Priests Intentions

[Beads]

All CAF members: Please remember to pray for your Priest(s) intentions at your Parish! By doing so, you are praying for many many brothers and sisters.

• In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

 

[xyneshia]

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of our death.
Amen

 

[Trishie]

Thank You, God, for the gift of each priest to us. I offer him back to You. Fulfil Your will in him. Grant that he may bear fruit a-hundredfold, that his spirit is made perfect in Your sight.

Through Your Spirit, please witness the beatitudes in him. Let his prayer be, “Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, I love You, above all, with my whole being. My brothers and sisters of all humankind, I love you as myself, as God loves me. I love you with His love poured through my being out of my self-giving in Him.”

Pardon each priest for his sins and their consequences. Pardon any way that he ever fails in his commitment to You. Restore and heal him. Lead him to overcome his faults. Transform into good anything that he may spoil by weakness, sin, or lack of knowledge.

May Your priest so belong to You, may he be so transformed by Your love that his faults no longer constitute offence in Your sight, nor foster anything that impedes Your will. This, my soul, in trusting confidence, implores, giving thanks for Your merciful love.

You, our Creator and our destiny, who said at the beginning of time, “Let there be light” and there was light, now say, “Let it be as is requested in these prayers”, and it shall be so. My God, I ask only what You surely desire to give!

 

[Trishie]

Thy kingdom come amongst my people

Eternal Father please unite me with the good Shepherd who is loving, wise, faithful and vigilant. Make creative use of the person I am and through grace may become. Where I cannot achieve what is required, please supply what is needful. Use me as a human witness of Your living gospel to others. Let Your kingdom of the Spirit come among the souls whom You entrust to me.

As I minister to Your people, I bring them truths divergent from this world’s logic, so allow Your Holy Spirit to convey Your gospel to them through me. Lead me to best use of modes of communication to convey Your love and truth.

Be manifest in my cheerful personality, my wise instructions, my writing, preaching and conversation, through my body language in its subtleties, so that others are always drawn to You through me.

In my strengths and limitations, minister to others through me. Do not let my failures discourage me, for there is much to be done between sowing and reaping, and the harvest depends upon Your nurture. Your warmth and rain blesses my labour and its fruits may manifest only in Heaven!

With each experience and observation, make me a more sensitive instrument of Your love. Left to myself, I can err in countless ways, and even harm, or alienate another person from You.

To those You entrust to my shepherding, please give growing awareness of the ceaseless operation of Your grace. Let them realise that their lives are held continually in Your love. Give them faith that You can heal, purify and make whole (sanctify) each willing person, however ‘lowly’, in the ordinary human realities of life.

Give trust and fidelity to anyone willing to assist me with prayer and support…I ask the intercession of our sisters and brothers in Heaven, and the holy Angels, guardians of humankind! Do not forget us whom God loves and creates for Himself. He seeks to lead us into communion with you also…So profoundly love and cherish us—in guidance, intercession and blessing—that the tide of God in our lives ever swells with your tremendous reservoir of merit and grace, and above all, with the merit of our Redeemer.

Jesus, grant us the graces of Your kingdom brought to reign amongst us! Let Your name be glorified and Your will be completed in us! Meet our spiritual and temporal needs, personal and communal. Forgive us our offences as we forgive others, by giving us Your forgiveness and compassion for each other. Protect us from sin and danger so that we shine as Your living word to all people.

This I ask of You in praise and thanksgiving, Jesus, good Shepherd, whose steward I am.

 

[Trishie]

Love and commitment

Loving God, for Jesus’ sake You look on Your priest and love him more than human mind can conceive! Through Your Spirit, please transmute his humanity through Your love and unite him with You! Make Your love to be his love, Your thoughts to be his thoughts, Your truth to be his truth, Your ways to be his ways, Your strength to be his strength.

Transform him into a fountain of Your goodness and love, a source of salvation to the whole human spirit of Your people. Fill him with loving-kindness, with peace and faith to share with others.

Ever deepen his contemplation and comprehension of You, and commensurately, his love and service. Intensify his perception and understanding of other human beings. Deepen his ability to communicate Your gospel to them, and commensurately, his love and service.

Expand in him the gift of opening others’ hearts and minds, so that they become receptive to Your love and teachings. Let others be thus inspired to seek God, rather than concepts of God.

Wherever he goes, whatever he does, whatever he says or preaches, endow Your priest with grace and wisdom to inspire others to love and faith. Empower him to inflame others’ complacency into genuine and faithful practice of Your greatest commandment, of love for You above all and others as self!

Almighty God, make him the saint You mean him to be. With thanksgiving, I offer him to Your merciful love! Lent 1980

 

[Trishie]

The Sacraments

Loving God, through Jesus You give Your priest power to minister Your Sacraments. Grant that he may always do so with deep love and faith.

Let those he baptises belong always to You. If at some time in their lives they fail to trust Your love and to share Your gifts, protect them through this time and lead them safely back with renewed faith and obedience to Your will.

Let all who are present at the Eucharist with him truly share in it. Let all who receive Communion through his ministry become aware of the greatness of this gift.

Let those who confess to him find true sorrow and absolution—and let him speak to them out of Your knowledge and love of them.

Let anyone he anoints in sickness and in death be healed in spirit, comforted by Your peace, and absorbed eternally into You through Your divine mercy.

Along with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, give to those to whom he administers Confirmation a deep abiding desire to grow in You and the urge constantly to invoke the Spirit’s guidance.

Let all whom he blesses in Matrimony be given strength and wisdom to build and maintain unity in Your faith and love—and may they transmit these gifts to their children.

