Pray

The Pastoral Care Ministry team explores and helps to bring forward ways for all us to participate in and go deeper into prayer.

Good and gracious God, source of every grace and blessing – you are love and you O Lord call us to lives marked by love, mercy, and justice. Today, we come before you to ask your blessing and favor, as we open our healing tent in a city and nation beset by injustice, violence, and polarization. We are here because without you, we are nothing and we can do nothing. By faith, we also know that with you, all things are possible. Help us Lord to make this place a place of prayer and healing and may your gracious blessing and love extend outward to our city and nation. This grotto commemorates the mission of prayer and healing that you gave your Mother and our Mother in faith – Notre Dame de Lourdes. We ask Mary’s intercession today and in the coming days and the intercession of St. Anthony of Padua, lover of humanity and peace, as today we begin our noble work of prayer, justice and healing. Amen.

The rosary has a special significance to our parish. During the apparition at Lourdes, France in 1858, Bernadette knelt and prayed the rosary each of the 18 times the "beautiful lady" appeared. Sacred art, statuary and windows in the church depcit over a dozen rosaries inside the church, including one with the patron saint of Minneapolis, St. Anthony of Padua and a modern day saint, St. Teresa of Calcutta. In the early part of the 20th century, the women's group at Lourdes was named the Rosary Society. 

Devotion to the wounded heart of Jesus has its origins in the eleventh century, when pious Christians meditated on the Five Wounds of Christ. There grew up among the faithful prayers to the Sacred Heart, prayers to the Shoulder Wound of Christ—private devotions which helped Christians to focus on the passion and death of Christ, and thus to grow in love for our Savior who had suffered and died for us. It was not until 1670, however, that a French priest, Fr. Jean Eudes, celebrated the first Feast of the Sacred Heart. This devotion is particularly celebrated in urban parishes.

More information about the history of the Sacred Heart devotion can be found here. Here is the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The message of The Divine Mercy is simple: God loves us – all of us. And, he wants us to recognize that his mercy is greater than our sins, so that we will call upon him with trust, receive His mercy, and let it flow through us to others. Thus, all will come to share his joy.