Holy Water Helps?

March 7, 2018

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

How is your Lent going? Is all but the essential falling away? I hope you are able to find some silence in the busyness of the day and are able to spend that time with the Lord.

Do you use Holy Water? Faithfully? St. Teresa of Avila wrote in her autobiography that “(f)rom long experience I have learned that there is nothing like holy water to put devils to flight and prevent them from coming back again.” She tells a story of the devil coming to bother her when she was at prayer. She would make the sign of the cross and he would leave, but it wasn’t until she sprinkled him with holy water that he left and didn’t come back!

An article in The Catholic Thing on Holy Water says that in the rite of the Roman ritual, the priest adds exorcised salt to exorcised water:

It remakes the salt and water, turning them in a special way into instruments against the Evil One. Thus the priest’s final prayer over the mixture entreats God to sanctify it so that ‘wheresoever it shall be sprinkled, by the invocation of Thy holy name, all troubling of unclean spirits may be cast out, and the dread of the poisonous servant be chased far away.’

Here's an ancient prayer you can use when blessing yourself with holy water: “By this holy water and by thy Precious Blood wash away all my sins, O Lord.” You can read the article on holy water here: https://www.thecatholicthing.org/2018/03/06/in-praise-of-holy-water/

Today I have a prayer for you that was written by Saint John Paul the Great. I wanted to share it because you are all in it! He requests the Blessed Mother’s intercession “that all who believe in your Son” (that’s us) “may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love” (we try to do that every day). Then he asks for us to receive grace, joy, and courage so that we can build the civilization of truth and love!

I also wanted to share this prayer because it is the most important part of our new Gospel of Life Disciples program. We’ll be visiting parishes to ask them to pray for us and our ministries, give them information, and provide opportunities for them to volunteer to join us in building the civilization of truth and love. Would you be willing to add this prayer to your other daily devotions? It takes about a minute to pray, and we should all benefit greatly from praying this together as the body of Christ.

O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life:

Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy. Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time.

Obtain for them the graceto accept that Gospel as a gift ever new, the joy of celebrating it with gratitude throughout their lives and the courage to bear witness to it resolutely, in order to build, together with all people of goodwill, the civilization of truth and love, to the praise and glory of God, the Creator and lover of life.

Amen