Aloysius Schwartz on Prayer

Thomas Merton on Spiritual Union

Prayer of Thomas Merton 

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that my desire to please you does in fact please you. 

And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road
though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always,though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you will never leave me to face my perils alone. 
Amen.

Commemorating the Sacrifice of the Smallest Cristero Soldier: St. Jose Sanchez del Rio

St. Jose,Littlest soldier of Christ,who's last bloody stepsbrought you to the arms of Our Lady and Our Lord,keep healthy and strongthe steps of Our Lord's soldierswho remain here on Earth,so that they may have your strength to endure and preserve to the end.Via Cristo Rey!Amen

Thoughts on Faith and American Life from the National Prayer Breakfast

President Donald Trump spoke at the 66th annual National Prayer Breakfast, during which he bolstered lofty rhetoric about faith and American life by pairing it with contemporary examples of how we can be heroes to everybody. 

Fatima Seer Sister Lucia on the Rosary

Post Scriptus: One reader of this post repeatedly inveighed "You must be out of your mind" concerning credence to Our Lady of Fatima. Of course, it was a shrill anti-Catholic screed. Regrettably the writer of the ad hominem comment lacked the testicular fortitude to attach a name or any means to colloquy. Some profession of faith--not! The poster must have been out of his mind if he was seeking to convince anyone of his conviction. God bless his little heart.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger on Prayer

Pope St. John Paul II was so convicted that the Blessed Virgin Marry saved his life as the first apparition of the lady in white was on May 13th 1917 and he was shot on May 13th 1981. One year after the assassination attempt, JPII gave one of the bullets lodged in his body to be melded into the crown of Our Lady of the Rosary.

Prayer to St. Joseph the Worker

St. Schlastica on the Spiritual Life

St. Aloysius Gonzaga Celebrates Being a Child of God

St. Aloysius Gonzaga is an Italian aristocrat who renounced his wealthy inheritance to become a Jesuit.  He died at the in 1591 age of 23 as a result of caring for victims of an epidemic in Rome. Aloysius Gonzaga was beatified in 1605 and canonized in 1726.  St. Aloysius Gonzaga is consider a patron saint of youth, AIDS patients and AIDS care givers. 

During his short life, St. Aloysius Gonzaga had a special devotion to the Mary.  Considering the prayer which he composed to the Blessed Virgin Mary as seen through the lens of his life, we can appreciate why he so valued being a child of God.

O holy Mary, my Mistress, into thy blessed trust and special blessing, into the bosom of thy tender mercy, this day, every day of my life and at the hour of my death, I commend my soul and body; to thee I entrust all my hopes and consolations, all my trials and miseries, my life and the end of my life, that through thy most holy intercession and thy merits, all my actions may be ordered and disposed according to thy will and that of thy divine Son. Amen

Charles Spurgeon on Prayer

St. Padre Pio on Prayer

To celebrate the Jubilee for Prayer Groups on Padre Pio  Pope Francis offered a reflection on St. Pio of Pietrelcina and prayer:

Prayer, then, is not a nice practice for finding a little peace of heart; nor is it a means of devotion for obtaining useful things from God. Were it so, then it would be an act of subtle selfishness: I pray in order to be well, just as if taking an aspirin. But this is just making a deal. No, it’s not like this. Prayer is something else, it is something else. Prayer is instead a spiritual work of mercy, which means bringing everything to the heart of God. “You take it, you who are Father”. It should be like this, speaking to him in a simple way. Prayer is saying: “You, take it, you who are Father. Look at us, You who are Father”. This is the relationship with the Father. Prayer is like this. It is a gift of faith and love, an intercession needed just as bread is. In a word, it means to entrust: entrust the Church, entrust people, entrust situations to the Father — “I entrust this to you” — so that you will take care of it. That is why prayer, as Padre Pio liked to say, is “the greatest weapon we have, a key that opens the heart of God”. A key that opens God’s heart: it is a simple key. The heart of God is not “heavily guarded” with many security measures. You can open it with a common key, with prayer. For his is a heart of love, a father’s heart. And it is the Church’s greatest strength, one which we must never let go of, for the Church bears fruit only if she does as did Our Lady and the Apostles, who “with one accord devoted themselves to prayer” (Acts 1:14), as they awaited the Holy Spirit. Dedicated and united in prayer. Otherwise we risk relying elsewhere for support: on means, on money, on power; then evangelization vanishes and joy is extinguished and the heart grows dull. Do you want to have a dull heart? [the people respond: No!] Do you want to have a joyful heart? [Yes!] Pray! This is the recipe.

Pope Francis was so moved by Padre Pio that he made an unexpected visit to the remains of Padre Pio as they were displayed in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

Roodmas Reflections Through the Prism of Merciful Love

The Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (also known as Roodmas) is a solemnity which celebrates three distinct historical events: the finding of the True Cross by St. Helena, the retrieval of the sacred relic by Emperor Heraclius in 629 from the Persians and the ineffable powers of the instrument of Christ's redemptive sacrifice and our salvation. 

According to the Brevery, the Emperor Heraclius carried the Cross back to Jerusalem on his shoulders as he was garbed in fancy garments adorned with precious stones.  But at the entrance to Mount Calvary, the Emperor could not carry the Holy Cross up.  The bishop said to the astonished Heraclius:  

"Consider, O Emperor, that with these triumphal ornaments you are far from resembling Jesus carrying His Cross." The Emperor then put on a penitential garb and continued the journey.

This offers a lesson of humble service which fits into the lesson of Merciful Love associated with the Holy Cross .


