Prayer Request

A English reader writes:

I feel a little bad asking for your prayers and the prayers of my fellow readers because I’ve asked a couple of times before, but could you please pray for me, the devil has been coming after me in a big way over the past couple of weeks and although I know that God is real and Jesus is the 2nd person of the Most Holy Trinity he is still trying to tempt me to doubt.

Father, we ask that you would help your servant by strengthening in him the gift of faith and helping him to feed on that which strengthens that gift. Give him a new dedication to reading Scripture, to the works of the great saints, and to living out the works of mercy that he may build up his spiritual muscles. Help him to remember that he who does what you command will know whether Jesus speaks your word. Your command is that we love one another as Christ has loved us. Mother Mary, pray for your son. St. Michael and his guardian angel, fight for him and remind him that the devil would not be attacking him so fiercely were he not doing something right. Help him to be an agent of grace in a country badly needing to see your grace at work. We ask this through Christ our Lord.

A note to my brother in England: don’t think it strange your faith is being tried right now. You are on the front line in a major spiritual battle for the soul of your country. We say to our troops here in the US, “Thank you for your service.” I say it to you. Thank you for your service. God sees and will not forget.

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal which comes upon you to prove you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice in so far as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God. For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God? And “If the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious and sinner appear?” Therefore let those who suffer according to God’s will do right and entrust their souls to a faithful Creator. (1 Peter 4:12-19)