Prayer of Consecration to the Immaculata

Picture Source

O Immaculata, Queen of Heaven and earth, refuge of sinners and our most loving Mother, God has willed to entrust the entire order of mercy to you. I, (name), a repentant sinner, cast myself at your feet, humbly imploring you to take me with all that I am and have, wholly to yourself as your possession and property. Please make of me, of all my powers of soul and body, of my whole life, death and eternity, whatever most pleases you.

If it pleases you, use all that I am and have without reserve, wholly to accomplish what was said of you: "She will crush your head," and "You alone have destroyed all heresies in the whole world." Let me be a fit instrument in your immaculate and merciful hands for introducing and increasing your glory to the maximum in all the many strayed and indifferent souls, and thus help extend as far as possible the blessed kingdom of the most Sacred Heart of Jesus. For wherever you enter you obtain the grace of conversion and growth in holiness, since it is through your hands that all graces come to us from the most Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Allow me to praise you, O Sacred Virgin
Give me strength against your enemies

Amen

Thanks to Sue Cifelli.

Salutation Of The Blessed Virgin

( by Saint Francis of Assisi )

Hail Holy Lady most holy Queen,
Mary Mother of God.
Chosen by the Father in heaven
consecrated by Him.
With His most beloved Son and
Holy Spirit comforter,
On you descended and still remains
fullness of grace
And every good.

Hail His palace and His robe,
Mary Mother of God.
Hail His handmaid lowly and pure,
Loving servant of the Lord.
Hail holy virtues given by God
to all the faithful in the world,
So that no longer we faithless be,
And may become the
servants of the Lord. - AMEN

Mary We Turn To You For Protection

We turn to you for protection,
holy Mother of God.

Listen to our prayers
and help us in our needs.
( mention your special request )
Save us from every danger,
glorious and blessed Virgin.

Thanks to Father Vince I.

Every Priestly Vocation Passes through the Heart of the Blessed Virgin

We cannot live, we cannot look at the truth about ourselves without letting ourselves be looked at and generated by Christ in daily Eucharistic Adoration, and the Stabat of Mary, "Woman of the Eucharist," beneath her Son's Cross, is the most significant example of contemplation and adoration of the divine Sacrifice that has been given to us. ...

Lastly, the Holy Mother of God remains an indispensable foundation of the whole of priestly life. The relationship with her cannot be resolved in pious devotional practice but is nourished by ceaseless entrustment to the arms of the ever Virgin of the whole of our life, of our ministry in its entirety. Mary Most Holy also leads us, like John, beneath the Cross of her Son and Our Lord in order to contemplate, with her, God's infinite Love: "He who for us is Life itself descended here and endured our death and slew it by the abundance of his Life" (St Augustine, Confessions, IV, 12).

(...) Pope St Pius X said: "Every priestly vocation comes from the heart of God but passes through the heart of a mother." This is true with regard to obvious biological motherhood but it is also true of the "birth" of every form of fidelity to the Vocation of Christ. We cannot do without a spiritual motherhood for our priestly life: Let us entrust ourselves confidently to the prayer of the whole of Holy Mother Church, to the motherhood of the People, whose pastors we are but to whom are entrusted our custody and holiness; let us ask for this fundamental support.



Excerpt from Pope Benedict XVI's Message on the
Day of Prayer for Priests for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus,
May 30, 2008

Source. Thanks Brother John Samaha!

Blessed Fr. Jerzy Popieluszko - Polish Priest and Martyr

A God Who Feels Compassion

The End of the Year for Priests - The Grace of the Presence of Christ

Photo Source

Thanks to Father Vince Inghilterra for sharing the following.

Father Walter Ciszek, S.J.

The moment a priest appeared on the camp grounds by himself or with a fellow priest, he would be joined by passing prisoners. The moment it became known in a new brigade or new barracks or a new camp that a man was a priest, he would be sought out. He didn't have to make friends; they came to him instead. It was a very humbling experience, because you quickly came to appreciate that it was God's grace at work and had little to do with your own efforts. People came to you because you were a priest, not because of what you were personally. They didn't always come, either, expecting wise counsel or spiritual wisdom or an answer to their every difficulty; they came expecting absolution from their sins, the power of the sacrament.

