PRAY FOR ME, mda. On 17 December Pope Francis turns 78 – a few days after the 45th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, which took place on the Third Sunday of Advent. What do you give to a Pope for his birthday, which he described as “a completely normal day”, a Pope who raffles his presents? You carry out his requests. Those who pay attention to what he says, or those who only took in the words he addressed to the Schoenstatt Movement during the audience on 25 October, will know a number of his requests: To read a passage from the Gospel, to study Evangelii Gaudium, to go out onto the streets and the outskirts of society, to place Christ at the centre and remove our “self”, to accompany people very personally, to renew the covenant at Mass and at Confession. Then there is a request he makes repeatedly, “Pray for me!”
Again and again he asks for prayers for others – for refugees, for peace, for the sick, for the poor … And for himself. “Please do not forget to pray for me, I need it,” he told the Schoenstatt Movement at the end of the audience. “When he told us about the Pilgrim Mother on the little cupboard beside his bed, and said that he touched it every morning, it really touched me”, someone related who spontaneously entered into covenant solidarity with Pope Francis during the audience. “Since then I have touched the picture of Pope Francis in my home shrine and pray for him.”
Bowing to the people of God
Pray for me! This was the great gesture he made at the start of his pontificate, on that 13 March, when he set out on this way “we are beginning together today”. He bowed to the people of God on St Peter’s Square and the TV screens of the world and asked for our prayer. It was a moment in which this people of God, the family of God, the Church, became great, strong and united in prayer for this man who had been born on 17 December 1936 in Buenos Aires.
“And now I want to give you the blessing, but first I ask you to do me a favour. Before your Bishop blesses the people, he asks you to invoke the Lord to bless me: The prayer of the people that prays for a blessing for their bishop. In silence let us now pray.”
Best of all every day
Pray for me. A request for this 17 December, and perhaps the start of praying every day for him. The Pope Francis Prayer Rally is one of the many initiatives that encourage us to pray daily for Pope Francis. With great creativity and tenacity, Karin Schmitz, the initiator, who is visited once a month by the Pilgrim Mother, wins others to pray each day for our Holy Father – in the Philippine parish in Siegburg, in parishes in Hennef and St Augustin, in the secondary school of the Steyler Missionaries, with the Youth 2000, Medjugorje groups, and in Schoenstatt.
Actually it is very simple. When he greets the picture of the Blessed Mother every morning, the Schoenstatt Family greets him from their shrines. On his birthday and perhaps every day.
Translated from the German, M. Cole, UK
