Page:TheYoungMansGuide.djvu/201

 For what  and  for  whom  should  we  pray?

St. Alphonsus  Liguori  insists  repeatedly that in  all  our  devotions,  at  Mass,  at  holy communion, in  all  our  visits  to  the  Blessed Sacrament, we  should  pray  for  these  four graces for  ourselves,  viz.:  the  forgiveness  of our  sins,  the  love  of  God,  the  love  of  prayer, and final  perseverance. When these  graces are secured,  our  salvation  is  assured.

As loyal  Catholics  we  should  also  pray according to  the  intentions  of  our  Holy  Father the Pope;  for  his  welfare  and  for  the  needs and interests  of  our  Holy  Mother  the  Church; for bishops,  priests,  and  superiors;  for  our' country; for  universal  peace;  for  the  conversion of  sinners,  heretics,  and  pagans;  and last but  not  least  for  the  poor  holy  souls  in purgatory.

Father Girardey,  C.SS.R.,  in  his  beautiful treatise on  Prayer,  writes:

"In praying  for  temporal  favors  for  ourselves, we  can  claim  unconditionally  only the  necessaries  of  life;  in  the  Our  Father we  are  taught  to  pray  for  'our  daily  bread'; this  does  not  include  superfluities  or  luxuries; and  the  words  'deliver  us  from  evil' do  not  necessarily  include,  as  we  have  seen, deliverance  from  physical  evils,  for  the  evil here  meant  is  sin  and  all  that  leads  to sin.  We  have  no  reason  to  hope  that  God will  hear  our  prayers  for  those  temporal favors  that  may  prove  hurtful  to  our  saltation, or  that  He  will  exempt  us  from  cer-