A Prayer for Priests

This ministry and members of its affiliated prayer groups - FIAT and the Cohort of St. Michael - have a deep respect for the priesthood.  We understand priests have a crucial role in the life of the Church and, as a result, are more prone to spiritual attacks than the average lay-Catholic/Christian.  Some are able to weather the spiritual warfare very well, while others succumb to it, which then leads to all sorts of issues within their respective parishes.  Whatever the case, our priests are urgently in need of prayer and voluntary sacrifices offered on their behalf.

Consequently, in early 2022, members of our group started an initiative to have each priest in our Honolulu Diocese "spiritually adopted" for that year, via volunteers committed to saying a specific prayer every day for their randomly assigned priests.  Due to enthusiastic feedback received from participants, we continued the program on an annual basis with new sets of priestly "adoption certificates" being distributed so repeat participants have an opportunity to pray for a different priest.

Below is the text of our unique Priestly Adoption Prayer, written through the collaboration of three group members.

The Church needs holy priests; the whole world needs them, too, today more than ever.

Remember - one saintly priest can help sanctify many, many souls and transform an entire parish (or an entire region) for the better... while a single bad priest can easily lead a multitude astray, and even destroy faith completely!

So feel free to print our prayer, write your local priest's name on it... then use it as a reminder to pray daily for him; recommend it to others, too.  It takes less than a minute to say, but the resulting graces will be many - plus, without a doubt, God will abundantly reward such a generous commitment!

+  AN INTERESTING PHOTO  +

Early in 2022, when this idea for the Spiritual Adoption of our Hawaii Priests was initiated, this author personally worked on designing the adoption certificates and having them printed.

Prior to distributing the certificates to our prayer volunteers, I placed them in a stack on my home altar, at the feet of my large statue of Our Lady of Grace.  I then specifically asked the Holy Virgin to bless this endeavor and to intercede with her Divine Spouse - the Holy Spirit - in obtaining special graces for each individual who will say the above prayer every day for an assigned priest.

After my prayer I snapped three photos with my cellphone and, was pleasantly surprised to discover among them, the one shown above.  In it, a huge luminous sphere can be seen descending from above, which in my personal opinion is the Holy Spirit's blessing manifested in visible form.

It all just goes to show how pleasing it is to God to pray for His servants - our priests.