Election 2008: Novena Starts September 1

Here's a wonderful idea for this election year (which I schneebed from my good friend, Mary M!).


Priests for Life -- a pro-life group led by one of my heroes, Fr. Frank Pavone -- have created a nine-week novena to pray each day from September 1st through November 4th (Election Day). Here is the prayer (but go ahead and click on the link so that you can commit to praying this wonderful pray):

O God, we acknowledge you today as Lord,

Not only of individuals, but of nations and governments.
We thank you for the privilege

Of being able to organize ourselves politically

And of knowing that political loyalty

Does not have to mean disloyalty to you.
We thank you for your law,

Which our Founding Fathers acknowledged

And recognized as higher than any human law.
We thank you for the opportunity that this election year puts before us,

To exercise our solemn duty not only to vote,

But to influence countless others to vote,

And to vote correctly.

Lord, we pray that your people may be awakened.

Let them realize that while politics is not their salvation,

Their response to you requires that they be politically active.

Awaken your people to know that they are not called to be a sect fleeing the world

But rather a community of faith renewing the world.
Awaken them that the same hands lifted up to you in prayer

Are the hands that pull the lever in the voting booth;

That the same eyes that read your Word

Are the eyes that read the names on the ballot,

And that they do not cease to be Christians

When they enter the voting booth.

Awaken your people to a commitment to justice

To the sanctity of marriage and the family,

To the dignity of each individual human life,

And to the truth that human rights begin when human lives begin,

And not one moment later.

Lord, we rejoice today

That we are citizens of your kingdom.

May that make us all the more committed

To being faithful citizens on earth.
We ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

This will be such a contentious, difficult election -- the Presidential, state and local governemnts and issues being decided by the pull of a switch on November 4th. We will pray this novena as a family in the hopes that the Holy Spirit guides our hands as we vote on November 4th ... please join us!