The Church exalted the Holy Cross just as Moses lifted up the Bronze Serpent in Exodus and those who looked upon it lived. Jesus willingly sacrificed Himself so that we all may enjoy eternal life. 

In the early 20th Century, Sister Maria Teresa Desandais was blessed with mystical experiences about Jesus' Merciful Love. She wrote about these experiences under the pseudonym  "Sulamitis PM".  In 1912, Sr. Desandais, who had no training in painting, was inspired to create the picture "Merciful Love" which depicted Christ crucified looking towards heaven with a host in the background with the initials JHS.  Rays of light emanating from the Sacred Heart of  Jesus illuminate a  Bible laying at the foot of the cross turned to the passage "Love one another as I have loved you" alongside a crown.  That is an incredible amount of symbolic meaning suffused in one scene, particularly for an amateur painter. 

This message of Merciful Love was widespread in France and Spain after the First World War. To bolster devotion to Merciful Love, Sr. Desandais sent two of her paintings to Spain.  The painting sent to Juana Lacasa effectively became a place of pilgrimage. The other painting was installed at the Royal Basilica of Our Lady of Atocha in Madrid where Sister Maria Teresa's order was attached.

 It is quite conceivable that the message of Merciful Love of Jesus with the exhortation to be servants who love one another may well have influenced Pope Francis for the Year of Divine Mercy.

Part of Sister Maria Teresa's revelations was an offering to Merciful Love:

Holy Father, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer to you Jesus, your beloved Son, and I offer myself in Him and through Him, and with Him for all your intentions, and on behalf of all creatures.

Pope Benedict XVI's Prayer at Ground Zero

During his visit to the United States, Pope Benedict XVI met with survivors and families and also blessed Ground Zero where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center stood before the terrorist atrocity of September 11, 2001.

St. Dominic on Prayer

 As the Church celebrates the Solemnity of St. Dominic, it is worth remembering that this year is the 800th anniversary of the founding of the Order of Preachers (a.k.a. the Dominicans).

An Ignatian Invocation at the DNC in Philly

Father William Byron, S.J. offered an Ignatian invocation at the Democrat National Convention in Philadelphia.

Fr. Byron had been the President of Scranton  University as the Catholic University in America. While he served as a Pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown, DC, he became acquainted with parishioner John Podesta, an adviser to President Bill Clinton.

Byron's prayer weaved scripture, the saints and contemporary contemplation into an invocation. This  prayer seemed like a much more appropriate appeal to the divine than the Pastor's Polemic Prayer at the RNC, but perhaps that was an outlier.

St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori on Mary

On the Immaculate Heart of Mary

St. John Eudes was a Seventeenth Century Normand French cleric who extolled the virtues of a devotion to Sacred Heart started observing a feast for the heart of Mary in 1643. When Pope Leo XIII proclaimed Eudes heroic virtues in 1903, he was proclaimed "Author of the Liturgical Worship of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and Holy Heart of Mary".

Pope Pius VI in 1799 granted a limited feast to "The Most Pure Heart of Mary" in Polermo.  In 1805, Pope Pius VII made a new concession which spread the practice more broadly.  In 1855, the office and Mass of the Most Pure Heart of Mary was approved.  In 1944, Pope Pius XII instituted the Feast of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1944 to be celebrated on August 22.  In 1969, Pope Paul VI moved the feast to the third Saturday after Pentacost, immediately after the the Solemnity of Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

In his Angelus from June 5, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI mused:

The heart that resembles that of Christ more than any other is without a doubt the Heart of Mary, his Immaculate Mother, and for this very reason the liturgy holds them up together for our veneration. Responding to the Virgin's invitation at Fatima, let us entrust the whole world to her Immaculate Heart, which we contemplated yesterday in a special way, so that it may experience the merciful love of God and know true peace.

Because of the strong analogy between Jesus and Mary, the consecration to Mary's Immaculate Heart is closely linked to the consecration to Jesus' Sacred Heart, although it is subordinate and dependent on it. That is, although the act of consecration is ultimately addressed to God, it is an act that is made through Mary.

The aim of  the devotion  to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is to unite mankind to God through Mary's heart, via consecration and reparation. One who is consecrated to Mary's Immaculate Heart as a way of being totally devoted to God.  This involves a total gift of self, something possible only with reference to God but Mary is the intermediary in this process of consecration. 

O Most Blessed Mother, heart of love, heart of mercy, ever listening, caring, consoling, hear our prayer. As your children, we implore your intercession with Jesus your Son. Receive with understanding and compassion the petitions we place before you today, especially ...(special intention).

We are comforted in knowing your heart is ever open to those who ask for your prayer. We trust to your gentle care and intercession, those whom we love and who are sick or lonely or hurting. Help all of us, Holy Mother, to bear our burdens in this life until we may share eternal life and peace with God forever.
Amen.

Pope Leo XIII on the Sacred Heart of Jesus

The first Office and Mass of the Sacred Heart were composed by St. John Eudes, but the institution of the feast was a result of the appearances of our Lord to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque in 1675. The celebration of the feast was extended to the general calendar of the Church by Pius IX in 1856.

O most holy heart of Jesus, fountain of every blessing, I adore you, I love you, and with lively sorrow for my sins I offer you this poor heart of mine. Make me humble, patient, pure and wholly obedient to your will. Grant, Good Jesus, that I may live in you and for you. Protect me in the midst of danger. Comfort me in my afflictions. Give me health of body, assistance in my temporal needs, your blessing on all that I do, and the grace of a holy death. Amen.

Cardinal Jaime Sin on the Power of Prayer

Cardinal Robert Sarah on the Battle for the Soul of America