August 3rd, 2025 – Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Dear Sisters & Brothers,
On Monday, the Church celebrates the memorial of St. John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. In light of this, I would like to share a daily prayer for priests that I came across when I was in my teens.
O almighty eternal God, look upon the face of your Christ, and for love of Him who is the eternal High-priest, have pity on your priests. Remember, O most compassionate God, that they are but weak and frail human beings. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation which is in them by the imposition of the bishop’s hands. Keep them close to you, lest the enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation.
O Jesus, I pray to you for your faithful and fervent priests; for your unfaithful and tepid priests; for your priests laboring at home or abroad in distant mission fields; for your tempted priests; your lonely and desolate priests; for your young priests; for your aged priests; for your sick priests; for your dying priests; or the souls of your priests in purgatory.
But above all I commend to you the priests dearest to me: the priest who baptized me; the priests who absolved me from my sins; the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me your Body and Blood in Holy Communion; the priests who taught and instructed me or helped me and encouraged me; all the priests to whom I am indebted in any way, particularly . . . . . . . . . . . . . O Jesus, keep them all close to your heart, and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity. Amen.
I ask you to please remember all priests in your daily prayers.