To realize this was a matter of joy and of humility. You realized that they came to you as a man of God, a representative of God, a man chosen from among men and ordained for men in the things that are of God; you realized, too, that this imposed upon you an obligation of service, of ministry, with no thought of personal inconvenience, no matter how tired you might be physically or what risks you might be running in the face of official threats.

For my part, I could not help but see in every encounter with every prisoner the will of God for me, now, at this time and in this place, and the hand of providence that had brought me there by strange and torturous paths...

The things that are of God are all the joys and works and sufferings of each day, however burdensome and boring, routine and insignificant they may seem. It is the priest's function to offer these things back to God for his fellow men and to serve as an example, a witness, a martyr, a testimony before the men around him of God's providence and purpose.

The end of this particular jubilee year is bittersweet. I hope everyone remembers to pray for ALL our priests, every chance they get.

Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus

Painting of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque Contemplating the Sacred heart of Jesus by Corrado Giaquinto
Picture Source

"The heart of God burns with compassion! On today’s solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus the Church presents us this mystery for our contemplation: the mystery of the heart of a God who feels compassion and who bestows all his love upon humanity. A mysterious love, which in the texts of the New Testament is revealed to us as God’s boundless and passionate love for mankind. God does not lose heart in the face of ingratitude or rejection by the people he has chosen; rather, with infinite mercy he sends his only-begotten Son into the world to take upon himself the fate of a shattered love, so that by defeating the power of evil and death he could restore to human beings enslaved by sin their dignity as sons and daughters." - Pope Benedict XVI, from his homily on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, June 19, 2009

Thank you Father Vince I.

Year for Priests: Interior Renewal

A Prayer for Priests Based on the Tenth Promise

Sacred Heart of Jesus, Eternal High Priest,
let Your love flow into the hearts of your priests
and transform them into living images of You.
By Your grace, make them true apostles of Your Sacred Heart.

I pray for the fulfillment of the promise You made to St. Margaret Mary:
"I will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts".

May Your kingdom come to the hearts of all
through the ministry of holy priests!

Amen.

Mahalo to Eucharistic Adoration for Priests for sharing the prayer.

Pius XII's Letter to US President Roosevelt

From Zenit

"Spare Innocent Civil Populations and in Particular Churches"

VATICAN CITY, JUNE 9, 2010 (Zenit.org).- Here is the previously unpublished letter sent by Pope Pius XII to U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on Aug. 30, 1943, after one of the several bombings of Rome by the Allied Forces.

* * *

Your Excellency,

Recent events have naturally focused the worlds attention for the moment on Italy, and much has been said and written on what policy she would or should now follow for her own best interests. Too many, we fear, take for granted that she is entirely free to follow the policy of her choice; and we have wished to express to Your Excellency our conviction that this is far from true. Of her desire for peace and to be done with the war, there can be no doubt; but in the presence of formidable forces opposing the actuation or even the official declaration of that desire she finds herself shackled and quite without the necessary means of defending herself.

If under such circumstances Italy is to be forced still to bear devastating blows against which she is practically defenseless, we hope and pray that the military leader will find it possible to spare innocent civil populations and in particular churches and religious institutions the ravages of war. Already, we must recount with deep sorrow and regret, these figure very prominently among the ruins of Italy's most populous and important cities.

But the message of assurance addressed to us by Your Excellency sustains our hope, even in the face of bitter experience, that God's temples and the homes erected by Christian charity for the poor and sick and abandoned members of Christ's flock may survive the terrible onslaught. May God in His merciful pity and love hearken to the universal cry of his children and let them hear once more the voice of Christ say: Peace!

We are happy of this occasion to renew the expression of our sincere good wishes to Your Excellency.

From the Vatican, August 30, 1943

Pius PP XII

Turkey: bishop's murder was political, Church leaders fear

Photo of Archbishop Padovese courtesy of Aid to the Church in Need

...An Italian Catholic journalist, Father Filippo di Giacomo, has said that Bishop Padovese had been warned by Turkish security officials that his driver was involved with radical Islamic groups. The bishop, who was preparing to travel to Cyprus to join Pope Benedict there, cancelled his plans because he feared Altun might be involved in an attempt on the Pope's life, the Italian journalist wrote...

Catholic Culture Article here