Let Freedom Ring: Freedom from Irreverence
At a word from You the devil and his minions flee in terror.
You are the source of all truth. You are the source of all strength.
By the power of your Cross and Resurrection, we beseech You, O Lord
To extend Your saving arm and to send Your holy angels
To defend us as we do battle with Satan and his demonic forces.
Exorcise, we pray, that which oppresses Your Bride, The Church,
So that within ourselves, our families, our parishes, our dioceses, and our nation
We may turn fully back to You in all fidelity and trust.
Lord, we know if You will it, it will be done.
Give us the perseverance for this mission, we pray.
Amen
St. Joseph...pray for us
St. Michael the Archangel...pray for us
(the patron of your parish )... pray for us
(your confirmation saint)...pray for us
Christ, have mercy on us.
Lord, have mercy on us.
Christ, hear us. Christ, graciously hear us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, Have mercy on us.
God the Holy Ghost, Have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God, Have mercy on us.
Heart of Mary, like unto the Heart of God, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, united to the Heart of Jesus, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, instrument of the Holy Ghost, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, sanctuary of the Divine Trinity, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, tabernacle of God Incarnate, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, immaculate from thy creation, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, full of grace, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, blessed among all hearts, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, throne of glory, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, most humble, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, holocaust of Divine Love, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, fastened to the Cross with Jesus Crucified, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, comfort of the afflicted, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, refuge of sinners, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, hope of the agonizing, Pray for us.
Heart of Mary, seat of mercy, Pray for us.
Spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy on us.
Make our hearts like unto the Heart of Jesus.
O most merciful God, Who, for the salvation of sinners and the refuge of the miserable, wast pleased that the Most Pure Heart of Mary should be most like in charity and pity to the Divine Heart of Thy Son, Jesus Christ, grant that we, who commemorate this sweet and loving Heart, by the merits and intercession of the same Blessed Virgin, may merit to be found like unto the Heart of Jesus, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.
__ Daily reflection and prayers
__ Litany of the day
__ Pray a Rosary
__ Divine Mercy Chaplet
__ Spiritual or corporal work of mercy
__ Fast/abstain (according to level)
__ Exercise (according to level/ability)
__ Refrain from conventional media (only 1 hr. of social)
__ Examination of conscience (confession 1x this week)
First Saturday
Ester, Chapter 4D, Verse 13
We
fear the rich and the powerful, yet we often have no fear of God and continue
in our inability to rise above our weaknesses. It is when we like Ester rise
above our fears that we can live up to our potential.
The Law
of the Sacrifice[1]
·
Ester
is willing to give her life for the people.
·
A
leader must be willing to give up to go up.
·
Leaders
only do this when their cause becomes more important than their life.
·
Likewise,
Jesus a descendent of Ester, called on his staff to deny themselves, take up
their cross and follow Him.
·
Christ
stated that those who wished to save their lives would lose them and those who
gave up their lives would save them.
True leadership places the
cause of the people above the instinct for self-preservation.
Holy Father Francis to the People of God[2]
“If one member suffers,
all suffer together with it”. These words of Saint Paul forcefully echo in my
heart as I acknowledge once more the suffering endured by many minors due to
sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience perpetrated by a
significant number of clerics and consecrated persons. Crimes that inflict deep
wounds of pain and powerlessness, primarily among the victims, but also in
their family members and in the larger community of believers and nonbelievers
alike. Looking back to the past, no effort to beg pardon and to seek to repair
the harm done will ever be sufficient. Looking ahead to the future, no effort
must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from
happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and
perpetuated. The pain of the victims and their families is also our pain, and
so it is urgent that we once more reaffirm our commitment to ensure the
protection of minors and of vulnerable adults.
1.
If one member suffers…
In recent days, a report
was made public which detailed the experiences of at least a thousand
survivors, victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and of conscience at the
hands of priests over a period of approximately seventy years. Even though it
can be said that most of these cases belong to the past, nonetheless as time
goes on, we have come to know the pain of many of the victims. We have realized
that these wounds never disappear and that they require us forcefully to
condemn these atrocities and join forces in uprooting this culture of death;
these wounds never go away. The heart-wrenching pain of these victims, which
cries out to heaven, was long ignored, kept quiet or silenced. But their outcry
was more powerful than all the measures meant to silence it or sought even to
resolve it by decisions that increased its gravity by falling into complicity.
The Lord heard that cry and once again showed us on which side He stands.
Mary’s song is not mistaken and continues quietly to echo throughout history.
