March 2024: Prayers and Reflections

Prayers and Reflections
March 2024

 

The Pope’s Monthly Intention
For the New Martyrs: We pray that those who risk their lives for the Gospel in various parts of the world inflame the Church with their courage and missionary enthusiasm.

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St Patrick’s Day • 17 March
Prayer for Those Away from Home

Loving God,
we pray for those whom we love,
but who are absent from us.
Keep them safe from all harm, evil and danger.
Bless them with peace, laughter,
wisdom, love and joy.
Grant that we may be reunited in the fullness of love;
in Christ’s name we pray.

Amen.

From Prayers of our Hearts 
by Vienna Cobb Anderson
Further prayers for emigrants
can be found on catholicbishops.ie

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Spring

Nothing is so beautiful as spring –
When weeds in wheels shoot long and lovely lush;
Thrushs’ eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightning to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden? Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy, Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.

 Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ

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Prayer of Pope Francis on Good Friday

O Christ, abandoned and betrayed even by your own, and sold for next to nothing.
O Christ, judged by sinners, handed over by the leaders.
O Christ, tortured in the flesh, crowned with thorns and clothed in purple. O Christ, slapped and beaten, and nailed in excruciating pain to the Cross.
O Christ, pierced by the lance that opened your heart.
O Christ, dead and buried, you who are the God of life and existence.
O Christ, our only Savior, we return to you this year with eyes lowered in shame, and with hearts filled with hope:
Shame for all the images of devastation, destruction and wreckage that have become a normal part of our lives;
Shame for the innocent blood that is shed: of women, children, migrants and those who are persecuted because of the color of their skin or their ethnicity and social standing, or because of their faith in You;
Shame for the many times that, like Judas and Peter, we have sold you and betrayed you and left you alone to die for our sins, fleeing like cowards from our responsibilities;
Shame for our silence before injustices; for our hands that have been lazy in giving, and greedy in grabbing and conquering; for the shrill voices we use to defend our own interests and the timid ones we use to speak out for others; for our feet that are quick to follow the path of evil and paralyzed in following the path of good;
Shame for all the times that we bishops, priests, and consecrated men and women have scandalized and wounded your body, the Church; for having forgotten our first love, our initial enthusiasm and total availability, allowing our hearts and our consecration to rust.
So much shame Lord, but our hearts are also longing with trustful hope, knowing that you will not treat us according to our merits but solely according to the abundance of Your mercy; that our betrayals do not diminish the immensity of your love; that your maternal and paternal heart does not forget us because of the hardness of our own;
The certain hope that our names are written in your heart and that we are reflected in the pupils of your eyes;
The hope that your Cross will transform our hardened hearts into hearts of flesh that are able to dream, to forgive and to love; that it will transform this dark night of your cross into the brilliant dawn of your Resurrection;
We ask you to break the chains that keep us imprisoned in our selfishness, in our willful blindness, and in the vanity of our worldly calculations.
Oh Christ, we ask you to teach us never to be ashamed of your Cross, not to exploit it but to honor and adore it, for by it You have shown us the monstrosity of our sins, the greatness of your love, the injustice of our judgments, and the power of your mercy.
Amen.

Translation by Diane Montagna of Aleteia’s English edition

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