Novena to holy
face (Day 3) GRAND CANYON Est.
Mark, Chapter 9,
Verse 31-32
31 He was teaching his disciples and telling them, “The
Son of Man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him, and three days
after his death he will rise.” 32 But
they did not understand the saying, and they were afraid to question him.
Many
times, we are afraid to ask a
question of the Lord because we do not want to know the answer. We measure
success with an earthly yardstick and not a heavenly one. Christ asks us to
trust in Him. The heavenly yardstick is this as spoken by Michael the
Archangel, “Who is like God?
We
are in a battle with the world, the flesh and the Devil. Let us remember that
St. Michael, along with our Guardian Angel stand to defend us from perdition.
No harm can come to the children of God who place their trust in the Precious Blood.
We must not be afraid to ask for Michaels help and to always call on Mary the
Queen of Angels whose children we are through Christ. We must not be afraid to
question science, literature, or art in its many forms as these achievements of
human works are often pressed into service by the Devil and his cohorts.
God’s
yardstick, “Who is like God?” leads us to Love Him and to love our neighbors.
Why is this
commandment to love God and our neighbor called the great commandment? Because in these
two are contained all the others, so that he who fulfills these fulfills the
whole law. For whoever loves God with his whole heart does not murmur against
God; does not dishonor His name by cursing and swearing; does not desecrate the
Sabbath-day, because he knows that all this is offensive to God. On the
contrary, he hopes in God; gives thanks and praise to God; sanctifies the
Sundays and holy-days, because he knows this to be pleasing to God; observes
the precepts of the Church, because he knows it to be the will of God that he
should hear the Church; honors his parents; does no injury to his neighbor;
does not commit adultery; does not steal; slanders no one; bears no false
witness; pronounces no unjust judgment; is not envious, malicious, unmerciful,
but rather practices towards every one the corporal and spiritual works of
mercy; and all this because, out of love to God, he loves his neighbor as
himself. Thus, love fulfills all the commandments.[1]
Freeing My Own Self from the Power of Evil
·
Through
his passion, death, and resurrection, Jesus has broken the power of the Evil
One. When the influence of evil is perceived in one's own life, it most
frequently comes about from personal sin. Family members suffer because of the
sin of an individual member of the family. It is through the sacred power that
the Lord has placed in his Church that the evil of sin is conquered.
·
Through
medicine, psychology and other human means, suffering can often be alleviated.
But Jesus in his Church, has given us basic helps that are often neglected.
·
In
our day the Sacrament of Reconciliation has fallen into disuse. There exists a
power in this sacrament to break the power of the Evil One and sin that is not
possible otherwise.
·
Our
faith in the Eucharist is weakened. In this sacrament is the power and presence
of Jesus Himself. Persons who have actually needed exorcism from the power of
the Evil One have been cured by sitting in church in the presence of the
Blessed Sacrament, an hour each day, for one or two months. These were very
difficult cases.
·
Our
Blessed Mother has been designated by God as the one who crushes the head of
the serpent (Gen. 3:1s). The Rosary is a very powerful means of protection and
salvation. Many sons and daughters have been saved from the power of sin and
the loss of faith through the perseverance of their parents in saying the Holy
Rosary.
NOVENA
TO THE HOLY FACE
DAILY
PREPARATORY PRAYER
We now implore all the Angels and Saints to intercede for us as we pray this Holy Novena to the Most Holy Face of Jesus and for the glory of the most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Third
Day
Psalm 51, 6b-7.
You are just when you pass sentence on me, blameless when you give judgment. You know I was born guilty, a sinner from the moment of conception.
You are just when you pass sentence on me, blameless when you give judgment. You know I was born guilty, a sinner from the moment of conception.
O Jesus! Cast upon us a look of mercy; turn your Face towards each of us as you did to Veronica; not that we may see it with our bodily eyes, for this we do not deserve, but turn it towards our hearts, so that, remembering you, we may ever draw from this fountain of strength the vigor necessary to sustain the combats of life. Amen. Mary, Our Mother, and Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Through the merits of your precious blood and your Holy Face, O Jesus, grant us our petition, Pardon and Mercy.
Prayer of Saint Francis
All highest, glorious God, cast your light into the darkness of our hearts, give us true faith, firm hope, perfect charity and profound humility, so that with wisdom, courage and perception, O Lord, we may do what is truly your holy will. Amen.
