to cure the incurable, to make people whole. We ask you to intercede with our brother, Jesus, to send His saving grace to heal the sickness and suffering of __________________, to uplift his/her despondent spirit, and to instil hope in his/her heart. Amen. 

credits : https://www.facebook.com/DailyRosary/photos/a.10152905218748706/10160291788473706/

SAINT OF THE DAY St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin (Feast Day: Feb. 26)

Maria Bertilla Boscardin was an Italian nun and nurse who displayed a pronounced devotion to duty in working with sick children and victims of the air raids of World War I. She was later canonised a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. 

Source:Wikipedia

Born: October 6, 1888, Brendola, Italy

Died: October 20, 1922, Treviso, Italy

Canonized: May 11, 1961 by Pope John XXIII

Feast: October 20

Beatified: June 8, 1952 by Pope Pius XII

Major shrine: Vicenza, Veneto, Italy

 SAINT OF THE DAY 

 St. Maria Bertilla Boscardin 

Feast Day: Feb. 26

Pray for us!

Saint Maria Bertilla Boscardin’s Story

If anyone knew rejection, ridicule and disappointment, it was today’s saint. But such trials only brought Maria Bertilla Boscardin closer to God and more determined to serve him.

Born in Italy in 1888, the young girl lived in fear of her father, a violent man prone to jealousy and drunkenness. Her schooling was limited so that she could spend more time helping at home and working in the fields. She showed few talents and was often the butt of jokes.

In 1904, she joined the Sisters of Saint Dorothy and was assigned to work in the kitchen, bakery and laundry. After some time Maria received nurses’ training and began working in a hospital with children suffering from diphtheria. There the young nun seemed to find her true vocation: nursing very ill and disturbed children. Later, when the hospital was taken over by the military in World War I, Sister Maria Bertilla fearlessly cared for patients amidst the threat of constant air raids and bombings.

She died in 1922 after suffering for many years from a painful tumor. Some of the patients she had nursed many years before were present at her canonization in 1961.

Reflection

This fairly recent saint knew the hardships of living in an abusive situation. Let us pray to her to help all those who are suffering from any form of spiritual, mental, or physical abuse.

SAINT OF THE DAY FEBRUARY 25: BLESSED SEBASTIÁN OF APARICIO

🕊 🙏 SAINT OF THE DAY 💕 🕊

🙏🏻 Blessed Sebastian of Aparicio 🙏🏻

(Feast Day: Feb. 25,)

Pray for us!

Sebastian de Aparicio y del Pardo was a Spanish colonist in Mexico shortly after its conquest by Spain, who after a lifetime as a rancher and road builder entered the Order of Friars Minor as a lay brother. Source:Wikipedia

Born: January 20, 1502, A Gudiña, Spain

Died: February 25, 1600, Puebla, Mexico

Feast: 25 February

Beatified: 17 May 1789 by Pope Pius VI

Blessed Sebastian of Aparicio’s Story

Sebastian’s roads and bridges connected many distant places. His final bridge-building was to help men and women recognize their God-given dignity and destiny.

Sebastian’s parents were Spanish peasants. At the age of 31, he sailed to Mexico, where he began working in the fields. Eventually he built roads to facilitate agricultural trading and other commerce. His 466-mile road from Mexico City to Zacatecas took 10 years to build and required careful negotiations with the indigenous peoples along the way.

In time Sebastian was a wealthy farmer and rancher. At the age of 60, he entered a virginal marriage. His wife’s motivation may have been a large inheritance; his was to provide a respectable life for a girl without even a modest marriage dowry. When his first wife died, he entered another virginal marriage for the same reason; his second wife also died young.

At the age of 72, Sebastian distributed his goods among the poor and entered the Franciscans as a brother. Assigned to the large (100-member) friary at Puebla de los Angeles south of Mexico City, Sebastian went out collecting alms for the friars for the next 25 years. His charity to all earned him the nickname “Angel of Mexico.”

Sebastian was beatified in 1787 and is known as a patron of travelers.

PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE FROM EVERY KIND OF WAR

We pray for deliverance from every kind of war.

_________________________________________

PRAYER FOR DELIVERANCE FROM EVIL

Immaculate Heart! Help us to conquer the menace of evil, which so easily takes root in the hearts of the people of today, and whose immeasurable effects already weigh down upon our modern world and seem to block the paths towards the future!

From famine and war, deliver us. From nuclear war, from incalculable self-destruction, from every kind of war, deliver us. From sins against the life of man from its very beginning, deliver us. From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity of the children of God, deliver us. From every kind of injustice in the life of society, both national and international, deliver us. From readiness to trample on the commandments of God, deliver us. From attempts to stifle in human hearts the very truth of God, deliver us. From the loss of awareness of good and evil, deliver us. From sins against the Holy Spirit, deliver us, deliver us.

