Second Thoughts for the Day – 26 August – 21st Sunday of the Year in Ordinary Time, Year B – Today’s Gospel: John 6:60–69
May we offer our Sunday Communion for all the Priests of the World, who bring us the Sacrament which gives us life.
O my beloved Jesus,
Son of the Father and His Eternal High Priest,
offering Yourself to Him perpetually in the sanctuary of heaven
and here in the Sacrament of Your Redeeming Love,
I adore You.
I praise You that here I find Your Eucharistic Heart,
open, ever-beating with love,
and covering with a flood of Blood and of Water
those who draw near to You in this Sacrament.
I praise You that here I behold Your Eucharistic Face,
filling the shadows of this world with Your deifying light,
and shining into the hearts of those who approach You
in faith, in hope and in love.
I pray to You for Your priests,
without whom this valley of tears would be
devoid of the Holy Sacrifice of the Altar,
without the adorable mysteries of Your life-giving Body and Blood,
and without Your abiding real presence in the tabernacles of the world.
Sanctify Your priests, O Jesus!
Wash them in the Blood and Water gushing at every moment
from Your Sacred Side
Heal them in the light of Your Eucharistic Face and,
to do this, draw them all into Your sacramental presence.
Let Your tabernacles magnetise their souls,
and the desire to abide before Your Eucharistic Face
hold sway over their hearts.
Let Your Sacred Body exposed in the monstrance
exercise over them the most compelling of all attractions.
Look today upon those priests who, for whatever reason,
have forgotten the way to Your tabernacles
and rarely, if ever, stop all else
to rest their tired bodies and still their minds
before Your Eucharistic Face,
and to adore You simply because . . . You are there.
Save Your priests in danger of falling into sin,
and lift those who have fallen,
so that, having confessed their faults and received absolution,
they may return to Your altar and to the joy of their youth.
Let not one of Your priests remain outside the radiance of Your Eucharistic Face.
Draw them all out of this world’s darkness
into Your wonderful light,
that with the psalmist they might say not once,
but again and again:
“Look to Him and be radiant
and on your faces there will be no trace of shame.”
Amen.
I pray especially for my own Priest, Fr Enrico Parry and Catholic Priest Media – https://catholicpriestmedia.com/
