The Prayer Campaign

Fr. Frank Pavone

National Director, Priests for Life

From the time that the apostles began praying in the Upper Room for the coming of the Holy Spirit after the Ascension of our Lord, novenas have been a special way of asking God’s intervention for particularly important intentions.

And this year’s election is a very important intention.

Therefore, we at Priests for Life, in collaboration with various other Christian groups, have launched a Novena of Weeks to begin on Tuesday, August 31 and to end exactly nine weeks later, on Election Day, Tuesday, November 2, 2004.

The intentions for this special Novena are that in this year's elections, our nation will embrace the moral values of a culture of life, and that believers will reject apathy and take an active role in the elections by registering to vote and actually voting.

Christians can sign up for this prayer campaign by going to www.priestsforlife.org and clicking on the Prayer Campaign link. There are particular commitments they can make to offer Masses, Holy Hours, Rosaries, Divine Mercy Chaplets, days of fasting, or other types of prayer.

This novena is not just limited to Catholics, and therefore there is also an ecumenical version of the prayer campaign.

We urge participants in the Novena to pray the following prayer each day:

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.

Priests for Life
PO Box 141172
Staten Island, NY 10314
Tel. 888-PFL-3448, (718) 980-4400
Fax 718-980-6515
Email mail@priestsforlife.org

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