Prayers - Save Our Aging Religious

S O A R - SAVE OUR AGING RELIGIOUS

God of teachers, God of nurses,
God of caregivers, God of workers,
God of nuns, God of Angels,
please Save Our Aging Religious.
They have been all of the above, and more!

They were our Earth-Angels, instructing, enlightening, guiding and giving good examples, showing us the road to decency
and guiding us toward the path to paradise.

Rising at dawn, they sang their Lauds,
and then, uncomplaining, well into old age, took on a long day's work for their Lord,
and for us, their students, their ill,
or their poor.

Few nuns ever retired at 65 years of age.
Bless those who are now in retirement.

Bless too, dear Lord, those that sing now
in Your heavenly choir, their somber vesture transformed to radiant silver light
and golden sun-bright angel wings!

Give the aged religious still with us
the will and health to endure,
and give the younger sisters the strength
they need to care for their elders,
while they make their own spiritual way
in a sometimes uncaring world,
and into a very uncertain future.

Save also the priests and monks and brothers
who baptized us and heard our confessions,
who gave us Communion, confirmed and married us, and prayed over us the last rites
of Your church on earth.

+ Father Nicholas Kao Se Tseien +

I know that Your beloved Father Nicholas,
the oldest Catholic priest in modern times. was thought to be 110 years old when he died in 2007.

Please, bless him, and bless our priests
and good nuns one and all. They have richly
and generously guided us, taught us,
and led us morally and spiritually.

They gave more to us than we could ever
give back to them: they gave us You.

May we live good lives which honor them
and pay tribute to their good lessons,
their generosity and example,
their thoughtful care, their vocational dedication, and their personal sanctity.

I pray peaceful rest for their souls,
as their days on earth are over,
and they sleep beneath a thankful earth.

I pray especially for gentle Sister Noreen
of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth,
my first-grade teacher who taught me to read.

I pray for Father Joseph Selting,
my daunting pastor at Sacred Heart Church
who corrected by errors as a server at early morning Mass.

xxx

+ Gilbert Wolters, OSB + Gilbert Hartke, OP +

I pray for Rev. Gilbert Wolters, OSB,
my kind Major Professor at Saint Benedict's College in Atchison, Kansas,
and for Rev. Gilbert Hartke, OP, my career guide and personal mentor at Catholic University in Washington, DC, to whom I owe my professional career and my livelihood.

Hold them gentle, Lord, until we meet again.

Reward all your religious servants, I pray,
with the Beatific Vision,
and with your choicest blessings,
as they raise their voices with the cherubim and seraphim, the saints and angels,
in Your triumphant eternal celestial choir.

Amen

At the 50th Anniversary of a religious order,
all the nuns are middle age or aged; none are young.

Contributions to the care
of our aging religious, women and men,
can be made here:
http://soar-usa.org/

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