Spiritual Motherhood for Vocations Holy Card

All mothers, grandmothers, widows, single women, girls, and religious sisters can be mothers to priests by entering into the vocation to be a spiritual mother for priests in imitation of the Sorrowful Mother Mary.  We can offer our prayers and sufferings united spiritually to the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary at the foot of her Son's Cross.  Our Spiritual Motherhood for Vocations holy card features two prayers for priestly vocations and the example of the pious Mothers of Lu, and Italian hamlet, who in the 1880's under the guidance of their parish priest made weekly adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and received Holy Communion on the First Sunday of every month asking God for vocations.  Their prayers were so effective that they produced over 320 vocations of priests, monks, and nuns from there small town.

From the Congregatio Pro Clericis, on December 8th, 2007 in a letter promoting Eucharistic adoration for the sanctification of priests and spiritual maternity and directing attention to the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium,  the role of the "Mother of the Word Incarnate -- the one whom Jesus desired to be intimately united with Himself for the salvation of humanity...the faithful are called to turn their eyes to Mary -- shining example of every virtue -- and imitate her as the first disciple.  it is she to whom every other disciple was entrusted by Christ as she stood at the foot of the cross (John 19:25-27).  By becoming her children, we learn the tre meaning of life in Christ.  Thereby and precisely becasue of the place occupied and the role served by the Most Blessed Virgin in salvation history -- we intend in a very particular way to entrust all priests to Mary, the Mother of the High and Eternal Priest brining about a movement of preayer, continuous Eucharistic adoration at the center so that a prayer of adoration, thanksgiving, praise, petition and reparation will be raised to God from every corner of the earth with the primary intention of awakening a sufficient number of holy vocations to the priestly state and, at the same time, spiritually uniting with a certain spiritual maternity at the level of the Mystical Body..."

Some examples of saints and holy people who have embraced the vocation of spiritual motherhood are: 1) St. Monica whose years of persistent prayer and sacrifice saved the soul of her son, St. Augustine, and enabled him to become a bishop and great Doctor of the Church.  St. Augustine stated, "Nine years passed in which I wallowed in the slime of that deep pit and the darkness of falshood. Yet that pious widow desisted not all the hours of her supplications, to bewail my case unto Thee where her prayers entered into Thy presence.  I have my mother to thank for what I have become and the way that I god there!" 2) Pope St. John Paul II at the beatification mass for St. Jacinta of Fatima, thanked her saying: "I express my gratitude to Blessed Jacinta for the sacrifices and prayers offered for the Holy Father, whom she saw suffering greatly." 3) Pope St. Piux X's dear old mother kissed her son's ring when he became a bishop but pointed to her wedding ring and declared to her son that he would not be wearing the bishop's ring, if she had not first worn her wedding ring.  Pope St. Piux X exclaimed, "Every vocation to the priesthood comes from the heart of God, but it goes through the heart of a mother. 4) Bertha Petit (1873-1943) desired to enter the religious life but due to family circumstances she was unable to, and asked Our Lady to intercede with Jesus that he would call a zealous and holy priest in the place of her religious vocation.  Instead she prayed for priests and offered her poor health for those who had abandoned the priesthood.

Printed on white or ivory cardstock, 3" x 5"

Image courtesy of Udayton.edu IMRI, ML028-002