A prayer for women athletes
“Women in Sport”
Dear Mary, you were a child once, maybe once running around and
chasing other children and being chased, perhaps playing tag and running in and out of the washing lines or up and down the hills.
Did you race down, and tumble down, running and rolling down, or race back up, maybe not calling the loser a slug, but helping up who had fallen, heading back home for lunch, a clean-up and a rest too?
Dear Mary, you are renowned for appearing to the poor, not the fittest, fastest, or most agile of women, and yet there are those who
love like you, your Son, who were full of the zipping zest for sport.
Did these zealous women, train harder, faster and higher, competing
all the while to win medals of a glittering, temporary kind, and maybe they thought of St. Paul racing for an everlasting reward?
Dear Mary, you know how fashions have changed, once women were covered in cumbersome garments but now, the other extreme,
pray for a step-back from barely enough to suitably modest clothing.
Did the media pick out the fastest, most graceful, delightful of faces, noting how the second helped the lead who collapsed to cross the line, leaving behind a ruthless win and winning in her humanity?
Dear Mary, women are not a race behind but leading the course,
some live the active life to the full, singing and dancing, tennis and horse riding, yielding only to death after entering religious life.
Did women believe the lie that there is no nobility and purpose in
motherhood, so their hearts shrink while their influence seems to resound around the world, glamorizing singleness, only to regret all?
Dear Mary, did your family watch you play and then, calling you in, send you on an errand to the elderly, the housebound, those in need,
and were you happy in these visits and on these missions to others?
Did you feel cheated of your childhood, visiting here and there, or are you shockingly happy to be sung through time, rejoicing in your
Son’s love, calling you out of total obscurity to light a way to Him?
Dear Mary, pray for the call to be like you, whether running on the field, jumping the bars of achievements, raising the level of love’s
loving the gift of womanhood, or just being you, loving to love all.
Did it matter that no one recorded your fastest run, your highest jump, your longest leap, as you outstripped us all in the race to pass through eternity’s opening, as you ran home ahead of all mankind?
Dear Mary, turn our hearts and the hearts of all women, to the irreplaceable gift that each one is given, whether in the glory hall or the lowest place of all places where only the poorest are to be found.
Prayer for Athletes
O Christ, we fix our gaze on you, who offer every person the fullness of life. Lord, you heal and strengthen those who, trusting in you, accept your will.
Today, during the Great Jubilee of the Year 2000, athletes throughout the world are gathered here in spirit, above all to renew their faith in you, man’s only Savior.
And those, like the athlete, who are at the peak of their strength recognize that without you, O Christ, they are inwardly like the blind man, incapable, that is, of seeing the full truth, of understanding the deep meaning of life, especially when faced with the darkness of evil and death.
Even the greatest champion finds himself defenseless before the fundamental questions of life and needs your light to overcome the demanding challenges that a human being is called to face.
Lord Jesus Christ, help these athletes to be your friends and witnesses to your love. Help them to put the same effort into personal asceticism that they do into sports; help them to achieve a harmonious and cohesive unity of body and soul.
May they be sound models to imitate for all who admire them. Help them always to be athletes of the spirit, to win your inestimable prize: an imperishable crown that lasts forever. Amen
by Pope John Paul II
Prayer for the return of stolen children
May the power of spiritual enlightenment come upon the Russian officials holding prisoner the 16,500 Ukrainian children.
That they might have a change of heart and mind, that they will feel compassion, concern .May they recognize the rights of the
children to their parents love and care, too their own home in Ukraine, that they be free to grow and live in peace in their own land
In their own home. Reunited with friends and relatives.
Lord of life, bring awareness and commitment to the world to continue the campaign to return the stolen children to their
Parents, families, relatives and friends. Amen
by Father Shay Cullen Profiles in Catholicism