Let Us Pray for Pope Benedict XVI

Oratio pro summo pontifice.

Today, Pope Benedict XVI celebrates the solemn investiture of his papal ministry. Here are prayers for the pope.

From the Current Roman Missal

Father of providence, look with love on N., our Pope, your appointed successor to St. Peter on whom you built your Church. May he be the visible center and foundation of our unity in faith and love. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

God our Father, shepherd and guide, look with love on N., your servant, the pastor of your Church. May his word and example inspire and guide the Church, and may he, and all those entrusted to his care, come to the joy of everlasting life. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

Lord, source of eternal life and truth, give to your shepherd N., a spirit of courage and right judgment, a spirit of knowledge and love. By governing with fidelity those entrusted to his care may he, as successor to the apostle Peter and the vicar of Christ, build your Church into a sacrament of unity, love and peace for all the world. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

From the 1962 Missale Romanum

Deus omnium fidelium pastor et rector, famulum tuum N., quem pastorem Ecclesiae tuae praeesse voluisti, propitius respice: da ei, quaesumus, verbo et exemplo, quibus praeest, proficere; ut ad vitam, una cum grege sibi credito, perveniat sempiternam. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

O God, the Shepherd and Ruler of all Thy faithful people, mercifully look upon Thy servant N., whom Thou hast chosen as the chief Shepherd to preside over Thy Church; grant him, we beseech Thee, so to edify, both by word and example, those over whom he hath charge, that he may attain unto everlasting life, together with the flock committed unto him. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 04/24/05 08:29:36 AM
Categorized as Religious.

From "Saints Peter and Paul"

By Rev. Ronald Knox, June 29, 1947.

A sermon preached at the Church of Our Most Holy Redeemer and St. Thomas More, Chelsea.

.... Shall we remember to pray all the more earnestly for the Holy Father, in troubled times like these? If our critics were right, if the Vicar of Christ had no other office to perform than to be a drag on the wheels of history, forbidding this, repressing that, fulminating endless decrees against everybody who did something which had not been done before, said something which had not been said before, how unlaborious a life he might lead, how unexacting! But it is not so, and it has never been so; in our day, perhaps more than ever, the Popes have a wider and nobler conception of the duty they have undertaken; they will give the world positive guidance, they will initiate, they will spur us to action. They will not be content to criticize (no difficult matter) the false standards they see prevailing in an exhausted and disillusioned world. They will set before it, instead, the pattern of a Christian world-order, of a civilization penetrated with, and expressing, the mind of Christ. And if we are to be worthy, you and I, of those great pontificates under which the divine mercy has privileged us to live, we must not be content, either, with a merely negative Catholicism which forbids us to do this, discourages us from doing that, shuts us up in ourselves and reduces the Christian life to a treadmill routine of avoiding sin. We must react generously, and if need be heroically, to the conditions of our age, of a world which enjoys a precarious, and, if we fail in our duty, an ignoble peace....

[Pastoral Sermons and Occasional Sermons, ed. Philip Caraman, S.J., pp. 497f.]

See also these.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 04/24/05 08:19:29 AM
Categorized as Religious & Speeches and Suchlike.

Three from Read & Dobrée II

Three poems from The London Book of English Verse.

On a Bank as I sat a-Fishing
A Description of The Spring

And now all nature seem'd in love;
The lusty sap began to move;
New juice did stir th' embracing vines,
And birds had drawn their valentines;
The jealous trout, that, low did lie,
Rose at a well-dissembl'd fly:
There stood my friend, with patient skill,
Attending of his trembling quill.
Already were the eaves possess'd
With the swift pilgrim's daubed nest:
The groves already did rejoice
In Philomel's triumphing voice.
   The show'rs were short, the weather mild,
The morning fresh, the evening smil'd.
   Joan takes her neat-rubb'd pail, and now
She trips to milk the sand-red cow;
Where, for some sturdy football swain,
Joan strokes a syllabub or twain.
   The fields and gardens were beset
With tulip, crocus, violet;
And now, though late, the modest rose
Did more than half a blush disclose.
Thus all look'd gay, all full of cheer,
To welcome the new liveried year.

Sir Henry Wotton

Spring Quiet

Gone were but the Winter,
   Come were but the Spring,
I would go to a covert
   Where the birds sing.

Where in the whitethorn
   Singeth a thrush,
And a robin sings
   In the holly-bush.

Full of fresh scents
   Are the budding boughs
Arching high over
   A cool green house:

Full of sweet scents,
   And whispering air
Which sayeth softly:
   "We spread no snare;

"Here dwell in safety,
   Here dwell alone,
With a clear stream
   And a mossy stone.

"Here the sun shineth
   Most shadily;
Here is heard an echo
   Of the far sea,
   Though far off it be."

Christina Rossetti

The Merry Country Lad

Who can live in heart so glad
As the merry country lad?
Who upon a fair green balk
May at pleasure sit and walk,
And amid the azure skies
See the morning sun arise,
While he hears in every spring
How the birds do chirp and sing:
Or before the hounds in cry
See the hare go stealing by:
Or along the shallow brook,
Angling with a baited hook,
See the fishes leap and play
In a blessed sunny day:
Or to hear the partridge call
Till she have her covey all:
Or to see the subtle fox,
How the villain plies the box;
After feeding on his prey,
How he closely steals away,
Through the hedge and down the furrow
Till he gets into his burrow:
Then the bee to gather honey;
And the little black-haired coney,
On a bank for sunny place,
With her forefeet wash her face,—
Are not these, with thousands moe
Than the courts of kings do know,
The true pleasing spirit's sights
That may breed true love's delights?

Nicolas Breton

The London Book of English Verse (1949), ed. Herbert Read and Bonamy Dobrée, ## 427, 39, 677; pp. 381f, 67f, 831.

See also Three from Read & Dobrée I: Three poems from The London Book of English Verse.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sun. 04/24/05 08:04:56 AM
Categorized as Literary & Sunday Poetry Series.