Greetings Prayer Warriors,
One hundred and sixty-four years ago, the Blessed Mother by the title of Our Lady of Lourdes, appeared to a young Bernadette in Lourdes, France. She gave her a message for the world*. Lourdes is now a site of many miraculous healings*.
On this feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, I sense that the Lord wants to heal. Heal divisions, heal relationships, and heal hearts. What energy is wasted by holding on to grudges, sulking in our hurt feelings, and dreaming about vindication. While family can be a petri dish where discord can flourish, the Lord calls us to rise above. We are called to pull out the weeds of animosity and sow love. Knowing our human frailty and weakness, we can only do this united to Christ.
If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but [also] everyone for those of others. Philippians 2:1-4
Pray for one another! As inspiration, pray the Prayer of St Francis:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
Peace, Joy, and Love,
Janet
Say a prayer and pass it on!
*https://www.lourdes-france.org/en/message-lourdes/