To the Angels and Saints
We salute you, through the Holy Face and Sacred Heart of Jesus, O all you Holy Angels and Saints of God. We rejoice in your glory, and we give thanks to our Lord for all the benefits which He has showered upon you; we praise Him and glorify Him and offer you for an increase of your joy and honor, the most Holy Face and gentle Heart of Jesus. Pray that we may become formed according to the heart of God. Amen.
Pray
(1) Our Father, three (3) Hail Mary’s, one (1) Glory Be.
O Bleeding Face, O Face Divine, be every adoration Thine. (Three times)
What the Grand Canyon tells us about God[3]
Many years ago, I was telling my spiritual director that I found it easiest to pray in a beautiful garden, and I was warming to my sense of myself as a contemplative. The wise Dominican asked with disarming candour: “But are you in the garden, or is the garden in you?” It took a long time even to realise what the question meant. I remember another similarly disarming question at the very beginning of my adult search for God. I was an undergraduate and took myself to a Benedictine monastery for a few days’ retreat in Lent. I was captivated by the silence, prayer and retreat from the world, swept up in the chant and the romance of monastic life. What I did not realise was that I was attracted to it as something that would make it less painful to be what I thought I was – something I needed for my religious amour-propre. Thus, many searches for God begin, but one can only search for God because he has already found you. What must happen is that someone else must put a belt around you and lead you where you would rather not go. It is not the intensity of the search, but of the willingness to be led that is ultimately the measure of vocation. Vocation is not finding the garden in you, it is finding yourself in the garden.
Perhaps the wise abbot sensed this. Anyway, I remember being rather discombobulated by his direct manner. As I emoted about the spiritual life, he looked at me carefully and asked: “Is God real to you?” It was like a torpedo below the waterline of all my high-sounding talk about my attraction to the monastic life versus secular priesthood, the script I was busy constructing of an encounter with the living God in which I remained firmly the star. The best answer I could manage was: “I think so.” In the moment of asking I doubted it, or rather I realised suddenly that so much of what I thought was God wasn’t actually God. It was the paraphernalia of God, of religion. (In fact, the moment wasn’t too confounding, for soon there came another answer from deep inside: “He’s real to me in the Blessed Sacrament.” There – perhaps because, as Aquinas put it, “Sight, touch and taste in thee are each deceivèd” – I couldn’t confuse feeling for the reality. I realised that I had been given something to work with.) All of this came to mind when I visited the Grand Canyon at the end of my trip to America. What’s the connection? One may grasp what one might call the paraphernalia of the Grand Canyon. It was formed by billions of years of imperceptibly slow change, of almost every possible kind of geological activity: sediment layering, tectonic plates shifting, glaciers melting and rivers carving a gorge a mile and a half deep into solid rock. These are processes that can be mapped and understood, but the result overwhelms the sum and the mind of man. Its astonishing, ancient beauty can only be contemplated – that is, it must act on you, overwhelm your mind with its four-billion-year-old scale, stillness and silence which is in constant change. Spontaneously, the words of the psalmist rose from my heart at the breathtaking sight: “Before the mountains or the hills were brought forth, you are God, without beginning or end.” Contemplation always involves knowledge of one’s true scale, of a reality that dwarfs the ego. As if this were not enough, as the sun set, the sky above came alive with stars. I have never seen so many or so clearly. They were like the lights of some vast celestial city calling, a million million points of light and security like some distant homeland, like the medieval fantasy that the stars were rents in the sky through which one could see the light of heaven. To count them I must be eternal, like God. The psalmist said: “When I see the heavens, the work of your hands, the moon and stars which you have made, what is man, that thou art mindful of him?” And the answer comes back that in Jesus Christ the Father has united himself to the heart of every person in such a way that the vastness of the universe becomes an image not of alienation, but of the vastness of a love that was there before the hills were set in order. This love causes even rocks to exude a soft beauty which seems like the desire of the Eternal Hills for the Heart of their maker.
"Read
these counsels slowly. Pause to meditate on these thoughts. They are things
that I whisper in your ear-confiding them-as a friend, as a brother, as a
father. And they are being heard by God. I won't tell you anything new. I will
only stir your memory, so that some thought will arise and strike you; and so
you will better your life and set out along ways of prayer and of Love. And in
the end you will be a more worthy soul."
Examination of conscience: a daily task. Book-keeping is never
neglected by anyone in business. And is there any business worth more than the
business of eternal life?
Daily Devotions
[1] Goffine’s Devout Instructions, 1896.
[3]http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/issues/february-27th-2015/what-the-grand-canyon-tells-us-about-god/
[4]http://www.escrivaworks.org/book/the_way-point-1.htm
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