Remember, O most chaste spouse of the Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who implored your help and sought your intercession were left unassisted. Full of confidence in your power I fly unto you and beg your protection. Despise not O Guardian of the Redeemer my humble supplication, but in your bounty, hear and answer me. Amen.
O Jesus, our great High Priest, hear my humble prayers on behalf of your priest, Father [N].
Give him a deep faith a bright and firm hope and a burning love which will ever increase in the course of his priestly life.
In his loneliness, comfort him in his sorrows, strengthen him in his frustrations, point out to him that it is through suffering that the soul is purified, and show him that he is needed by the Church, he is needed by souls, he is needed for the work of redemption.
O loving Mother Mary, Mother of Priests, take to your heart your son who is close to you because of his priestly ordination, and because of the power which he has received to carry on the work of Christ in a world which needs him so much.
Be his comfort, be his joy, be his strength, and especially help him to live and to defend the ideals of consecrated celibacy. Amen.
Composed by John Joseph Cardinal Carberry
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Writing about the practice of confession specifically - although it also has universal application - Mother Teresa of Calcutta said, "We should be very simple and childlike... If a child... has not learned to tell lies, he will tell everything. This is what I mean by being childlike."
I appreciate her thought, and have drifted about on it, and I see it expanded in the ideas of your post.
I think it is exactly as we grow - tasting more and more fear and desire - that we become more divided and conflicted and less honest; and that things get complex.
But the look backwards and the look upwards through and beyond complexities and dishonesties, to simplicity and honesty, is easy in Jesus; impossible otherwise. 'Fear not, want not either' isn't so much a way of being as it is a place abandoned. And it is all the more precious I think when revisited and reclaimed with intent.
And so much more could be said.
So glad you're here, God be with you, Sister, I pray in Jesus' Name, aspiring
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