LAY FAST FOR PRIESTS 2025 - OPENING REMARKS

This month, twenty years ago, the LAY FAST DAY FOR PRIESTS began in response to a crisis in the priesthood that had shocked and wounded the Faithful.

That first Saturday, a group of just over 200 people from Our Lady's Shrine at La Salette, Massachusetts committed to offer the prayerful sacrifice of a Fast for all priests: those who were, those who are, those who are yet to be ordained.

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face became our Patroness. Over these 20 years, her powerful intercession has drawn people from across the globe to come together for this one Saturday each October to offer sacrificial prayer for all priests. That small group of 200+ 'Fast-ers' 20 years ago who responded to the Little Flower's invitation have grown into millions and from almost every country in the world.

St. Therese once said: "LET US SAVE, ABOVE ALL, THE SOULS OF PRIESTS. WE PRAY, WE SUFFER FOR THEM. AND ON THE LAST DAY, JESUS WILL BE GRATEFUL."

Under that direction of our St. Therese, we further learn from another greatly loved saint who taught us how to do as St. Therese suggests, to "pray and suffer" for other. St. John Paul II guides us....

"PRAYER UNITED WITH SACRIFICE IS THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN HUMAN HISTORY."

We offer our "prayer" and our "suffering" in our Fast for Priests and our united Sacrifice will once again, for the 20th year, become a "most powerful force," all across the world for God's priests, His "Ipse Christus". The Spirit of God, "hovering" (Gen. 1) over the face of the earth will breathe His Love into souls from across the Globe and we in turn will breathe His love out into our unitive prayer for all priests, all who were, who are and who are yet to be ordained. Millions of souls will offer sacrificial prayer to God for priests who forgive us in Jesus' Name, who consecrate the Bread and Wine and give us Christ Himself in the Most Holy Eucharist, priests whose hands anoint us when we are at last called Home and whose voice will walk us into Eternity.

St. Therese has given us many humbling testimonies of the sacrifices of our sisters and brothers in recent years.

We remember how in one of the poorest countries in Africa, an entire village fasted from food and water for all priests. Their sacrifice brings Therese's words to life.... "O Jesus, for the priest who baptised me, the priests who have absolved me from my sins, the priests at whose Masses I have assisted and who have given me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion."

We remember a grandmother, her daughter and son-in-law, four sons and grandsons who fasted in their country where priests were being dragged from Altars and those who were attending Mass were made to leave the Churches at gunpoint. We pray with St. Therese: "O Jesus, for your priests labouring at home or abroad in distant mission fields, for your tempted priests, for your lonely and desolate priests..."

With that grandmother, perhaps we too may be inspired this year to pray and offer any small sacrifice for those priests on our Fast Day 2025. Is any sacrifice "small"? Our St. Therese reminds us: "Jesus does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them."

We remember the Bishop who invited his entire Diocese to fast ... "O Jesus, I pray for your faithful and fervent priests... keep them all close to your heart and bless them abundantly in time and in eternity" (St. Therese).

We will offer our fast for all of them this year. Therese teaches us that "Love, because it is Eternal, embraces every time and space." We can therefore raise our prayer and sacrifice for all priests, those who live today, those who were, those who are yet to be.

Last year, in a country where poverty and corruption are life-threatening, a mother joined the Fast but she alone in the family could fast for priests "because the children need the food". This is a country where two priests were murdered in the week prior to the Global Lay Fast. "O Jesus, for your young priests, for your dying priests, for the souls of your priests in Purgatory."

We pray and sacrifice in our Fast for all of these and all priests: for the quiet priests who live and give and are faith-filled and suffer and pray and are obedient and offer sacrifice in an anonymity that makes present the mysticism of the ordinariness of the 30 years of their High Priest in Nazareth. 

THE WORLD OF 'FAST-ERS' WILL BE PRAYING AND SACRIFICING FOR YOU ON OCTOBER 18.

We conclude our prayer and suffering for all priests in union with St. Therese as she speaks for us:

“O Almighty Eternal God, Look upon the Face of Thy Christ, and for the love of Him, Who is the Eternal High Priest, have pity on Thy priests. Remember, O most compassionate God, that they are but weak and frail human beings. Stir up in them the grace of their vocation which is in them by the imposition of the Bishop’s hands, especially (...name here any particular priest whom you wish to pray and fast for). Keep them close to Thee, lest the enemy prevail against them, so that they may never do anything in the slightest degree unworthy of their sublime vocation, and bless them abundantly in time, and in eternity."

WILL YOU PRAY FOR GOD'S "IPSE CHRISTUS" AGAIN AS ONE BODY IN HIM FOR THE 20TH GLOBAL LAY FAST FOR PRIESTS ON THE 18th OF OCTOBER, 2025?

May it please our loving God that we will all unite again this year, on Saturday October 18th, to pray and sacrifice together for all priests, for their protection, their faith, their hope, and above all, for their love.

"THE PRIESTHOOD IS THE LOVE OF THE HEART OF JESUS. WHEN YOU SEE A PRIEST, THINK OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST."

(St. John Vianney, patron Saint of Priests)

"O Jesus, I pray for Your faithful and fervent priests, for Your unfaithful and tepid priests, for Your priests labouring at home or abroad in distant mission fields, for Your tempted priests, for Your lonely and desolate priests, for Your young priests, for Your dying priests, for the souls of Your priests in purgatory. But above all, I recommend to You the priests dearest to me, the priest who baptized me, the priests who absolved me from my sins, the priests at whose Masses I assisted and who gave me Your Body and Blood in Holy Communion, the priests who taught and instructed me, all the priests to whom I am indebted in any other way. O Jesus, keep them all close to Your Heart."

