Crucified Lord Jesus,
We have been bitten by the fiery serpent of covid-19. We bring to you all who are suffering from the virus itself, all who are suffering because of it, be it from pain, grief or fear or anxiety, and all who have died of it. By your Cross, relieve their manifold suffering and bring mercifully to Paradise those who have died.
Crucified Lord,
Our societies have been bitten by the fiery serpents of injustice in multiple forms, from petty crime to the scandal of the hunger, thirst and oppression of countless millions across the face of the earth. You, who were lifted up from the earth, bring down the arrogant and violent from their self-erected thrones of pride, vanity and folly. Raise up the lowly and restore joy to their faces, peace to their hearts, dignity to their bodies and souls.
Crucified Lord,
We are plagued with the fiery serpents of moral ignorance and moral defiance. With your own hands you formed man and woman in your image and likeness, to fill the earth and to steward it in your name. But today, it’s as if we have unravelled your image. Man and woman united in matrimony seem no longer to be the bedrock of society, or even the norm, but somehow a supposed relic from an oppressive past. It seems that man is no longer man, husband or father, woman no longer woman, wife or mother. It’s as if we wish to correct your creation and reform it to suit our own preferences, whims, likes, ideas, convenience. By the blood of your Cross, and by the Spirit you breathed forth in death, cleanse our societies and reinvigorate them to return to the unparalleled beauty, simplicity and clarity of marriage, manhood and womanhood.
Crucified Lord,
The fiery serpents of greed and envy have led us to plunder and pillage the human and material resources of the earth, acting like a band of thieves instead of stewards, with no head and less heart for the respect and care we should show for one another and for the earth you have given us to administer. Raise our eyes once more to your saving Cross, draw us all once more to yourself as you promised. Convert us from being the bad thief to the good and humble man who used to be a thief. As you cry “I thirst”, let us cry “we repent.”
Crucified Lord,
Hints of the fiery serpent of war, and of nation turning against nation, are creeping back into the minds and mouths of those in authority, causing fear and anxiety, unsettling populations, creating animosity between and within nations. We look to you to draw and, yes, drag us all towards you, you who are our peace, you who reconcile enemies and foes making peace by the blood of your Cross. Turn hearts towards peace and cooperation, change speech from confrontation to collaboration, calm the passions of the belligerent and open the doors of mutual understanding and respect.
Crucified Lord,
Also within your mystical Body, all is not well. Shadows of evil are all too present and powerful. We mourn above all at the foot of your Cross for the atrocities committed by ordained priests and bishops against your little ones, for the treachery and cruelty and devastation they have caused them and for the enraging scandal they have brought to your faithful people. Only you, suffering Jesus, can understand fully in its complete depth the pain, the damage, the destruction that has been perpetrated. Only you can carry it, and only you can remove and heal it. In your unutterable mercy, draw the wounded little ones very close to your pierced heart and feed them with the healing balm which pours forth from the deepest recesses of your love. Convert the hearts of the guilty, draw them out from the abyss into which they have fallen. Do what only the miraculous mercy of your crucified power can do and bring them, if they repent, to see your face.
Crucified Lord,
No bone of yours was broken on the Cross. Let, then, no bone be broken in the Mystical Body of your Church. We sense division within, we sense opposition and antagonism, we sense the spirit of the world and the smoke of Satan within her. From your Cross, Lord Jesus, cry out once more, “get behind me, Satan” and expel his influence and the influence of his minions upon the community of the redeemed, your Bride, the Church. Let faith again be strong and true, unsullied by merely human ideas and designs; may all Bishops, successors of the Apostles, resist the sin of heresy and apostasy, and stand firm on the foundations of the Apostolic Tradition. Let the practice of the sacraments once more be the inner power-house of the life of every Catholic, believed in with uncompromising faith, received with devotion and coherence of life, devoid of any wrong sense of entitlement, loved from the depth of the heart and soul. You who were crucified for speaking the truth and for being the Truth, deliver us from false certainties that are not rooted in you. Protect your Church from conforming to the spirit of the times and inspire her rather to evangelise the times with unapologetic clarity, unfailing charity and with the boldness of the first Pentecost.
Today, Lord Jesus, let your Cross Triumph once more in the hearts of all men and women, whatever their sufferings, concerns, or any other trait of their humanity. You are the Redeemer of all. All have a place in your heart. All are cleansed by your blood. All have a place at your table if they want it. Cleanse us by your Cross, revive us by our Cross and glorify us by means of your Cross. We hold it high, we hold it dear, we hold it close. Hold onto us, Crucified Jesus, the Mighty, the Immortal, the Holy, the Strong.