TOPICS:
Prayer of a Wife and Mother
By Dona Lucilia Ribeiro dos Santos
O Mary, Pure and Immaculate Virgin, Chaste Spouse of Saint Joseph, tender Mother of Jesus, perfect model of wives and mothers, I come to you full of respect, confidence and veneration. Kneeling at your feet, I implore your help.
Behold, O pure Mary, my needs and those of my family. Listen to the desires of my heart, as I entrust them to your tender heart. May I, through your intercession, obtain from Jesus the grace to fulfill my obligations as wife and mother. Obtain for me a holy fear of God, love of work and good deeds, love of prayer and holy things, sweetness, patience, wisdom, and finally, all the virtues that the Apostle Saint Paul recommends for Christian women, virtues that make for the happiness and adornment of families.
Teach me to honor my husband, as you honored Saint Joseph and as the Church honors Jesus Christ. May my husband find in me a wife after his heart; may the holy union we entered on earth continue in heaven. Protect my husband; guide him along the path of goodness and justice–because his happiness is as dear to me as my own.
I also entrust my poor children to your maternal heart. Be their mother; incline their hearts to piety. Do not allow them to stray from the path of virtue. Make them happy, and after our deaths, let them remember their father and mother; let them pray to God for us and honor our memory with their virtues.
Tender Mother; make them pious, charitable, and good Christians always, so that their lives, filled with good deeds, may be crowned with holy deaths. O, Mary, grant that one day we may be united in heaven, and there contemplate your glory, celebrate your goodness, enjoy your love and eternally praise your beloved Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen
Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope! To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve; to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary!
V. Pray for us, O Holy Mother of God.
