A Priest’s Litany of Thanksgiving

A Priest’s Litany of Thanksgiving

 With the institution of the Priesthood on Holy Thursday just a week away I saw this Litany and found it to hit the core of the vocation. I know it is for a Priest to say but read it and think and pray on what the vocation means and what can lose if we do not have more vocations. 

A Priest’s Litany of Thanksgiving

R./ Lord, you know that I love you.

For instituting the holy priesthood, R./

For setting me apart to work for the Kingdom of God, R./

For the privilege of serving your holy Church, R./

For the grace of preaching, R./

For the honor of pasturing your people, R./

For the capacity to teach the faith, R./

For the power to baptize, R./

For the honor of being able to witness marriages, R./

For the joy of bringing healing to the sick and consolation to the dying, R./

For the miracle of being able to say, “This is my Body,” R./

For the wonder of the words, “I absolve you from your sins,” R./

For all the ways I act in persona Christi, R./

For making me a man of prayer, R./

For consecrating my hands for sacrifice, R./

For priestly paternity, R./

For proposing me, despite my unworthiness, as an example of holiness, R./

For making me capable of offering pastoral counseling, R./

For priestly fraternity, R./

For the strength you provide in times of trial and distress, R./

For the desire to reach out to the poor and the alienated, R./

For priestly compassion, tenderness, and generosity, R./

For transforming me in my weakness and sins, R./

For helping me to live in unfailing dependence upon you, R./

For making me ardent in self-sacrificing love, R./

For the presence of Jesus that radiates from my fatherhood, R./

For the grace to be able to generate others, R./

For the ability to feed your sheep, R./

For making me an instrument of grace, R./

For every host that I have distributed in Holy Communion, R./

For the gift of holy celibacy, R./

For my love of Mary, Mother of priests, R./

For creating the priesthood to be the love of the heart of Jesus, R./

For the divine commission to sanctify others, R./

For the inestimable grace of being an alter Christus, R./

For the countless graces with which you bless my life, R./

Until tomorrow, God Bless, and Thank You to all Priests. 

Friday of the Fifth Week of Lent

Lectionary: 255

Reading 1

JER 20:10-13

I hear the whisperings of many:

“Terror on every side!

Denounce! let us denounce him!”

All those who were my friends

are on the watch for any misstep of mine.

“Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail,

and take our vengeance on him.”

But the LORD is with me, like a mighty champion:

my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph.

In their failure they will be put to utter shame,

to lasting, unforgettable confusion.

O LORD of hosts, you who test the just,

who probe mind and heart,

Let me witness the vengeance you take on them,

for to you I have entrusted my cause.

Sing to the LORD,

praise the LORD,

For he has rescued the life of the poor

from the power of the wicked!

Responsorial Psalm

PS 18:2-3A, 3BC-4, 5-6, 7

R. (see 7) In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

I love you, O LORD, my strength,

O LORD, my rock, my fortress, my deliverer.

R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

My God, my rock of refuge,

my shield, the horn of my salvation, my stronghold!

Praised be the LORD, I exclaim,

and I am safe from my enemies.

R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

The breakers of death surged round about me,

the destroying floods overwhelmed me;

The cords of the nether world enmeshed me,

the snares of death overtook me.

R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

In my distress I called upon the LORD

and cried out to my God;

From his temple he heard my voice,

and my cry to him reached his ears. 

R. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard my voice.

Verse Before The Gospel

SEE JN 6:63C, 68C

Your words, Lord, are Spirit and life;

you have the words of everlasting life.

Gospel

JN 10:31-42

The Jews picked up rocks to stone Jesus.

Jesus answered them, “I have shown you many good works from my Father.

For which of these are you trying to stone me?”

The Jews answered him,

“We are not stoning you for a good work but for blasphemy.

You, a man, are making yourself God.”

Jesus answered them,

“Is it not written in your law, ‘I said, ‘You are gods”‘? 

If it calls them gods to whom the word of God came,

and Scripture cannot be set aside,

can you say that the one

whom the Father has consecrated and sent into the world

blasphemes because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? 

If I do not perform my Father’s works, do not believe me;

but if I perform them, even if you do not believe me,

believe the works, so that you may realize and understand

that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

Then they tried again to arrest him;

but he escaped from their power.

He went back across the Jordan

to the place where John first baptized, and there he remained. 

Many came to him and said,

“John performed no sign,

but everything John said about this man was true.”

And many there began to believe in him.