With our exclusive Ordination Week coverage coming to an end, we want to catch up on some important news from this past weekend. At the Beatification festivities for Blessed John Paul II this past weekend, Fr. Jim Phalan, C.S.C., the Director of Family Rosary International, announced a new worldwide campaign of prayer entitled Firm in Faith with Mary. In the spirit of Servant of God Patrick Peyton, C.S.C., the founder of Holy Cross Family Ministries, Fr. Jim is leading this movement, calling on Christians around the world to unite in praying the rosary for World Youth Day. Here is the letter from Fr. Jim announcing the campaign. Our Vocations Office has signed up for Firm in Faith with Mary, and we invite you all to do so too!
We invite you to join us in a worldwide campaign of prayer, “Firm in Faith with Mary”, praying the Rosary for World Youth Day on Saturdays from the beginning of May until WYD which takes place in August.
Since the first World Youth Day 25 years ago, the event has become a very important opportunity to awaken and deepen faith for young people around the world. This year´s World Youth Day in Madrid from August 16-21 can be a great moment of grace for the New Evangelization not only of young people, but also for all throughout Europe and the world. Aware of the importance of this event, a number of Church organizations have joined together to call the whole Church to prepare for WYD and implore for its fruitfulness by praying the Rosary. The World Youth Day Organization in Madrid heartily endorses this initiative.
We invite you first and foremost to join us in prayer, because as we know from Jesus himself, our prayer has the power to move mountains. Also, more than simply joining us in prayer, we invite you and we need you to help us spread the Good News of this campaign to others. Recently we have been witness to the power of media to effect rapid socio-political change. So let us now harness the power of media for an even greater good, the good of changing hearts and remaking our world through the grace of Christ.
For this wide promotion of “Firm in Faith with Mary” we need to make full, dynamic and up-to-date use of the internet. The campaign web site, video resources and social networking will be accessible at www.firminfaith.org.
With your help and the help of others in the Church throughout the world, we have, through God’s grace, the chance to do something truly remarkable – to create through this campaign a global, interactive community united in and through prayer.
Let us join together in the Rosary, which the recently beatified Blessed John Paul II called both his “favorite prayer” and “the Gospel made prayer”. Believing in the power of prayer and in Mary’s love for us, her children, we entrust World Youth Day and our whole world to our Holy Mother through this campaign.
