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Devotion to Mary is both simple and complicated to understand. We admire her perfection: she was conceived without sin; was chosen to be the mother of Jesus; and was open to God’s will despite the risks involved. Her life was a model that we certainly can never measure up to. Like any one of us, she knew joy, pain and frustration; she knew both the bitter and the sweet. She understands our pain, although we can hardly fathom hers. She held many things close to her heart and, if we ask, she will hold us and our troubles there as well.

Holy Father, in the name of Jesus, I cry out for your mercy and forgiveness of my sins. I repent and renounce all of them. Forgive me, my God, for offending your image and likeness in me, for offending this same image and likeness in my neighbour.

Cleanse me in the precious Blood of Jesus Christ, purify every stain of sin in me, have mercy on me.

And now, Father, I want to open a blank page for this day that is beginning and I ask you, in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son, and my Lord, to fill it out with everything that happens to me today according to your will. Subject my will to yours as I put myself entirely in your hands to be led by the Holy Spirit through your pathways.

I proclaim that you are my God and Lord, the one who saves, sustains, exalts, protects, and heals me, in whom I put all my hope and trust. For everything I have received from you, I give you glory and thanks; for everything I am yet to receive, I praise and bless you. Amen, Alleluia.

The Catholic ideal is to order the whole of life towards unity, not by the denial and destruction of the natural human values, but by bringing them into living relation with spiritual truth and spiritual reality.
By : Christopher Dawson