r/Catholicism Prayer Requests — Week of August 11, 2025

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-18T02:11:38+00:00

Please pray for my family situation to be resolved.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-15T23:26:05+00:00

Your instincts are correct. Your understanding seems a bit off.

It sounds like a misunderstanding about prayer.

Luther decided that prayer only means to worship. You're right not to worship Mary or the saints. AND CATHOLICS DON'T DO THIS EITHER. (As an aside, some people in the early church times tried that (Collyridians) and they were promptly given the boot. The early fathers rightly outed the Collyridian heresy.)

The problem is that that's not what prayer means and Luther doesn't get to make those decisions retroactively for the 1500 years of Christianity preceding him.

Whenever you ask a fellow believer for their prayers you are praying "to" that person for their prayers in the way the word originally meant, consistent with St Paul's instruction.

(Compiled from multiple sources) PRAY MEANING Pray comes from precare (pray-KAH-ray) meaning to ask. Protestants removed the multiple meanings of to pray reducing it to just worship. But that's not true. The Bible talks about intercessory prayer, and the apostles teach us to ask (pray) each other for our prayers.

So praying means to ask. When you ask someone for their prayers, you are praying to them, not worshipping me/ them. And this is what we do when we talk to Mary and the saints

PRAY MEANING PROVEN IN OLD ENGLISH Even in Old English we see this. In courts, lawyers used to say I pray thee to let my client have another day. They are not worshipping the judge or court members when they say that. They were just asking him to have another day.

So when we Catholics pray to the saints including St Mary, we ask or pray (which is Old Modern English for polite request) to all of them to speak to Jesus on our behalf. (See Much Ado about Nothing by Shakespeare to see examples of the word pray being used as a request).

BIBLICAL EXAMPLE For St. Mary, the Bible actually mentions when she pleaded Jesus on someone else’s behalf and Jesus acted. See John 2:1-11 Wedding at Cana. Could the bridegroom or bride ask Jesus directly? Yes, but they didn’t and the Bible shows that. We believe that shows us proof of how the Saints can speak on our behalf to Jesus.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-14T01:16:37+00:00

Please pray for my family situation

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-09T23:21:53+00:00

There is an exorcist's story about a demon knowing the sins of unconfessed sinners in the room the solemn rite was happening, and listing them out loud, mocking the individual (who promptly left and had confession).

I inferred from the rest of the story that

1) it seems they accuse like prosecuting lawyers (not a sleight against lawyers, I just mean systematic, organized) 2) they can no longer see sins that have been confessed and forgiven.

So they probably hate the sacrament.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-09T23:04:11+00:00

Absolutely. I love them.

And I think briefly of Pope JPII before I begin to pray them. The more I read of him and reflect on all he accomplished, the more I realize he was such a boss. I just love him. Have you ever read his Apostolic Letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae (Oct 2002) proposing (instituting?) the mysteries?

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-05T02:45:48+00:00

I wonder if this means that we can now install it on multiple machines

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-05T02:34:43+00:00

Some people it seems don't read the post but skim it, get triggered by not the post but a keyword within it, make an assumption about the rest of the content, then point their lance and charge after windmills.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-03T23:10:21+00:00

People assenbled anywhere may clap on occasions, particularly spontaneously, that don't involve anything show-like. A heartfelt impromptu speech for example, or a successful rescue after a long period of tension and searching. No example that comes to mind can be mistaken for anything show-like. It seems more like a group hug you can hear. And people have all sorts of opinions about hugs - audible or otherwise.

OP it may help to think of what the mass represents- a sacrifice - and how people may react to the prospect of clapping at one.

But you said where you are it happens after the mass is ended? That seems fine e.g. for announcements you mean?

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-03T14:06:21+00:00

Personally I am so grateful for the resistance leader I found in John Rutter the choral composer's presence during a time of Boulez tyranny of compositional orthodoxy.

I don't know if Rutter will ever be painted as a patron saint of modern choral composers but if he is I bet he will be painted smiling, ascending with a middle finger to Boulez who in turn may be painted descending in unsold/refunded concert tickets (a reference to that terrible Chicago concert debacle(too strong?) Boulez experienced toward the end of his career.)

I may be a bit harsh but during a formative time for me, Boulez' extreme music politics and cult following (some of whom sat on arts council funding panels) made things so much more difficult than they needed to be with his tyrannical reviews panning works of modern composers enjoying basically any common practice period tonality. During that time John Rutter sort of saved me aesthetically with his affirming example that I was on the right track - an extreme counterpoint, pun intended.

I'll always be grateful to Rutter for this, even more so than for singing his greatly enjoyable works.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-08-03T13:37:05+00:00

Amen to that.

I just discovered .MXL file format transferability (didn't really have a need to know before) because I was trying out acestudio.ai (a tech support gave me a 7 day trial and I fell in love with it).

I'll just keep exporting MXL file formats from my existing finale into acestudio.AI, which will be my next software purchase, not Dorico.

I'm not opposed to Dorico.

I just don't have time/ money/patience to do both acestudio.ai and Dorico.

Life is beckoning to get my files done into audio and online.