For the Lord remembers the promise He made to our fathers: “He has scattered
the proud in their conceit; He has cast down the mighty from their thrones and
lifted up the lowly; He has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich He
has sent away empty” (Lk 1:51-53). We feel shame when we realize that our style
of life has denied, and continues to deny, the words we recite. With shame and
repentance, we acknowledge as an ecclesial community that we were not where we
should have been, that we did not act in a timely manner, realizing the
magnitude and the gravity of the damage done to so many lives. We showed no
care for the little ones; we abandoned them. I make my own the words of the
then Cardinal Ratzinger when, during the Way of the Cross composed for Good
Friday 2005, he identified with the cry of pain of so many victims and
exclaimed: “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in
the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to [Christ]! How much pride, how much
self-complacency! Christ’s betrayal by His disciples, their unworthy reception
of His body and blood, is certainly the greatest suffering endured by the
Redeemer; it pierces His heart. We can only call to Him from the depths of our
hearts: Kyrie eleison – Lord, save us! (cf. Mt 8:25)” (Ninth Station).
2.
all suffer together with it
The extent and the gravity
of all that has happened requires coming to grips with this reality in a
comprehensive and communal way. While it is important and necessary on every
journey of conversion to acknowledge the truth of what has happened, in itself
this is not enough. Today we are challenged as the People of God to take on the
pain of our brothers and sisters wounded in their flesh and in their spirit.
If, in the past, the response was one of omission, today we want solidarity, in
the deepest and most challenging sense, to become our way of forging present
and future history. And this in an environment where conflicts, tensions and
above all the victims of every type of abuse can encounter an outstretched hand
to protect them and rescue them from their pain (cf. Evangelii Gaudium, 228).
Such solidarity demands that we in turn condemn whatever endangers the
integrity of any person. A solidarity that summons us to fight all forms of
corruption, especially spiritual corruption. The latter is “a comfortable and
self-satisfied form of blindness. Everything then appears acceptable:
deception, slander, egotism and other subtle forms of self-centeredness, for
“even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light”” (Gaudete et Exsultate,
165. Saint Paul’s exhortation to suffer with those who suffer is the best
antidote against all our attempts to repeat the words of Cain: “Am I my
brother's keeper?”. I am conscious of the effort and work being carried out in
various parts of the world to come up with the necessary means to ensure the
safety and protection of the integrity of children and of vulnerable adults, as
well as implementing zero tolerance and ways of making all those who perpetrate
or cover up these crimes accountable. We have delayed in applying these actions
and sanctions that are so necessary, yet I am confident that they will help to
guarantee a greater culture of care in the present and future. Together with
those efforts, every one of the baptized should feel involved in the ecclesial
and social change that we so greatly need. This change calls for a personal and
communal conversion that makes us see things as the Lord does. For as Saint
John Paul II liked to say: “If we have truly started out anew from the
contemplation of Christ, we must learn to see him especially in the faces of
those with whom he wished to be identified” (Novo Millennio Ineunte, 49). To
see things as the Lord does, to be where the Lord wants us to be, to experience
a conversion of heart in his presence. To do so, prayer and penance will help.
I invite the entire holy faithful People of God to a penitential exercise of
prayer and fasting, following the Lord’s command. This can awaken our
conscience and arouse our solidarity and commitment to a culture of care that
says “never again” to every form of abuse. It is impossible to think of a
conversion of our activity as a Church that does not include the active
participation of all the members of God’s People. Indeed, whenever we have
tried to replace, or silence, or ignore, or reduce the People of God to small
elites, we end up creating communities, projects, theological approaches,
spiritualities and structures without roots, without memory, without faces,
without bodies and ultimately, without lives. This is
clearly seen in a peculiar way of understanding the Church’s authority, one
common in many communities where sexual abuse and the abuse of power and
conscience have occurred. Such is the case with clericalism, an approach that
“not only nullifies the character of Christians, but also tends to diminish and
undervalue the baptismal grace that the Holy Spirit has placed in the heart of
our people”. Clericalism, whether fostered by priests
themselves or by lay persons, leads to an excision in the ecclesial body that
supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we are condemning
today. To say “no” to abuse is to say an emphatic “no” to all forms of
clericalism. It is always helpful to remember that “in salvation history, the Lord
saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a
people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather,
God draws us to Himself, taking into account the complex fabric of
interpersonal relationships presents in the human community. God wanted to
enter into the life and history of a people” (Gaudete et Exsultate, 6).
Consequently, the only way that we have to respond to this evil that has
darkened so many lives is to experience it as a task regarding all of us as the
People of God. This awareness of being part of a people and a shared history
will enable us to acknowledge our past sins and mistakes with a penitential
openness that can allow us to be renewed from within. Without the active
participation of all the Church’s members, everything being done to uproot the
culture of abuse in our communities will not be successful in generating the
necessary dynamics for sound and realistic change. The penitential dimension of
fasting and prayer will help us as God’s People to come before the Lord and our
wounded brothers and sisters as sinners imploring forgiveness and the grace of
shame and conversion. In this way, we will come up with actions that can
generate resources attuned to the Gospel. For “whenever we make the effort to
return to the source and to recover the original freshness of the Gospel, new
avenues arise, new paths of creativity open up, with different forms of
expression, more eloquent signs and words with new meaning for today’s world”
(Evangelii Gaudium, 11).