Accept, O Mother of Christ, this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual human beings, laden with the sufferings of whole societies. Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit to conquer all sin: individual sin and the “sin of the world,” sin in all its manifestations. Let there be revealed, once more, in the history of the world the infinite saving power of the Redemption: the power of merciful Love! May it put a stop to evil! May it transform consciences! May your Immaculate Heart reveal for all the light of Hope!

_____________________________

Ref.: Saint John Paul II, Consecration of all Individuals and Peoples of the World to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, 1984

🙏 Evening Prayer 🙏

Evening Prayer

Into thy hands, Mary, I commend my body and my soul, I ask thee to provide for them and to protect them. I ask thee to protect them from the evil one. I ask thee enlighten my mind, strengthen my will, and refrain my appetites by grace. Our Lady and St. Michael, call down from Heaven the legions of angels under your command to protect me; I ask of thee all the things I ask of my Guardian Angel. My Guardian angel, under thy intellectual and volitional protection I place my body. I ask thee to illumine my mind and refrain my appetites. I ask thee to strengthen my cogitative power, my memory and my imagination. Help me to remember the things I should and not remember the things I should not. Help me to associate the things I should and not to associate the things I should not. Give me good clear images in my imagination. I ask thee to drive away all the demons that might affect me while I sleep (or throughout the course of the day). (Help me to sleep and, if thou should deem it prudent, direct my dreams. Help me to arise refreshed). Amen.

SAINT OF THE DAY St. Peter Damian (Feast Day: Feb.21)

SAINT OF THE DAY

St. Peter Damian

(Feast Day: Feb.21,)

Pray for us!

Saint Peter Damian’s Story

Maybe because he was orphaned and had been treated shabbily by one of his brothers, Peter Damian was very good to the poor. It was the ordinary thing for him to have a poor person or two with him at table and he liked to minister personally to their needs.

Peter escaped poverty and the neglect of his own brother when his other brother, who was archpriest of Ravenna, took him under his wing. His brother sent him to good schools and Peter became a professor.

Already in those days, Peter was very strict with himself. He wore a hair shirt under his clothes, fasted rigorously and spent many hours in prayer. Soon, he decided to leave his teaching and give himself completely to prayer with the Benedictines of the reform of Saint Romuald at Fonte Avellana. They lived two monks to a hermitage. Peter was so eager to pray and slept so little that he soon suffered from severe insomnia. He found he had to use some prudence in taking care of himself. When he was not praying, he studied the Bible.

The abbot commanded that when he died Peter should succeed him. Abbot Peter founded five other hermitages. He encouraged his brothers in a life of prayer and solitude and wanted nothing more for himself. The Holy See periodically called on him, however, to be a peacemaker or troubleshooter, between two abbeys in dispute or a cleric or government official in some disagreement with Rome.

Finally, Pope Stephen IX made Peter the cardinal-bishop of Ostia. He worked hard to wipe out simony—the buying of church offices–and encouraged his priests to observe celibacy and urged even the diocesan clergy to live together and maintain scheduled prayer and religious observance. He wished to restore primitive discipline among religious and priests, warning against needless travel, violations of poverty, and too comfortable living. He even wrote to the bishop of Besancon complaining that the canons there sat down when they were singing the psalms in the Divine Office.

He wrote many letters. Some 170 are extant. We also have 53 of his sermons and seven lives, or biographies, that he wrote. He preferred examples and stories rather than theory in his writings. The liturgical offices he wrote are evidence of his talent as a stylist in Latin.

He asked often to be allowed to retire as cardinal-bishop of Ostia, and finally Pope Alexander II consented. Peter was happy to become once again just a monk, but he was still called to serve as a papal legate. When returning from such an assignment in Ravenna, he was overcome by a fever. With the monks gathered around him saying the Divine Office, he died on February 22, 1072.

In 1828, he was declared a Doctor of the Church.

SAINT OF THE DAY St. Jacenta and Francisco Marto (Feast Day: February 20)

 

SAINT OF THE DAY

St. Jacenta and Francisco Marto

(Feast Day: February 20,)

Pray for us!

Saints Jacinta and Francisco

Marto’s Story

Between May 13 and October 13, 1917, three Portuguese shepherd children from Aljustrel, received apparitions of Our Lady at Cova da Iria, near Fátima, a city 110 miles north of Lisbon. At that time, Europe was involved in an extremely bloody war. Portugal itself was in political turmoil, having overthrown its monarchy in 1910; the government disbanded religious organizations soon after.

