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.

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.