It is essential that we,
as a Church, be able to acknowledge and condemn, with sorrow and shame, the
atrocities perpetrated by consecrated persons, clerics, and all those entrusted
with the mission of watching over and caring for those most vulnerable. Let us
beg forgiveness for our own sins and the sins of others. An awareness of sin
helps us to acknowledge the errors, the crimes and the wounds caused in the
past and allows us, in the present, to be more open and committed along a
journey of renewed conversion. Likewise, penance and prayer will help us to
open our eyes and our hearts to other people’s sufferings and to overcome the
thirst for power and possessions that are so often the root of those evils. May
fasting and prayer open our ears to the hushed pain felt by children, young
people and the disabled. A fasting that can make us hunger and thirst for
justice and impel us to walk in the truth, supporting all the judicial measures
that may be necessary. A fasting that shakes us up and leads us to be committed
in truth and charity with all men and women of good will, and with society in
general, to combating all forms of the abuse of power, sexual abuse and the
abuse of conscience. In this way, we can show clearly our calling to be “a sign
and instrument of communion with God and of the unity of the entire human race”
(Lumen Gentium, 1).
“If one member suffers,
all suffer together with it”, said Saint Paul. By an attitude of prayer and
penance, we will become attuned as individuals and as a community to this
exhortation, so that we may grow in the gift of compassion, in justice,
prevention and reparation. Mary chose to stand at the foot of her Son’s cross.
She did so unhesitatingly, standing firmly by Jesus’ side. In this way, she
reveals the way she lived her entire life. When we experience the desolation
caused by these ecclesial wounds, we will do well, with Mary, “to insist more
upon prayer”, seeking to grow all the more in love and fidelity to the Church
(SAINT IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA, Spiritual Exercises, 319). She, the first of the
disciples, teaches all of us as disciples how we are to halt before the
sufferings of the innocent, without excuses or cowardice. To look to Mary is to
discover the model of a true follower of Christ. May the Holy Spirit grant us
the grace of conversion and the interior anointing needed to express before
these crimes of abuse our compunction and our resolve courageously to combat
them.
First Saturday-Time
to Get Serious About Fatima[3]
The
world's gone mad. Take the attacks and outrages perpetrated by men upon their
neighbors or the persecutions of the Church in China and North Korea, and the
list could go on. But it's pointless to compare tragedies, to try to determine
who's most wounded, who is most in pain. Rather, it's time and long past time
to apply the solutions we've had all along. I'm talking, of course, about the message of Fatima, specifically Our Lady's calls for
the daily Rosary for peace in the world and the Five First Saturday’s devotion.
My
fellow Marian Fr. Seraphim Michalenko sometimes tells a story that a priest
ministering in Japan shared with him in Rome. This priest was attending an
international gathering of Christians from across the world, attended by
foreign dignitaries. The ambassador from Japan approached the priest, verified
that the priest served in Japan and was a Catholic priest, and then said,
"War is your fault." The priest was surprised and asked what the
ambassador meant. The ambassador said, "You Catholics, all of you — we do
not have peace in the world. It is your fault." The priest said,
"Ambassador, why do you blame us?" The ambassador said, "I've
read about this. The Lady came to you at Fatima, right? That's what you
believe? She told you what to do to secure peace in the world. Well, there's no
peace in the world, so obviously you Catholics haven't done it." The
priest had to acknowledge that the ambassador was correct, but still tried to
protest, saying, "Isn't peace everyone's responsibility?" The
ambassador was vehement. "No, she came to you Catholics. Not to Buddhists.
Not to Hindus. She came to you, and it is your responsibility."
We've
been given the answer. Pray the Rosary daily for peace in the world and invite
others to pray with you. At college, there would occasionally be "sit ins
for peace." A number of my fellow students, passionately convicted and
righteously indignant though they were, would go and sit outside the student
center with signs. That was their sit in for peace. It always massively
frustrated me because here we were, a Catholic school, armed with a whole host
of powerful prayers and devotions, and there they were just sitting. If they'd
just bothered to pray the Rosary, their protest would have meant a great deal
in this world and the next. Why not arrange for a Rosary for peace at your
colleges and universities, if not every day, then at least every Saturday,
traditionally set aside as Our Lady's day? Why not revive the tradition of
family and neighborhood Rosaries, offered specifically for the intention of
peace in the world? What about having a regular Rosary for peace at your
parish, maybe even before Mass with the permission of your pastor?
• Make the Five First Saturdays devotion
• Consecrate yourself to the Immaculate Heart, and encourage others to do the
same.
• Become invested in the Brown Scapular.
• Do penance for your sins and on behalf of poor sinners everywhere.
Don't just sit there — the world is in trouble, and we have the answer.
·
Saturday Litany of the Hours
Invoking the Aid of Mother Mary
·
Offering to
the sacred heart of Jesus
·
Rosary
[1]John Maxwell, The Maxwell Leadership
Bible.
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