NOVENA TO ST. IGNATIUS OF LOYOLA - NINTH DAY - JULY 30, 2013 - SENSUS CHRISTI

Tomorrow, we will celebrate the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits. For the last eight days, we have been praying that through his intercession we might obtain various graces to live more fully our own lives as individuals and as a community. Today on the last day of the novena, we make our own the prayer of Fr. Pedro Arrupe, himself a former General of the Society of Jesus:  “Lord, meditating on ‘our way of proceeding’, I have discovered that the ideal  way of acting is your way of acting.

Give me that sensus Christi that I may feel with your feelings, with the sentiments of your heart, which basically are love for your Father and love for all men and women. Teach me how to be compassionate to the suffering, the poor, the blind, the lame and lepers.  Teach us your way so that it becomes our way today, so that we may come closer to the great idea of St. Ignatius; to be companions of Jesus, collaborators in the work of redemption.”

Through the intercession of St. Ignatius we pray for the grace to make Jesus’ way of proceeding our way of proceeding, his way of acting our way of acting.

Father, Son and Spirit, on this last day of our Novena, we come to you with grateful hearts because we know you always listen to our prayers. We have prayed during these days that we as individuals and as a community will imbibe through the intercession of St. Ignatius, the same qualities with which he was graced which made him such a powerful instrument of your generous and unconditional love and peace. We know that if we continue to open our hearts to you, you can accomplish in us the same work that you were able to accomplish in St. Ignatius.

We make this prayer thorough the intercession of St. Ignatius to you our Triune God who live and reign forever and ever. Amen.