Let he who is ordained, wholeheartedly fulfil his vows and duties, and Your will for him, so that he may attain the highest degree of service and sanctity possible to him and he may be truly Christ amongst us.

Let all the graces and blessings that You intend to flow from these Sacraments in which Your Priest is instrument, cascade from his ministering, to all persons who partake and behold. Lent 1980

 

[Trishie]

Vulnerable human reality

Jesus, You chose Your priests from amongst Your people, yet in the sacramental ‘laying of hands’ You do not perfect us. Like those we serve, we need pardon, healing, prayer and faith as we seek grace to become humble, genuine witnesses of Christ.

Through Sacrament and intercession, teaching and act, we encourage and instruct Your people as You call us in our personal human history and reality, to be instruments of Your grace for others.

By your honest expression of rightly directed human emotion, intelligence and personality, You witnessed the wholeness of our nature when creatively lived in God’s love. In Your authenticity as a vital human, You revealed that each person’s salvation is projected around reality, not around some ideal self. Wholeness is found in one’s actual situation with its limitations and advantages. It is offered within one’s true personality in its abilities and handicaps.

Allow us to recognise Your unique expression of love in each other person. Give us the gift of revealing to everyone we meet and serve—the image within him of the glorious, loving beauty of You amid his human frailties and strengths. We thus encourage his trust and affirm his hope in Your patient lifelong moulding of him in the overwhelming love of Your personal plan for him.

In us, therefore—who are no less human than any other person—is manifest the wise charity and the gentle humility of Christ, to each person who comes before You in contrition, thankfulness, faith and joy. We thank and praise You Jesus, who shared all weakness of our nature except sin.

Help us to respect and encourage everyone, pardoning those who offend or inconvenience us. In liberty of spirit born of obedience, faith, and of freedom from undue attachments—we allow Your grace and witness to flow through us to others. We trust that You accomplish this even where there is no evidence of Your action.

Please sustain us as generous, inspired instruments of grace for Your continuing mission, as we alert others to the light of the Spirit in their lives. We glorify You, as we daily accept this joyful cross of our priestly ministry, while managing the challenges of our own vulnerable humanity!

Thank You Jesus, Who throughout the ages lovingly uses Your imperfect creatures as instruments of love, service, and glory! 1982

 

[BriarRose]

This is on the back of a special card from the 25th Anniversary of my Parish Pastor’s Ordination. I have no clue who originally wrote it, but would like to share.
~+~
The Beautiful Hands of a Priest

We need them in life’s early morning,
We need them again at its close;
We feel their warm clasp of true friendship,
We seek them when tasting life’s woes.

At the altar each day we behold them,
And the hands of a king on his throne
Are not equal to them in their greatness;
Their dignity stands all alone.

And when we are tempted and wander,
To pathways of shame and of sin,
It’s the hand of a priest that will absolve us-
Not once, but again and again.

And when we are taking life’s partner,
Other hands may prepare us a feast,
But the hand that will bless and unite us-
Is the beautiful hand of a priest.

God bless them and keep them all holy,
For the Host which their fingers caress;
When can a poor sinner do better,
Than to ask Him to guide thee and bless?

When the hour of death comes upon us,
May our courage and strength be increased.
By seeing raised over us in blessing-
The beautiful hands of a priest.

 

[Beads]

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come;
thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Amen.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.

 

[Trishie]

Jesus, You chose Your priests from amongst Your people, yet in the sacramental ‘laying of hands’ You do not perfect us. Like those we serve, we need pardon, healing, prayer and faith as we seek grace to become humble, genuine witnesses of Christ.

Through Sacrament and intercession, teaching and act, we encourage and instruct Your people as You call us in our personal human history and reality, to be instruments of Your grace for others.

By your honest expression of rightly directed human emotion, intelligence and personality, You witnessed the wholeness of our nature when creatively lived in God’s love. In Your authenticity as a vital human, You revealed that each person’s salvation is projected around reality, not around some ideal self. Wholeness is found in one’s actual situation with its limitations and advantages. It is offered within one’s true personality in its abilities and handicaps.

Allow us to recognise Your unique expression of love in each other person. Give us the gift of revealing to everyone we meet and serve—the image within him of the glorious, loving beauty of You amid his human frailties and strengths. We thus encourage his trust and affirm his hope in Your patient lifelong moulding of him in the overwhelming love of Your personal plan for him.

In us, therefore—who are no less human than any other person—is manifest the wise charity and the gentle humility of Christ, to each person who comes before You in contrition, thankfulness, faith and joy. We thank and praise You Jesus, who shared all weakness of our nature except sin.

Help us to respect and encourage everyone, pardoning those who offend or inconvenience us. In liberty of spirit born of obedience, faith, and of freedom from undue attachments—we allow Your grace and witness to flow through us to others. We trust that You accomplish this even where there is no evidence of Your action.

Please sustain us as generous, inspired instruments of grace for Your continuing mission, as we alert others to the light of the Spirit in their lives. We glorify You, as we daily accept this joyful cross of our priestly ministry, while managing the challenges of our own vulnerable humanity!

Thank You Jesus, Who throughout the ages lovingly uses Your imperfect creatures as instruments of love, service, and glory!

 

[bknebel]

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 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 dearest to me:
the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins;
the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion;
the priests who taught and instructed me;
all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way.
O Jesus, keep them all close to Your heart,
and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.
-St. Therese of Lisieux

Let us pray today for those priests who are in especially strong need of our prayers. I have a couple priests that I am praying especially hard for; one who is on Sabbatical and one who is ill and receiving treatments.

I Pray also for the parishes affected by priests who have not lived out their vocation as well as they should or could, and for priests affected by alcoholism and temptations.

AMEN!