Prayers
John Paul II’s Prayer Entrusting Humanity, the Church and Families to the Blessed Virgin Mary
October 8, 2000
Recited daily at the shrine of Samogitian Calvary
Mary, behold your children, gathered before you, seeking refuge in your motherly protection and trustingly begging your intercession. O mother, pray for us, intercede for us, so that God’s graces might not be lost but rather might foster the holiness to which we are all called.
We wish to entrust to you the future that awaits us, and we ask you to be with us on our way. It is exhilarating, yet full of contradictions. Humanity now has instruments of unprecedented power: we can turn this world into a garden, or reduce it to a pile of rubble. We have devised the astounding capacity to intervene in the very well-springs of life: man can use this power for good, or he can succumb to the pride of a science which tramples on the respect due to every human being. Today as never before in the past, humanity stands at a crossroads. And once again, O Virgin Most Holy, salvation lies fully and uniquely in Jesus, your Son.
Therefore, O Mother, like the Apostle John, we wish to take you into our home, that we may learn from you to become like your Son. Woman, behold your children! Here we stand before you to entrust to your maternal care ourselves, the Church, the entire world. Plead for us with your beloved Son that he may give us in abundance the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth which is the fountain of life. May the Spirit open our hearts to justice and love, and guide people and nations to mutual understanding and a desire for peace. We entrust to you all people, beginning with the weakest: the babies yet unborn, and those born into poverty and suffering, the young in search of meaning, the unemployed, and those suffering hunger and disease. We entrust to you all troubled families, the elderly with no one to help them, and all who are alone and without hope.
O Mother, you know the sufferings and hopes of the Church and the world: come to the aid of your children in the daily trials which life brings to each one, and grant that, thanks to the efforts of all, the darkness will not prevail over the light. To you, Dawn of Salvation, we commit our journey through the new Millennium, so that with you as guide all people may know Christ, the light of the world and its only Saviour, who reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever. Amen.
