Prayers

1. God, our Loving Father, as we come together for prayer and reflection, bless us with your presence. Send your Holy Spirit and give us true faith. Touch our lives and heal us. Inspire our minds to listen to your word. Transform our lives to be your effective witnesses of faith and messengers of harmony. Help us to be true instruments of your healing. Enable us to live in communion with one another. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord.

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2. Heavenly Father, as we humbly come today for prayer and reflection, bless each one of us. Send forth your Holy Spirit upon us that our faith may be strengthened to follow your Son. We pray that, our faith may lead to wholeness, that it may lead a new life in you and being transformed and liberated we may liberate others as well. We make this prayer through Christ Our Lord, Amen

Prayer of Faithful

Introduction : With deep gratitude for the innumerable gifts we have received from God, let us humbly place all our prayers and intentions to the heavenly Father, through Christ who is the source of our health and healing.

• Heavenly Father, bless us with true faith! Strengthen us. Give us grace to contemplate on thy Word, and to live what we believe. For this we pray to you Lord. Lord, hear our prayer.

• Merciful Father, we ask you to bless all the poor, marginalized, friendless, those who are in misfortune, abandoned, stigmatized due to dreaded diseases, those who are fallen victim to drugs. Bless them in your mercy and strengthen their faith in your unconditional love.

• Father, true Healer of the soul and body, we entrust to your loving care all the sick brothers and sisters of our communities. May the Cross of your Son be their source of inspiration and strength! Touch them and heal them

• We pray for all the doctors, nurses and technicians and other healthcare providers and all those in our healthcare institutions. Help us to be faithful to our mission, committed to our duty and above all compassionate to the persons whom we encounter, especially the suffering. Empower us to be the channel of your healing power.

• Father in heaven, we pray for your constant guidance in our life. Help us to be courteous, friendly and warm with people we meet. Help us to be true, trustful and prudent in all our dealings. Help us to bring comfort to those in sorrow, and strength to those who find themselves weak. Help us to bring hope, cheer and encouragement to those who have lost hope, and are depressed and discouraged.

( Please add other intentions )

Concluding Prayers :

1. Lord, may this coming together and sharing, transform our lives by the power of your Holy Spirit. May our words, works and worship be visible signs of our faith in you! Help us to go forth and live as effective agents of love, compassion and healing. May Your Son, Jesus be visible in us! We ask this in the name of Jesus Our Lord. Amen.

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2. God, our loving Father, give to your people the joy of continual health in mind and body. Grant, we beseech you, that through the intercession of Blessed Mary, the mother of the Author of Life, all your children who are distressed, experience your peace and healing power, and eternal happiness in the life to come. We make this prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Excerpts from

THE MESSAGE FOR XII WORLD DAY OF THE SICK

(February 11, 2004)

by

POPE JOHN PAUL II

Human suffering finds its deepest meaning and its salvific value in the death and resurrection of the Redeemer. The whole weight of the tribulations and pains of mankind is epitomised in the mystery of a God who, in taking on our human nature, humbled himself to the point of making himself ‘a victim of sin ' ( 2 Cor 5:21). On Golgotha he took on the faults of every human creature, and in the loneliness of abandonment, cried out to the Father ‘why have you forsaken me? ( Mt 27:46).

From the paradox of the Cross comes the answer to our most disquieting questions. Christ suffers for us : he takes upon himself the suffering of everyone and redeems it. Christ suffers with us , giving us the possibility of sharing our afflictions with him. Joined to the suffering of Christ, human suffering becomes a means of salvation. This is why the believer can say with St. Paul: ‘It makes me happy to be suffering for you now, and in my own body to make up all the hardships that still have to be undergone by Christ for the sake of his body, the Church' ( Col 1:24). Pain, accepted with faith, becomes the door by which to enter the mystery of the redemptive suffering of the Lord: a suffering that no longer takes away peace and happiness because it is illuminated by the splendour of the resurrection.

Illness and death, although they continue to be present in earthly existence, nonetheless lose their negative meaning. In the light of faith, the death of the body, a death defeated by the death of Christ ( Rom 6:4), becomes the necessary passageway the fullness of immortal life.