Prayer for Peace to Mary, the Light of Hope

Source: Bulletin from Saint Albert the Great Parish in Dayton

The Holy Father has asked us to pray for peace in the year 2002.  With all that has happened in our country and in the world these past few months these prayers are needed more than ever.  The "Prayer for Peace to Mary, the Light of Hope" from Pope John Paul II has been designated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as a special prayer we can recite.

Immaculate Heart of Mary,
help us to conquer the menace of evil,
which so easily takes root
    in the hearts of the people of today,
and whose immeasurable effects already
    weigh down upon our modern world
    and seem to block the paths toward the future.

From famine and war, deliver us.
From nuclear war, from incalculable self destruction,
    from every kind of war, deliver us.
From sins against human life from its very beginning,
    deliver us.
From hatred and from the demeaning of the dignity
    of the children of God, deliver us.
From readiness to trample on the commandments
    of God, deliver us.
From the loss of awareness of good and evil,
    deliver us.
From sins against the Holy Spirit,
    deliver us.

Accept, O Mother of Christ,
    this cry laden with the sufferings of all individual
    human beings, laden with the sufferings
    of whole societies.
Help us with the power of the Holy Spirit conquer all
sin:
    individual sin and the "sin of the world,"
    sin in all its manifestations.

Let there be revealed once more in the history of the
world the infinite saving power of the redemption:
the power of the merciful love.
May it put a stop to evil.
May it transform consciences.
May your Immaculate Heart
    reveal for all the light of hope.

Amen.

Pope John Paul II

URL for this page is http://campus.udayton.edu/mary/prayers/prayer_to_mary.htm