ASH WEDNESDAY PRAYER

✝--ASH WEDNESDAY PRAYER --

GOD of goodness and mercy, hear my prayer as I begin this Lenten journey with You. Guide me as I humbly seek to repent and return to Your love. May humility guide my efforts to be reconciled with You and live forever in Your abundant grace.

Transform me this Lent, Heavenly Father. Give me the strength to commit myself to grow closer to You each day. I humbly ask You this, through Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever. Amen.

A PRAYER FOR PEACE BY POPE FRANCIS FOR UKRAINE

FOR UKRAINE: A PRAYER FOR PEACE BY POPE FRANCIS

Lord God of peace, hear our prayer!

We have tried so many times and over so many years

to resolve our conflicts by our own powers and by the force of our arms.

How many moments of hostility and darkness have we experienced?

How much blood has been shed?

How many lives have been shattered?

How many hopes have been buried?

But our efforts have been in vain.

Now, Lord, come to our aid!

Grant us peace, teach us peace;

guide our steps in the way of peace.

Open our eyes and our hearts,

and give us the courage to say: "Never again war!"; 

"With war everything is lost".

Instill in our hearts the courage to take concrete steps to achieve peace.

Lord, God of Abraham, God of the Prophets, God of Love,

you created us and you call us to live as brothers and sisters.

Give us the strength daily to be instruments of peace;

enable us to see everyone who crosses our path as our brother or sister.

Make us sensitive to the plea of our citizens

who entreat us to turn our weapons of war into implements of peace,

our trepidation into confident trust,

and our quarreling into forgiveness.

Keep alive within us the flame of hope,

so that with patience and perseverance

we may opt for dialogue and reconciliation.

In this way may peace triumph at last,

and may the words "division," "hatred," and "war"

be banished from the heart of every man and woman.

Lord, defuse the violence of our tongues and our hands.

Renew our hearts and minds,

so that the word which always brings us together will be "brother,"

and our way of life will always be that of: Shalom, Peace, Salaam!

Amen.

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.