A Novena for the Traditional Mass (day 8)

Glory to Thee, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
One God over all the world in every age.

In Thy mercy
grant that Thy servants
may once again freely worship Thee
in the unity of the Mass of Ages,
with St. Thomas More,
with St. John Fisher,
with St. Ignatius of Loyola
and with all the saints
whom Thou hast spiritually formed
through the traditional Mass.

Father in Heaven,
through Christ our Lord, we ask Thee
to pour out the grace of Thy Holy Spirit
on Thy vicar, Pope Benedict XVI,
and on Thy unworthy servants,
to conform our hearts to Thee,
so that, animated by Thy Spirit,
we may serve Thee faithfully in this life
and enter into the joy of Thy kingdom
at the end of our days.

For the Holy Father:
Our Father Who art in heaven...
Hail Mary, full of grace...
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit...

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And when He had arisen from prayer and come to His disciples, He found them sleeping for sadness, and He said to them, "Why are you sleeping? Sleep on now and take your rest. That is enough. Get up and pray that you may not enter into temptation. Behold, the hour is coming when the Son of Man will be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Get up, let us go. Behold, the one who will betray me is near at hand." [Mt 26:45-46, Mk 14:41-42]

See now, when Christ comes back to His apostles for the third time, there they are, buried in sleep, although he commanded them to bear up with Him and to stay awake and pray because of the impending danger; but Judas the traitor at the same time was so wide awake and intent on betraying the Lord that the very idea of sleep never entered his mind.

Does not this contrast between the traitor and the apostles present to us a clear and sharp mirror image (as it were), a sad and terrible view of what has happened through the ages from those times even to our own? Why do not bishops contemplate in his scene their own somnolence? Since they have succeeeded in the place of the apostles, would that they would reproduce their virtues just as eagerly as they embrace their authority and as faithfully as they display their sloth and sleepiness! For very many are sleepy and apathetic in sowing virtues among the people and maintaining the truth, while the enemies of Christ, in order to sow vices and uproot the faith (that is, insofar as they can, to seize Christ and cruelly crucify Him once again), are wide awake--so much wiser (as Christ says) are the sons of darkness in their generation than the sons of light.

Saint Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ

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(Today is the Feast of St. Monica)

Saint Monica, at whose powerful prayers Augustine was rescued from the spirit of the age and raised to heights of holiness, ora pro nobis.