This wonderful prayer is part of the 9th day of the St. Augustine of Hippo Novena. Aurelius Augustinus was born in 354 and is one of the Latin Fathers of the Church and maybe one of the essential Christian founders along with St Paul and St Luke. His teachings are responsible for a great deal […]

Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote this holy prayer.  What’s interesting is that Saint John Henry did not start as a Catholic but switched after he learned that the Roman Catholic Church was in the closest continuity with the Church that Jesus established. He was canonized as a saint in 2010 by Pope Benedict XVI. Lead, […]

I’ve mentioned my mom (the Ma) before in this book but I would be remiss to not mention her friends and family in the church. These women hold the fabric of their parish and parishes around the world together through prayer. I believe groups like the Legion of Mary are keeping our world intact.  This […]

I was unable to find the author of this inspirational prayer but again, it jumped off the page as if it had a life of its own. “Pick me, Pick me.”  So this week’s prayer is the power of these gifts, if you know the author, please tweet me at @prayer_to Power of These Gifts […]

The following is one of my mom’s favorite prayers. “The Ma” as she is known to her six children and “Nana” to her 22 grand and 19 great-grandchildren.  It was written by the late Sister Geraldine Hedinger, pictured here, of the Monastery of Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand Indiana. When my mom showed me this prayer […]

Cardinal Mercier’s Prayer To The Holy Spirit Désiré-Félicien-François-Joseph Mercier (1851-1926) was a cardinal, a Thomist scholar (of Thomas Aquinas) and the Archbishop of Mechelen in Brussels. He staunchly resisted the German occupation during world war 1. Bringing food to the starving masses. He recommended that we should “quiet our imagination, close our eyes to everything visible and […]

This is one of the most inspiring prayers to the Holy Spirit in this book. “Veni Creator Spiritus”  is a fantastic hymn written in the 9th century by Rabanus Maurus a Frankish Benedictine monk. Who later became the archbishop of Mainz (now in Germany). Usually sung in Gregorian chant, go here bit.ly/vcshymn to listen to […]

I firmly believe that the Holy Spirit is like a conduit to God. When we ask the Holy Spirit to “Come In” we are asking for the blessings of the full Trinity. In my dad’s prayer at the beginning of this book, we ask for Him to “come into our hearts.” In the Novena to […]

My interpretation of this prayer is that our goal here on earth is to become so one with the Holy Spirit that he shields our sins like a force field so we may enter heaven even as flawed as we are. I didn’t understand what was meant by defaced and deformed by sin until I […]

Like many of you, I still have young children at home. So please don’t judge me, when I say; that no matter how hard I try, I still fear death. Not so much for myself but for my family that I would leave behind.   I do worry about the afterlife as well and if […]

I was taught that I should trust my gut instincts. Malcolm Gladwell called the gut instinct, “Blink” in his famous book of the same name. The idea you do your best thinking when you don’t think at all. When I was young I tended to mistrust my gut feelings, dismissing them as foolish or unactionable. […]

Most Catholics know that a novena is a private and/or public prayer to obtain special graces. Sometimes used to ask for special favors, and/or to make special petitions.  As the definition suggests, the novena has a sense of urgency and neediness to it. For example, when I first started my business I asked my mom […]

I felt inspired to write this small prayer after reading various sections of the Catechism of the Catholic Church via Vitican.va.  In section two, chapter three, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” The catechism calls the Holy Spirit the Paraclete.  In my humble ignorance of the Holy Spirit, I had to look up the word […]

There was a time when Christianity was facing extinction through war, territorial disputes, and loss of faith. During that time, small pockets of the faithful hid away in monasteries in obscure parts of the world. Such as on the spike island of Skellig Michael off the coast of Ireland, pictured above, or the Sümela Monastery, […]