Intention of the month of April 2011
Offer prayer
Divine Heart of Jesus,
I offer you by means
of the Immaculate Heart
of Mary, Mother
of the Church, in union
to the Eucharistic Sacrifice,
prayers and actions,
the joys and sufferings
of this day:
under repair
of sins,
for the salvation of all
men, in grace
of the Holy Spirit,
to the glory of the divine Father.
Prayer
for
the divorced
Jesus you have not condemned anyone.
You looked at man with the same gaze as God the Father. Your entire Gospel is an act of profound respect for the human person: respect and forgiveness for the Samaritan woman, for Magdalene the public sinner. Even the adulteress was not condemned and you sent her with the invitation: "Never sin again." For the children who approached you, you said to the apostles: “Let them come to me and try to be like them.” Matthew, the evangelist, you seduced him with your gaze and he left everything to follow you. You did not reproach the centurion, but praised his faith.
To Peter you didn't say: "You're a braggart" but: "Do you love me more than others?". You said to the thief: "Today you will be with me in Paradise!". For all those who condemned you you prayed: "Father forgive them, they do not know what they do!".
Lord, now that I have reminded you of what you have done, I present to you all the divorced people, the separated families, the children of parents who are no longer united. And for each of them I beg you. You know what they need.
Pope's intention
The Church knows how to offer
to the new generations
reasons for living
and of hope
Missionary intention
Missionaries bring Christ
to how many more
they don't know him
Intention of the Bishops
The Holy Spirit
give consolation
to those who live
in solitude
and in anguish
Intention of the month of March 2011
A father's prayer
How difficult is the prayer of the fathers!
To first say what you're asking for
a father, Lord, I stand next to Giuseppe and take the measurements.
Like him, I too, a father, would like to learn to recognize the faint traces of angels; to believe the Word brought by the announcement; to hold it tight, just to obey.
Lord, even fathers know
the desolation, like Joseph, when he thought of sending Mary back, and he endured it, because he trusted her and you visited his sleep to bring him comfort.
Intention of the month of January 2011
«For unwanted children and mothers in difficulty due to pregnancy»
Prayer intention
The intentions that the Pope and the Italian Bishops entrust to the Apostolate of Prayer express the concerns of the Holy Father and the problems of the Church today.
For this reason we must spread them, study them and make them the object of our prayer.
The Pious Union also has its monthly intentions for which the members direct their prayers and intentions.
A memory full of blessings
of Mother Anna Maria Cánopi
The journey of life is done in company and the people who, from stage to stage, providentially stand by us have a more or less large impact on our history.
For this reason I should remember a long list of people, but I will limit myself to some of the most significant ones, starting, obviously, with those who introduced me into life.
My parents: Mario and Maria Cleofe. He might be called a man of thought, she a woman of intuition; a combination of rationality and poetry, strength and sweetness. Wisely humble, with only elementary education they were able to express in their lives the most genuine values of Christianity: the strong and large family, the responsibility of education, the sacrifice of work, altruism. I can only think of them in heaven among the ranks of those who have experienced the evangelical beatitudes.
New shoots in the "priories"
of Mother Anna Maria Cánopi
The Lord has plans unknown to us and always surprising. The tree rooted on the rock of San Giulio Island, which had grown unpredictably, was ready to transplant some shoots elsewhere. And there were many bishops who came to ask us - almost to beg us - to give our presence to their dioceses too. Among the numerous and continuous requests we were able to satisfy some.
In Valle d'Aosta, the «Regina Pacis» Priory was born on 12 October 2002. The monastery is created from the renovation of some rustic medieval "grange" of the canons of the Great San Bernardo. As in a cradle, surrounded by mountains, next to the Hospitaller House of the Canons, the "Regina Pacis" community, initially made up of seven members, also gradually grew. Now there are about fifteen nuns. The activities they carry out are, to a proportionate extent, some of those already learned in the abbey on the island, in particular sacred vestments, icons and various crafts.
In the school of divine service
of Mother Anna Maria Cánopi
The landing at the monastery
Itinerary towards the monastic vocation
of Mother Anna Maria Cánopi osb
Vocation is a mystery of grace: it is not easy to describe its origin and development. I recognize that my monastic vocation has its roots already in childhood, since I have always felt God's gaze on me and I have always felt a strong attraction towards the Lord, towards prayer and the sacred in general.
The nuns who then ran the orphanage in my town welcomed me to pray in their little chapel and perhaps hoped that one day I would join their religious family. The same applies to the nuns of another Institute who served in the hospitals; but I was a teenager and still busy studying; it wasn't time to think about this yet.
I was about twenty years old when my good former primary school teacher, whom I called "godmother", accompanied me to the visiting room of the diocesan seminary to introduce me to a priest who dedicated himself to the training of seminarians and the youth of Catholic Action.
«Listen, please, this young woman – he said to him – She has something inside…», and he left me alone with him. He, seeing my shyness, began to kindly ask me questions about my family, my living environment and the most intimate desires of my heart. At that time, among the various young people who were around me there was one to whom I had become fond because of his mother, a widow, whom he made suffer a lot by leading a reckless life and neglecting his university studies. I loved him, but my intent was only to make him good. Besides, he himself didn't dare make the proposals he usually made to all the girls. In fact, he kept a notebook in which he wrote the names of those he had "conquered", boasting that he had already listed a hundred! After many years, I learned of a secret he had made to a friend who was then surprised that he didn't try to seduce me: "When I thought of conquering her, a voice shouted to me: Don't touch that!". Strange things, but which certainly happen under divine direction. For this reason we can boast of nothing other than the gratuitousness of the salvation brought about by God.
Passion for the values that are the foundation of every life
of Mother Anna Maria Cánopi osb
Nothing in our life happens by chance. For each of us there is a plan of God which he himself brings to completion by arranging the means and favorable circumstances, requiring on our part docility, free adherence - by faith - to his will.
This explains the fact that my parents - despite the economic difficulties - made me continue my studies, while my brothers and sisters, no less intellectually gifted than me, were soon sent to work. Perhaps there was also the reason for my frail physical constitution. For all the family members, however, it was fine and, without a shadow of jealousy, they were pleased with what I learned for them too.
The years of my studies were experienced by me as a continuous and confident exodus.
The harsh experience of war: high school
by Mother Anna Maria Cánopi, osb
On June 10, 1940, while I was next to my mother who was sitting in front of the house under the lime tree, breastfeeding her last little brother, a woman arrived shouting: «The war has broken out! The Duce proclaimed on the radio that Italy too had allied itself with Germany and entered the war! My mother gasped and held her baby close as if to protect him: «Mercy, Lord! What will happen to all of us?".
The first consequence was the call of men - young and old - to the army. I was nine years old; I didn't yet know what a world war was, but I understood its gravity from the dismay I saw on the faces of the two mothers. In fact, our life underwent an abrupt change.