(St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face)

All are most welcome to join this global army of fasters at the link below:

https://www.annaprae.com/lay-fast-for-priests-2025.html

THE TRIUMPH OF THE “TRIFLES” OF ST. THERESE

       On the Feast of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face -

                                           

                                         THE TRIUMPH OF “TRIFLES”

Few of us have met, or live close to a person who levitates during prayer. Few there are among us too whose faculties have been suspended by Spirit Lord and for whom human time is silenced for that soul to experience mystical union with God during those God-ordained moments.

Most of us live and laugh and love and experience sorrow and joy and concerns and hurts in lives that reflect the ordinariness of the 30 years of the days of the Holy Family in Nazareth. But God dwelt in those ordinary days and they were therefore mystical. 

The mysticism of ordinariness. 

October 1 is the Feast Day of St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. We may wonder if St. Therese, like us, lived a mysticism of ordinariness. We look to her own words for answers.

When she received Holy Communion for the first time, Therese reveals to us that a "fusion" of love caused her to write: "Therese had vanished as a drop of water is lost in the immensity of the ocean."

Therese was telling us that she and the Lord had become One.

Later in her life, Therese offered herself as a "victim of holocaust to God's Merciful Love". 

Her own words describe this mystical moment:

    "... all at once I felt myself wounded by a dart of fire so ardent that I thought I must  die. I do not know how to explain it; it was as if an invisible hand had plunged me wholly into fire. Oh, what fire, and what sweetness at the same time! I was burning with love, and I thought one minute, nay, one second more, and I shall not be able to support such ardour without dying.” 

Therese underwent a "spiritual wounding of the heart" or transverberation.

And yet, it was this same Therese who gave all souls, for the rest of time, that pathway to holiness we know as “The Little Way."

This pathway to God is centered on knowing and accepting our own nothingness, totally abandoning ourselves to God's Merciful Love, the way a small child trusts in his parent. In Therese's doctrine of her "little way", she teaches us how to offer small, hidden, daily acts of love, totally surrendering them and abandoning them to God for his glory alone, trusting that He will transform them from our ordinary into His Extraordinary acts of Love.

Therese's mystical experiences suggest that she lived an extraordinary life. And yet, her gift to all of us revealed a call to holiness through "little ways", raised in love in the ordinariness of our days, lives. 

So, we may wonder what "ordinary" looked like for St. Therese.

Many sources, including her own "Story" of her soul and her Letters, reveal to us that she lived a short life filled with anonymity, rejection, humiliations, great emotional sorrows, profound interior spiritual darkness, physical sufferings beyond description.

Such traumas were Therese's experiences of days and years of "ordinary", traumas that would make many of us question if God is present in our sorrows, pain.

It's from her writings that we recognize the Presence of God dwelling within her, guiding and strengthening her, letting her "borrow" His Love, His fortitude, His perseverance, His patience. 

Therese lived with Him, and in Him, and He in her, in the mysticism of her "ordinariness”. 

She teaches us that where God is, "the Uncreated Word" is speaking endlessly. To her, and to us:

          “To live by love is closely to enfold
            The Uncreated Word ---- Voice of my Lord!
            And with Thee, in my heart of hearts, to hold
            The Spirit sending forth His flame adored.
            Thus, loving Thee, the Father too is mine:
            My feeble heart hath drawn Him from above.
            O Trinity, the Prisoner Divine.
            Oh, my poor love."

Therese lived by Love.

Therese helps us to dig and discover how and where God dwells in the mysticism of our ordinariness, how our "feeble heart" draws Him, to willingly become the "Prisoner of Love" in our souls.

And so Therese introduces us to one of her Little Ways of enthralling God, to hold Him in our heart of hearts in our ordinary days, years.

St. Therese writes to us about the power of a "trifle" and we begin to understand its triumph because Therese's "trifles" involve interior self-denial: self-denial of the will and the mind. 

"There are trifles which please Our Lord more than the conquest of the world: a smile or a kindly word, for instance when I feel inclined to say nothing, or appear bored. Believe me, the writing of pious books, the composing of the sublimest poetry, all that does not equal the smallest act of self-denial."

We read of a moment when a novice had promptly answered a knock at the door. We are astonished at Therese's reaction to that novice's prompt action :

"You have done something more glorious, than if, through clever diplomacy, you have procured the goodwill of the government for all religious communities and had been proclaimed throughout France as a second Judith."

We may wonder why Therese applauded this behaviour with such joy. Perhaps because in the ordinariness of our days, fidelity to trifles requires greater heroism than doing great things which bring praise from many. 

Her words help us to understand how these trifles, these small, hidden acts, filled with self-denial and unsought recognition, offered out of pure love for God , may, because they are unseen, offered “… in the dark... may obtain the conversion of the heathen, help the missionaries, and gain for them plentiful alms both spiritual and material  dwellings for our Eucharistic Lord."

Maybe we too name dear ones every day , those whose souls we plead with Spirit Lord to grasp and convert into dwellings for our Eucharistic Lord. And we may be irresistibly drawn by Spirit Lord to pray too for His dear ones, whose names are unknown to us but for whom the Savior "thirsts". (John 19:28)

Our "Trifles", winning souls for God, trifles that triumph because they are filled with self - denial, hidden, enshrouded in humility, anonymously offered in Love, giving all glory to the Father alone. Trifles that make present to others the Voice of Our Lord, The Uncreated Word speaking in the mysticism of our ordinariness.

                     THE TRIUMPH OF THE "TRIFLES" OF LITTLE THERESE.

--

Anna Rae-Kelly OCDS
www.annaprae.com

THE BIRTH OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY (8 September)

"GOD SEEKS MAN IN THE WOMB OF MARY" 

- St. John Paul II

Image Source:  St. Maximilian Kolbe's Perpetual Adoration Chapel in the Niepokalanów Monastery in Poland