Make us worthy, Lord, to serve our fellow-men throughout the world who live and die in poverty and hunger. Give them through our hands, this day their daily bread, and by our understanding love, give peace and joy. O Mary, look upon the church, look upon the most responsible members of the Mystical Body of Christ gathered about you to thank you and to celebrate you as their Mystical Mother. O Mary, bless the great assembly of the hierarchical church, which also gives birth to brothers and sisters of Christ, the firstborn among redeemed humankind. O Mary, grant that this church of Christ, in defining itself, will acknowledge you as its most chosen mother, daughter, and sister, as well as its incomparable model, its glory, its joy, and its hope. We ask you now that we may be made worthy of honouring you because of who you are and because of what you do in the wondrous and loving plan of salvation. Grant that we may praise you, O holy Virgin! O Mary, look upon us who are your children, look upon us who are brothers and sisters, disciples and apostles and continuation of Jesus. Make us aware of our vocation and our mission; may we not be unworthy to take on, in our priesthood, in our word, in the offering of our life for the faithful entrusted to us, the representation and personification of Christ. O you who are full of grace, grant that the priesthood that honours you may itself also be holy and immaculate. O Mary, we pray to you for our Christian brothers and sisters who are still separated from our Catholic family. See how a glorious group of them celebrate your cult with fidelity and love. See also how among another group, who are so intent on calling themselves Christians, there now dawns the remembrance and the veneration of you, O most holy Lady. Call these children of yours to the one unity under your motherly and heavenly aid. O Mary, look upon all mankind, this modern world in which the Divine Will calls us to live and work. It is a world that has turned its back on the light of Christ; then it fears and bemoans the frightening shadows that its actions have created on all sides. May your most human voice, O most beautiful of virgins, O most worthy of mothers, O blessed among women, invited the world to turn its eyes toward the life that is the light of man, toward you who are the precursor-lamp of Christ, Who is the sole and the highest Light of the world. Implore for the world the true understanding of its own existence; implore for the world the joy of living as the creation of God and hence the desire and the capacity to converse, by prayer, with its Maker, whose mysterious and blesses image it reflects within itself. Implore for the world the grace to esteem everything as the gift of God and hence the virtue to work with generosity and to make use of such gifts wisely and providently. Implore peace for the world. Fashion brothers and sisters out of persons who are so divided. Guide us to a more ordered and peaceful society. For those who are suffering, today there are so many and ever new ones, afflicted by current misfortunes, obtain solace; and for the dead, obtain eternal rest. Show yourself a mother to us; this is our prayer, O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary! Lord, I believe: I wish to believe in Thee. Lord, let my faith be full and unreserved, and let it penetrate my thought, my way of judging Divine things and human things. Lord, let my faith be joyful and give peace and gladness to my spirit, and dispose it for prayer with God and conversation with men, so that the inner bliss of its fortunate possession may shine forth in sacred and secular conversation. Lord, let my faith be humble and not presume to be based on the experience of my thought and of my feeling; but let it surrender to the testimony of the Holy Spirit, and not have any better guarantee than in docility to Tradition and to the authority of the magisterium of the Holy Church. Amen. Prophets of a Future Not Our Own It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection. No pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the Church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything. This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest. We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own