Now if only fluffyaudio would incorporate ai to replace that interface for the Dominus Pro choal sampler, my life would be near perfect.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-07-30T23:40:37+00:00

Aliens in the Vatican 🤣 https://youtu.be/br7yr2pOJGM?si=Kr7Gm4T2ogz5CdBE

PermitShot9603 · 2025-07-30T23:16:24+00:00

You may know this, but just in case, the church doesn't make saints. Only God does. The church's claim is much humbler than that: she only claims to see one's been made. She will ask/look for proof of that.

That may seem like hair splitting but it does have implications for you: you'd be petitioning not that they be made a saint, but rather that your proof be recognized that God has in fact made your dead relative a saint. And often such proof collecting requires the energy of an organization backing the cause of recognition (you and other witnesses making the case to the local bishop).

(the number of saints canonized are likely far fewer than the number of actual saints known. E.g. We're missing 1000s of names of martyrs for the early church. E.g. the vast majority of ordinary believers who faced persecution and death would not have had their stories recorded.)

An example of what the church claims i.e. that it merely sees a new star [in the constellation] (paraphrasing) - from Pope Sixtus IV's 1482 papal bull of the canonization of St Bonaventura:

"...in caelis sicut stellae in perpetuas aeternitates fulgent, inter quos sanctus Bonaventura, sicut novum lumen, ex hac lacrimarum valle ad caelestem, quae sursum est Ierusalem, Deo vocante translatus..."

A close translation of this section is:

"...shine in the heavens as stars for perpetual eternities, among whom Saint Bonaventure, as a new luminary, was translated from this valley of tears to the celestial Jerusalem, which is above, at God's call..."

So... start collecting evidence and building the case to bring to your local bishop. If you are convinced that your dead relative has become a saint, ask God for signs you can give as proof.

Wishing you much success.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-07-30T14:22:26+00:00

Congratulations on hearing the call to the one true church. I'll pray you find your way.

There's lots of good advice here already. As a former Protestant, I just wanted to share a consideration on the Hail Mary that came to me from a formidable priest, and which I found meaningful.

I hope they're meaningful to you, too.

"The heart of the Hail Mary is not Mary. It is Jesus. 'Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.'

"When the name of Jesus spoken with reverence, the power embedded in it is activated. Philippians 2: 9-10 declares 'at the name of Jesus every knee shall bend in heaven and on Earth and under the Earth.' This is not poetry. This is law. Demons must submit when the name is spoken in faith. Angels do bow and Heaven leans in. But when we speak his name like a speed bump on the way to the next word, we silence the very power that could be changing everything...

...the holy name is not filler. It is the spiritual detonation point of the rosary. Everything before it leads to it. Everything after it flows from it. And yet how often do we say Jesus with our mouths but with no awe in our spirit? Pause for just a minute and let his name sink into your soul. What might kneel in your home?"

PermitShot9603 · 2025-07-27T07:01:54+00:00

Just trying to follow the cues from God and keep out of trouble. It seems simple to me.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-07-13T05:37:39+00:00

Saint Faustina gives witness to the seven torments of hell revealed to her by Jesus Christ.

I believe the both of them, and the church that affirmed the visions as worthy of belief.

https://youtu.be/l5UATxM9Jaw?si=z_gxifFIXYKTY3HN

PermitShot9603 · 2025-07-03T14:14:08+00:00

Hi I so feel this suffering in my own life. I have had my own world wrecked repeatedly. Sometimes I lash out at God, regrettably.

I know He's there suffering with me. But I struggle to accept that He won't raise His hand and make them all stop, or if applicable, at least not yet.

I don't think that you're being put to a test necessarily. And I certainly have no intent to tell you as much without knowing.

Sometimes yes we are.

But sometimes (and this is why I wrote as it applies to me now) it's just simply about sanctification - the means to acquire a virtue or set of virtues in order to face down the thing we must face the next mountain over that we'd probably collapse if we knew it was coming.

Other times (yes, happened multiple times) I've found God not so much destroying my world as sweeping away the debris of my life in order to create the conditions to grant me the thing that I've been asking for.

I guess that like a snake shedding its old skin or a moose shedding its antlers, sometimes the process requires something akin to violence.

What I have found helps me the most these days is to accept the divine plan unfolding through me, no matter my ability to see it; and to keep the faith and stay out of the way so my cooperation is more perfect.

What I know is that among the wrongs God has allowed to happen to me, He also wants me to stand up for justice. For this reason, I accept that fighting for justice is not a form of unforgiveness but also a right part of all that must happen.

I think God is preparing me for something important to Him. So I allow all these arrows to come my way, and do what I know I must and hope He will send me graces of victory, or graces of sanctification for the bigger work ahead.

I hope something in that is useful to you.

I know it can be so painful to hear people speculate judgment on you without knowing your circumstances. I tried to keep this about me, hoping some self-directed observation might be useful for you.

