Prayer for Lent

Hello Everyone:

We are on the last day for study and prayer in the first phase of Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary. Tomorrow starts "Knowledge of Self". Information and instruction are posted under "Total Consecration to Jesus through Mary" on this website. 

Today is also the eighth day of the Novena to the Holy Face. A very powerful Novena with many promises attached. I will post these promises on Tuesday - the actual Feast Day! A great Carmelite devotion which I wish the entire world would embrace because of its many graces. (Sadly, it is not even practiced and known in most of the Carmelite Order communities)

Wednesday officially starts Lent. Ash Wednesday is a day we remember where we came from and where we hope to go. This is perfect for this week of "Knowledge of Self". I pray that we all have a very very prayerful Lent.  As mentioned in the last post - there are many things to pray for and prepare for.

To begin Lent, I thought I would mention a very great and holy American (Irish immigrant) --- Father Patrick Peyton. He led the Rosary Crusades through America and into the world from the 1940's through 1960's. He was an amazing saint - soon forgotten. Our American Bishops should use and replicate his example in order to draw graces down on this country. Below I have posted a little piece of wisdom from his book "The Ear of God - Prayer is the language of man to God".  I recommend this book - if you can find one on the internet. This little segment, I thought was appropriate to begin Lent as we try to spend more time meditating upon the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ.    Enjoy!

"It is told in the Bible that a cripple, going afoot to a city, had fallen by the road and could not rise, and that Christ found him, lifted him up, refreshed him, and gave him a stout stick of white-thorn wood, that he might assist himself on his journey. You do not recall this story in the Bible? It is the whole story of the New Testament. For the cripple, of course, is man, the city is God, and the stick is of the wood of the Cross. How wonderful, then, that out of the mouths of atheists we hear it said: "Religion is a crutch." By the mercy of God, His atheists are preaching the Gospel!

They do not understand what they say. Yet when an atheist says that religion is a crutch he quite consciously attaches to it powers of encouragement and consolation in earthly life for those who believe in it, although at the same time he denies the end for which it is given, which is eternal life in God. He cannot see the city, and so he cannot use the crutch.

There is no doubt that atheists have seen striking evidence of prayer's effectiveness. They have seen men refreshed by it, strengthened; they have seen fear turned to courage by it, discouragement to hope, torment turned into peace, and some atheist doctors go so far as to admit that they have seen prayer improve the physical condition of the sick. But atheists explain these things entirely by the power of mind over matter. They say that confidence is half the battle, whether that confidence be in God, luck, or the doctor, and they explain that through the act of prayer the religious man renews his confidence that a Supreme Being is looking after him. It is not the power of God that these atheists deny; it is only the existence of God. 

So it is not when we cannot see the city (God), but only while we will not see it, that we cannot use the crutch."   written by  Fr. Patrick Peyton - "The family that prays together, stays together."

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