At the first appearance, Mary asked the children to return to that spot on the thirteenth of each month for the next six months. She also asked them to learn to read and write and to pray the rosary “to obtain peace for the world and the end of the war.” They were to pray for sinners and for the conversion of Russia, which had recently overthrown Czar Nicholas II and was soon to fall under communism. Up to 90,000 people gathered for Mary’s final apparition on October 13, 1917.

Less than two years later, Francisco died of influenza in his family home. He was buried in the parish cemetery and then re-buried in the Fátima basilica in 1952. Jacinta died of influenza in Lisbon in 1920, offering her suffering for the conversion of sinners, peace in the world, and the Holy Father. She was re-buried in the Fátima basilica in 1951. Their cousin Lúcia dos Santos, became a Carmelite nun and was still living when Jacinta and Francisco were beatified in 2000; she died five years later. Pope Francis canonized the younger children on his visit to Fátima to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the first apparition–May 13, 2017. The shrine of Our Lady of Fátima is visited by up to 20 million people a year.

WHY DO WE HAVE TO GO TO MASS

WHY GO TO MASS ?

1. At the time of your death, your greatest comfort will be the Masses that during your life you attended with fervor and devotion.

2. Every Mass you attended will accompany you in divine court and advocate for you to attain forgiveness.

3. With each Mass you can lessen the temporary punishment you owe for your sins, in proportion to the fervor with which you hear it.

4. With devoted attendance for the Holy Mass, pay the highest homage to the Holy Humanity of Our Lord..

5. The well-heard Holy Mass replaces your many neglects and omissions.

6. By the well-heard Holy Mass you are forgiven all the venomous sins you are determined to avoid, and many others you don't even remember.

7. Because of her also the devil loses dominion over you.

8. You offer ultimate consolation to the blessed souls of Purgatory.

9. You get blessings in your business and temporary affairs.

10. A Mass heard while you live will benefit you much more than many can offer for you after death.

11. You spare yourself from many dangers and misfortunes which you might fall into if not for the Holy Mass.

12. Also remember that it shortens your Purgatory.

13. With every Mass you will increase your degrees of glory in Heaven. In it you receive the blessing of the priest, which God ratifies in heaven.

14. To the one who hears Mass every day, God will deliver him from a tragic death, and the guardian Angel will keep in mind the steps he takes to go to Mass, and God will reward them in his death.

15. During Mass you kneel in the midst of a crowd of angels invisibly attending the Holy Sacrifice with utmost reverence.

16. When we hear mass in honor of a particular Saint, giving thanks to God for the favors bestowed on that Saint, we cannot help but earn his protection and special love, for the honor, joy and happiness that our good work follows him.

17. Every day we hear Mass, it would be good if, besides the other intentions, we had the one to honor the Saint of the day.

18. The Mass is the greatest gift that can be offered to the Lord for souls, to take them out of purgatory, to set them free from their sorrows, and to bring them to enjoy glory. – Saint Bernard of the Seine.

19. Whoever hears Mass, prays, gives alms, or prays for the souls of the Purgatory, works for his own benefit. – Saint Augustine.

20. For every Mass celebrated or heard with devotion, many souls leave Purgatory, and those who remain there are lessened by the sorrows they suffer. – Saint Gregory the Great, Pope.

21. During the celebration of the Mass, the sorrows of the souls are suspended for those who pray and work the priest, and especially for those for whom the Mass is offered. –St. Gregory the Great.

22. You can also earn Plenary Indulgence every Monday of the year by offering the Holy Mass and Communion in suffrage of the blessed souls of Purgatory. For the believers who can't hear Mass on Monday it's worth listening to it on Sunday with that intention.

23. It is pleaded that they apply all the indulgences in suffering of the Souls of Purgatory, for God our Lord, and they will reward you this charity.

24. The Holy Mass is the renewal of the Sacrifice of Calvary, the greatest act of worship to the Holy Trinity. That's why it's obligatory to listen to it every Sunday and holidays to save.

 

A BEAUTIFUL ACT OF CONTRITION

A BEAUTIFUL ACT OF CONTRITION

Forgive me my sins, O Lord, forgive me my sins; the sins of my youth, the sins of my age, the sins of my soul, the sins of my body; my idle sins, my serious voluntary sins; the sins I know, the sins I do not know; the sins I have concealed for so long, and which are now hidden from my memory.

I am truly sorry for every sin, mortal and venial, for all the sins of my childhood up to the present hour.

I know my sins have wounded Thy Tender Heart, O My Savior, let me be freed from the bonds of evil through the most bitter Passion of My Redeemer.

Amen.

O My Jesus, forget and forgive what I have been.

Amen.