The traditional and widely recited Prayer to Our Lady of Sorrows is a Catholic devotion honoring the grief and faith of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The traditional prayer honors Mary standing by the cross and bearing Jesus in her arms, praising her faith, hope, and love during the passion, and concluding with a plea for her intercession and comfort in times of trial. The 13th-century prayer by St. Bonaventure focuses on repentance and detachment from earthly joys to seek the ete

O ever Immaculate Virgin, Mother of Mercy, Health of the Sick, Refuge of Sinners, Comforter of the Afflicted, you know my wants, my troubles, my sufferings; deign to cast upon me a look of mercy. By appearing in the Grotto of Lourdes, you made it a privileged sanctuary whence you dispense your favors, and already many have obtained the cure of their infirmities, both spiritual and physical. I come, therefore, with the most unbounded confidence to implore your maternal interce

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mystical Rose, make intercession for the Holy Church, protect the Sovereign Pontiff, and help all those who invoke thee. As the Mother of the True God, she is asked to obtain the grace of keeping the faith, sweet hope, burning charity, and final perseverance. Dearest Lady, fruitful Mother of Holiness, teach your ways of gentleness and strength, and hear personal intentions offered with confidence. Believers call upon the Queen of Martyrs and Apostles t

The Church has encouraged prayer for the dead from the earliest times as an act of Christian charity. “If we had no care for the dead,” Augustine noted, “we would not be in the habit of praying for them.” Yet pre-Christian rites for the deceased retained such a strong hold on the superstitious imagination that a liturgical commemoration was not observed until the early Middle Ages, when monastic communities began to mark an annual day of prayer for the departed members. In th