World Day of Prayer for Priests

This is a day of great joy!  What a blessing it is for us to have an entire day set aside to offer loving prayers for priests, and it is an even greater blessing that this day occurs on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus!   I know that you pray for so many priests every day and that you have a tender love for those priests who have touched your soul through the Sacramental life of the Church, and yet, today, your prayers and my prayers are united into one great gift of love!

Would you please join me in offering additional prayers for our priests today on this World Day of Prayer for Priests?  On this Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pray for them within His Sacred Heart, uniting your prayers with His own, who loves them with such a pure and undivided love to which we can only hope to emulate.  In striving to pray within His Sacred Heart, you may benefit from reading this story about Fr. Jim Kubicki, SJ and his book A Heart on Fire: Rediscovering Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which can be found at this link.  O Sacred Heart of Jesus, make our hearts, and the hearts of all priests, like unto Thine!














From the Congregation for Clergy:


"O Lord, shatter and bring to naught all that might tarnish the sanctity of Priests"


Today’s world, with its ever more painful and preoccupying lacerations, needs God- The Trinity, and the Church has the task to proclaim Him. In order to fulfill this task, the Church must remain indissolubly embraced with Christ and never part from Him; it needs Saints who dwell “in the heart of Jesus” and are happy witnesses of God’s Trinitarian Love. And in order to serve the Church and the World, Priests need to be Saints!

PRAYER FOR THE HOLY CHURCH AND FOR PRIESTS

O my Jesus, I beg You on behalf of  the whole Church:

Grant it love and the light of Your Spirit,

and give power to the words of Priests

so that hardened hearts might be brought to repentance and return to You, O Lord.

Lord, give us holy Priests;

You yourself maintain them in holiness.

O Divine and Great High Priest,

may the power of Your mercy

accompany them everywhere and protect them

from the devil's traps and snares

which are continually being set for the soul of Priests.

May the power of Your mercy,

O Lord, shatter and bring to naught

all that might tarnish the sanctity of Priests,

for You can do all things.

My beloved Jesus,

I pray to you for the triumph of the Church,

that you may bless the Holy Father and all the clergy;

I beg you to grant the grace of conversion

to sinners whose hearts have been hardened by sin,

and a special blessing and light to priests,

to whom I shall confess for all of my life.

(Saint Faustina Kowalska)