I’ve been deep in prayer and reflection this past couple of weeks. But I haven’t forgotten you. I will be back.
In the meantime, I want to encourage you to add Pope Leo’s prayer intention for September to your daily prayers.
If you include the Pope’s prayer intention when you pray the Rosary and fulfill the other obligations, you can receive a plenary indulgence. The requirements are that you must pray all five decades of one of the Mysteries of the Rosary in a church or offertory, or with a group, be in a state of grace, not have an attachment to any sin, go to confession and receive communion.
To be honest, I don’t think I will ever reach the point — except maybe on my death bed — where I don’t have an attachment to some sin. So, I just ask God to give me whatever indulgence I may deserve, and most of the time, I ask that this small indulgence be applied to people in Purgatory.
But, if you can manage to fulfill the requirements, one of which is praying the pope’s prayer intentions, you can get a plenary indulgence.
Another, more accessible, reason to pray the Pope’s prayer intentions is that you are uniting your prayers with those of the Holy Father and millions of other people all around the globe. Any time you pray, you can know that you are not praying alone.
Pope Leo leads the largest religious organization in the world. I would guess that it is the largest religious organization in the history of the world. He is unique on this planet. No one else wields the spiritual and moral authority of the Pope.
He is the descendant of Peter. He is the living embodiment of the Rock.
He is also a frail and fallen human being, just like you and me. When you pray the pope’s prayer intention, remember to also pray for the pope himself.
The Holy Father’s prayer intention for September asks us to pray for the wisdom and vision to save ourselves. He is asking us to pray that the Holy Spirit will gift us with the insight of our reality as living beings on this planet who are part of the web of life that sustains us.
It’s easy, when so many of us live in hermetically sealed dwellings in vast cities, to forget that we are part of the web of life on this precious and possibly unique planet.
It’s easy, when we watch the many science fiction movies about aliens from other planets and exploring space to forget that there is no planet B. Talk of colonizing Mars as a way out of what we are doing to this planet is an idyll, built on fantasy thinking that ignores how hostile and isolated that world really is. Talk of exploring space and finding other worlds like ours is fantasy, built on another fantasy that ignores the distances between stars and worlds in this galaxy of ours.
There are many dangers in our world of computers and internet. One of the most omnipresent is that large numbers of people live in fantasy worlds of “virtual” friends and “disinformation.” They can no longer distinguish truth from lies, fact from fantasy. They are like sleepwalkers who are dreaming their reality.
Pope Francis was attacked and slandered by the billionaires who make money off destroying our planet. I don’t know these people, but they appear to be so completely in the thrall of their own greed and hubris that they are willing to destroy everything, everywhere to keep on piling up money and power for themselves. They are, right now, actively working to destroy our democracy and make serfs of all of us.
Pope Francis persevered in saying the truth no matter how he was attacked. His successor, Pope Leo, appears to be taking up the same work. Truth telling in the face of the power mongers who want to silence truth and make whole populations live and die in service to their lies and propaganda is a critical part of what popes do. Popes who fail in this function, ultimately fail Christ.
Pope Leo’s prayer intention is a gently worded reminder that you and I are part of the web of life that God created on this gorgeous, precious and, so far as we are concerned, unique planet.
We are humans. We are literally made of the dust of the earth. We were born here. We live here. And we will die here. Our souls have another destiny which none of us comprehends now. But our earthly existence, the here and now of us, is as human beings, living on this good earth.
Planet Earth was given the gift of life. Human beings were given the responsibility of caring for and preserving that life. We are the caretakers of God’s garden. That is part of our unique human responsibility.
Here is Pope Leo’s prayer intention for September:
Let us pray that, inspired by Saint Francis, we might experience our interdependence with all creatures who are loved by God and worthy of love and respect.
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