Illustration taken from
(Google Images)
This prayer was found on a Prayer Card at the back of my local Church.
Rather than leave it to lie there, unseen and unappreciated, I copy it, here, on this Blog, to permit the World to pray for their Priests.
O Jesus, I pray:
for Your faithful and fervent Priests;
for Your unfaithful and tepid Priests;
for Your Priests labouring at home or abroad in distant mission fields;
for Your tempted Priests;
for Your lonely and desolate Priests;
for Your young Priests;
for Your dying Priests;
for the Souls of Your Priests in Purgatory.
But, above all, I recommend to You
the Priests who are dearest to me:
the Priest who baptised me;
the Priest who absolved me from my sins;
the Priest at whose Masses I have assisted
and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;
the Priests who taught and instructed me;
the Priests to whom I am indebted in any other way.
Jesus, keep them all close to Your heart,
and bless them abundantly,
in time and in eternity.
Amen.
I offer this prayer for Father Leonard O'Donnell, who saw more in the little waif from the bombed out slums of 1945, than most. Who put a pen in my hand and taught me to draw.
ReplyDeleteI kept altar for him seven days a week, until one day I flew away.
God rest his soul.
Dear John Simlett.
DeleteThank you for your Comment.
What a beautiful thing for you to do, to pray for Fr Leonard O'Donnell, R.I.P.
If he needs your Prayers, he has them.
If he doesn't need your Prayers, you have an intercessor in Heaven who will, no doubt, pray for you.
in Domino.
Thanks for circulating this prayer.
ReplyDeleteIt is all too easy either to have extremely hish expectaions of priests, or to focus on those who have so badly failed their proestly office in the various scandals with which the Church is currently having to deal.
In fact, most of our priests are very like the rest of us, basically good-intentioned men, but subject to the same stresses and weaknesses that affect us all. The prayer reflects this, and encourages us to pray for those priests who may be in most need of o prayers. It also admirably recalls how vital our priests are, and the many ways in which they touch and assist our spiritual life, and for which we often forget to than God.
I have printed the prayer and am trying to learn it so that I can incorporate it into my daily prayers.
Dear Matthaeus. Thank you for your Comment. Your observations are spot on, of course.
ReplyDeleteI am so pleased that you have printed the Prayer and will incorporate it into your daily Prayers.