Coming Home

As we continue our nine days of prayer, please leave your supportive messages for the folks in Newtown and Sandy Hook in the comments section here on the blog. They’ll be seeing them, I assure you. Each night as we pray for the entire community, we’ll lift up in a special way different groups within that population. Thanks for joining in. God Bless you and your loved ones.

Day 1 here.

Day 2 here.

Day 3 here.

Day 4 here.

Day 5 here.

Day 6 here.

Day 7 here.

Prayer

Be blessed, O most pure Virgin, for having vouchsafed to manifest your shining with life, sweetness and beauty, in the Grotto of Lourdes, saying to the child, St. Bernadette: “I am the Immaculate Conception.” A thousand times we congratulate you upon your Immaculate Conception. And now, O ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of mercy, Health of the sick, Refuge of sinners, Comforter of the afflicted, you know our wants, our troubles, our sufferings deign to cast upon us a look of mercy.

DAY EIGHT

O Immaculate Mother of God, from heaven itself you came to appear to the little Bernadette in the rough Grotto of Lourdes! And as Bernadette knelt at your feet and the miraculous spring burst forth and as multitudes have knelt ever since before your shrine, O Mother of God, we kneel before you today to ask that in your mercy you plead with your Divine Son to grant the special favor we seek in this novena.

We pray tonight for all of the citizens of Sandy Hook and Newtown, that Christmas brings a reprieve from the trauma of these past eight days. We pray, too, for eternal rest for all 28 people who died in the madness of that day, especially for those most in need of your Son’s mercy.

O Brilliant star of purity, Mary Immaculate, Our Lady of Lourdes, glorious in your assumption, triumphant in your coronation, show unto us the mercy of the Mother of God, Virgin Mary, Queen and Mother, be our comfort, hope, strength, and consolation. Amen.

Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us.

Saint Bernadette, pray for us.