A Rosary for Priests: A Guide for Gratitude and Intercession

Above: A statue of Our Lady of Lourdes on display at the annual Lourdes Novena held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes.

By Fr. Kyle Ratuiste

How do you pray for priests? The importance of praying for priests may be self-evident, but we may not know how to do so. In this article, I want to share a simple method for using a familiar Catholic prayer – the Rosary – as a framework for practicing gratitude and intercession for our priests.

While directing a retreat for the priests of the diocese, Fr. Brett Brannen, a former vocation director and prominent author and speaker on priestly discernment, suggested a method for using the Rosary to pray for priests. I have adapted Fr. Brannen’s concept for our use in praying for vocations in our diocese.

The basic idea is to offer each decade of the Rosary for a specific priest who has impacted or will impact you at significant moments in your life. This can move you to gratitude as you consider what the gift of the priesthood has meant to you personally. Also, this helps you to intercede with intentionality for those priests who have ministered to you so significantly.

 

For each decade of the Rosary, you can pray for these suggested intentions:

• The first decade: For the priest who baptized you.
• The second decade: For the priest who gave you your First Holy Communion (or who heard your First Confession).
• The third decade: For the bishop who confirmed you (and gave you your First Holy Communion).
• The fourth decade: For the priest who has presided or will preside at you wedding (or for the bishop who has ordain or will ordain you).
• The fifth decade: For the priest who will offer your Funeral Mass.
• The sixth decade: For men to answer the call to be priests.

While much of the outline of intentions is rather straightforward, some elements may warrant further reflection.

 

The Gift of the Sacraments

What came to mind as you read this list of intentions? Maybe you imagined baptism photos stored in dusty family albums, recalled the scent of the Chrism oil from your Confirmation, or remembered the kindness of the priest who celebrated your Nuptial Mass. Perhaps you paused to consider the power of those moments, such as how God’s mercy is poured out on you in Confession or how the God of the universe truly comes to you in Holy Communion.

The sacraments are incredible gifts, and the first five decades identify priests based on how they gave us access to these great gifts at crucial milestones in our lives. At this point, I must acknowledge that deacons can also witness weddings and that any lay person can baptize in emergencies. That said, more often than not, priests are the ones who make the sacraments available to us. Priests truly are essential for the life of the Church.

 

The Second and Third Decades

The intentions are ordered to prompt us to ponder on how priests minister to us over the course of our life. I included the parenthetical parts for the second- and third-decade intentions to reflect the prevailing practice in our diocese to observe the restored order of the Sacraments of Initiation, namely that Confirmation is received prior to First Holy Communion. This is a restoration that hearkens back to the order of Baptism, Confirmation, and Eucharist in the early Church, which is also the order of sacraments given to unbaptized adults who become Catholic at the Easter Vigil Mass. The practical result is that Catholics who have received Confirmation and First Holy Communion according to the restored order (which would include most Catholics who grew up in the diocese and are in their early 30s or younger) likely received both sacraments from the same bishop in the same Mass. This then allows for the consideration of another sacramental milestone – one’s first Confession – for the second decade.

 

The Sixth Decade

Drawing from his devotion to our Lady of Lourdes, Bishop Daly encourages us to pray a sixth decade for vocations. You can hear a brief explanation from Bishop Daly in this brief video [click here].

Combining Bishop Daly’s invitation with Fr. Brannen’s prayer format, we can use this sixth decade to pray for priestly vocations from a unique place of gratitude. After considering how priests have meant so much in your own life, you may feel especially impelled to pray so that future generations may also receive the gift of priestly ministry that you have received. What are some of the most admirable qualities you have seen in the priests you know? How have priests made a difference in your life? May more men answer the call to priesthood to “fill the shoes” of the priests who have done and do so much for us.