Day Seven Novena Invoking Our Lady of Good Counsel on the Feast Day and St. Gianna Molla 

Blessed are the Peacemakers

Reflection

The campaign for peace is highlighted everywhere we go, but still we find the world in a storm of catastrophe. This is because peace is distorted in our secular society. Should we not instead imitate St. Gianna, who obtained peace by learning God’s Will through spiritual direction, submitting to God’s Will in her daily life, and ordering herself and her family to be, “living witnesses of the beauty and grandeur of Christianity.”

“‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they are the children of God.’ St. Augustine clarifies that ‘where there is no contention, there is perfect peace. And because nothing can contend against God, the children of God are peacemakers.’ The Peacemakers of God are the opposite of the peacemakers of the world, for the men of the world cry ‘peace peace when there is no peace.’ St. Augustine explains that ‘man is unable to rule over the lower things unless he in turn submits to the rule of a higher being.  And this is the peace promised on earth to men of good will.’ God’s peace is only possible when everything is in its proper order and oriented to Him.”

- “St. Augustine On the Beatitudes,” by Steven Jonathan Rummelsburg

Intention

Let us ask St. Gianna to help bolster our resolve
to practice the Beatitudes in our daily lives.

Novena Prayer to St. Gianna

(Composed by His Eminence, Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke)

Saint Gianna, heroically Christlike wife, mother and physician, I ask the help of your prayers, as I strive to follow your holy example in my physical and spiritual trials.

Help me, by your prayers, to recognize the suffering of the Cross as the way to pure and selfless love of God and my neighbor. May your practice of medicine with priestly care of both body and soul inspire physicians to see the Face of the suffering Christ in their patients.

May your loving acceptance of illness and death help patients to know and do God's will in all things, uniting their sufferings to the Passion and Death of Christ for the salvation of the world.

Saint Gianna, pray for us always that we may have a heart, meek and courageous, like the Heart of Jesus, in Whom we find our healing and strength.

We ask this through Christ Our Lord. AMEN

Invoking the Aid of Our Lady of Good Counsel, Feast Day, April 26

Litany to Our Lady of Good Counsel

Lord, have mercy on us.

Christ, have mercy on us.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Christ, hear us.

Christ, graciously hear us.

God the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.

God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.

God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us.

Holy Trinity, One God, have mercy on us.

Beloved Daughter of the Eternal Father, pray for us.

August Mother of God the Son, pray for us.

Blessed Spouse of God the Holy Ghost, pray for us.

Living temple of the Holy Trinity, pray for us.

Queen of Heaven and earth, pray for us.

Seat of Divine Wisdom, pray for us.

Depositary of the secrets of the Most High, pray for us.

Virgin most prudent, pray for us.

In our doubts and difficulties, pray for us.

In our tribulations and anguish, pray for us.

In our discouragements, pray for us.

In perils and temptations, pray for us.

In all our undertakings, pray for us.

In all our needs, pray for us.

At the hour of death, pray for us.

By thine Immaculate Conception, pray for us.

By thy happy nativity, pray for us.

By thine admirable presentation, pray for us.

By thy glorious Annunciation, pray for us.

By thy charitable Visitation, pray for us.

By thy Divine Maternity, pray for us.

By thy holy Purification, pray for us.

By the sorrows and anguish of thy maternal heart, pray for us.

By thy precious death, pray for us.

By thy triumphant Assumption, pray for us.

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Spare us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Graciously hear us, O Lord.

Lamb of God, Who takest away the sins of the world, Have mercy on us.

Pray for us, O holy Mother of God,

And obtain for us the gift of good counsel.

Let Us Pray:

Lord Jesus, Author and Dispenser of all good, Who in becoming incarnate in the womb of the Blessed Virgin hast communicated to her lights above those of all the Heavenly intelligences, grant that in honoring her under the title of Our Lady of Good Counsel, we may merit always to receive from her goodness counsels of wisdom and salvation, which will conduct us to the port of a blessed eternity. AMEN.

On your glorious feast day, O dearest Mother, please bring my petitions to your Son, Jesus. (Mention your intentions now and especially that many graces be bestowed upon Cardinal Burke.)

Our Lady of Good Counsel, pray for us!

St. Gianna Beretta Molla,
pray for us!