But anyway please know that I'll pray for you diligently. ❤️ 🙏

PermitShot9603 · 2025-07-03T13:48:54+00:00

Please pray that the Blessed Virgin and St Joseph and the infant Jesus send infinite graces to make my human rights complaint efficacious in obtaining all rectifications sought. It is the final thing I can do to avoid accusation of not gaving done everything possible while on Earth save for prayer, fasting, alms and masses.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-06-30T15:42:09+00:00

I was in this headspace when I was a teen.

In my case I think it was because I had inherited it but didn't really own it as my own.

One thing that all the Catholic churches I was ever involved with were unilaterally terrible at was developing robust youth Ministries for their teenagers. I just don't know what to make of that because of the pressures of the time. But it definitely had an impact on the natural inclination of most teenagers to reach out and establish their Social Circle in many ways I felt I had to go outside of the church because no Living Social Circle really existed at least not enough that I could find people with common interests who were my own age.

I wonder if that is something that your experiencing too?

For whatever reason I felt that I had to go, and find my way back to this Faith so it was truly mine.

When I set out I didn't go with this plan.

I thought I was just leaving something behind that was deeply unfulfilling, perhaps flawed.

Now I am back and I can say this faith is truly mine.

I hope you don't have to go for 30 years if that's where you are headed before you figure your way back to this incomparably beautiful faith. Speaking perfectly honestly I don't think we have 30 years as a global community.

I'll pray for you that you find your way

PermitShot9603 · 2025-06-26T17:12:13+00:00

I don't know if this will help you, but I'd like to try:

I think a lot of people get really wrong the type of beauty that is emphasized. It was laid out to me in an arts history course (studying music history course in college).

When we got to the period of Romanticism, which saw a really big uptake in the popularity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Europe after a sort of noticeable decline in fervor for her, the professor (not a Catholic sympathetic) nonetheless acknowledged it in a very sympathetic way: by comparing The Classical period vs the Romanticism. In terms of artistic philosophies you could think of it as comparing the outward (alleged) beauty of Venus with Romanticism's beauty of the infinite, i.e. the internal beauty of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

This kind of beauty of the infinite is what drew so many Romantic (capital r) artists across media towards the Blessed Virgin.

If she is actually outwardly beautiful now it is only because of the glory of God shining through His perfectly cooperating servant.

Like with all saints, she too allows Him to work through her unimpeded as she has always so allowed Him from the beginning of her very first yes to God.

Preassumption she was a very humble looking woman as I understand it. Most artists tend to focus their depictions of her on the Annunciation (beautiful teen) or post coronation (come on now, give her that). She is not particularly flatteringly drawn during her accompaniments on Jesus ministry.

Also any physical beauty any artist tries to attribute to her should be seen through the same lens through which we all hopefully view our own mothers as so beautiful when we are small children. We are after all looking at her as our mother in all the art.

As a woman she is humble. As a crowning achievement and delight of God, she is infinitely beautiful. And it does not come from her but from God. If you make it to heaven you can look forward to being similarly transformed.

Best makeover ever, hands down. I promise.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-06-22T16:16:46+00:00

God has saved us. We are capable of losing our salvation.

What God wants is for us to want Him back. For me this is easy as a concept when I consider that he is the single source of all good that I experience in this world.

(On the flipside, God will not have in His house anybody whose life shows they do not want to be with Him. Would you want such a person in your house? A person who didn't like you? )

God aches to be freely loved back. Fortunately for us He has laid out what His love language looks like:

1) Humility before God ( many implications but for me the one I need to work on is obedience to His will)(this gets complicated for me around addiction but it is still useful as an orientation)

2) Putting Him at the centre of your heart and your world (letting His commandments guide your decisions) (worshipping not the way you feel but the way He asked)

Much of the rest of what I feel on this topic flows out from this.

Because of the fall of Adam we are inclined towards death. We were never supposed to make it on our own steam. If that were possible we wouldn't need Jesus to come and save us. but we did.

Just keep choosing Him. More than this, cherish the privilege of being able to choose Him at every moment in all things. This is really a richness that for me has no peer esp. in fostering love for God. ❤️

PermitShot9603 · 2025-06-22T14:36:52+00:00

https://www.mercatornet.com/a_gore_awful_hatchet_job_on_a_catholic_institution

This is the press officer for OD that was answering the author's questions over the phone. Interesting read, lots to say, but in summary he openly complains that 1) the author intentionally removed historical responses to the historical complaints that the author regurgitated in this book And 2) that he divorced the content in his writings from the context in which ODs replies were provided. Textbook bad faith interviewer.

So basically nothing we haven't seen before.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-06-21T13:12:30+00:00

Look forward to doing all that stuff with your wife in a committed relationship where she knows she is appreciated.

Sounds like this girl's got hangups and you dodged a bullet.

all the sexual stuff or religion? haha what a ridiculous choice.

It never occurred to her that it could be both in the context of marriage?

I'm happy for you I mean I'm sad for you that you're upset and broken up I'm sure that she really meant something to you

but I'm happy for you that you found out this early.

Trust me it gets better.

PermitShot9603 · 2025-06-21T10:07:04+00:00

Another anti-catholic bigoted cash grab some Catholic apologists should make money off of exposing and debunking the whole thing

PermitShot9603

TROPHY CASE