Bishop Athanasius Schneider offers the following prayer for the 2023 Synod on Synodality:
Lord Jesus Christ, Our God and Saviour, You are the Head of the Church, Your spotless Bride and Mystical Body. Look mercifully upon the profound distress to which Our Holy Mother Church has been subjected.
Doctrinal confusion, moral abomination, and liturgical abuse have, in our day, reached an unprecedented height. ‘The heathens have come into your inheritance, having defiled your holy temple, and laid Jerusalem in ruins’ (Ps 79:1).
Churchmen who have lost the true Faith and become promoters of a worldly globalist agenda, are intent on changing Your truths and Commandments, the Divine Constitution of the Church, and the Apostolic tradition.
O Lord, with humble spirit and contrite heart we beseech you, prevent the enemies of the Church from exulting in a victory over the authentic Catholic Church obtained by imposing a counterfeit church under the guise of ‘synodality.’ Stir up Your power, O Lord, and come to the aid of Your Church with Your almighty strength. For where sin and apostasy in the Church abounds, the victory of Your grace will abound the more.
We firmly believe that the gates of Hell will not prevail against Your Church. In this hour, in which our beloved and holy Mother Church is suffering her Golgotha, we promise to remain with her. Graciously accept our interior and exterior sufferings, which we humbly offer in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Mother of the Church, as a reparation for our own sins and for the sins of sacrilege and apostasy within the Church.
O Lord, send forth your Holy Angels under the command of Saint Michael the Archangel, to bring your heavenly light to the Pope and synod participants, and to frustrate the plans of your enemies within the synod assembly.
O Lord, look mercifully upon the little ones in the Church, look upon the hidden souls who sacrifice themselves for the Church, look upon all the tears, sighs and supplications of the true children of the Church, and through the merits of the Immaculate Heart of Your Most Holy Mother, arise, O Lord, and by Your intervention grant Your Church holy shepherds who, imitating Your example, will give their lives for You and Your sheep.
O Lord, we beseech You: Through the Blessed Virgin Mary, grant us a holy Pope, zealous in promoting and defending the Catholic Faith, we implore You, grant it!
Through the Blessed Virgin Mary, grant us holy priests, who are men of God, we implore You, grant it!
In You, O Lord, we rest our hope: let us never be put to shame. To You, O Lord Jesus Christ, be given all honour and glory in Your Holy Church. You live and reign with the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit: God, forever and ever. Amen.
September 29, 2023, Feast of St. Michael the Archangel.
+ Athanasius Schneider
Deacon Frederick Bartels is a member of the Catholic clergy who serves the Church in the diocese of Pueblo. He holds an MA in Theology and Educational Ministry, and is a Catholic educator, public speaker, and evangelist who strives to infuse culture with the saving principles of the gospel. For more, visit YouTube, iTunes and Twitter.
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