Daily prayer for Priests

O Almighty, Eternal God, look upon the Face of Your Son and for love of Him, who is the Eternal High Priest, have pity on Your priests. Remember, O most compassionate God, that they are but weak and frail human beings. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation which is in them by the imposition of the bishop’s hands. Keep them close to You, lest the enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation.

O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests; for Your unfaithful and tepid priests; for Your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for Your tempted priests; for the lonely and desolate priests; for Your young priests; for Your dying priests; for the souls of Your priests in purgatory.

But above all, I commend to you N. and all the priests dearest to me, the priest who baptized me, the priests who have absolved me from my sins, the priests at whose Masses I have assisted and who have offered me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion, the priests who have taught and instructed me or helped and encouraged me, and the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way.

O Jesus, keep them all close to Your Heart, and bless them abudently in time and eternity. Amen.

Poem

Every substance
Every thing
All sustinence
Comes through Him.

Every creature
The smallest heard
In a day's stature
Were made by His Word.




Every person
Every race
Whatever is begun
At conception reflects His face.

Whichever virtue
Or Love that saves
It is given through
Grace; never fails to amaze



In Faith of Him
What his death has done
Will surely begin
Salvation which he has won

May Procession

It was lovely to attend the Marian procession today, which includes crowning of a statue of our Lady of Fatima with a garland of flowers. For the first time Maddy took a very special interest, walking with the other girls in their pretty white dresses. At one point Maddy picked some wild flowers en route and added them to the ones decorating the statue!

Fr Richard Duffield, the new provost of the Birmingham Oratory, led the procession, and asked everyone to pray especially for the success of the Pope's visit and the beatification of our Cardinal, which is beset with opposition. I must admit to my own failings and cynicism about the beatification ceremony, and hope that our family can be there to support our Holy Father.

The afternoon ended with a consecration to our Lady of Fatima, in the hope that we may have God's grace active in our lives using the Blessed Virgin Mary as an example of docility to the divine will.