First Friday of March - Day of Recollection

The Catholic tradition of special devotions on the first Friday of each month is especially dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Twice a year we consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart as a community of contemplative nuns with a special ritual and prayer. Each first Friday we observe a day of recollection, a day of limited work and activity, silence at meals and in the house generally, and ample time for prayer especially before the exposed Blessed Sacrament from Office of Readings and Morning Prayer 'til Midday.

In His Urbi et Orbi message of Easter 2005, Pope John Paul II left use a prayer for Eucharistic devotion so atuned to our world and its profound needs. He opened with the appeal made to Jesus by the disciples who encountered him on the raod to Emmaus, "Mane nobiscum, Domine!" - Stay with us, Lord.

... Jesus, crucified and risen, stay with us! Stay with us,

faithful friend and sure support for humanity on its journey

through history! Living Word of the Father, give hope and

trust to all who are searching for the true meaning of their

lives. Bread of eternal life, nourish those who hunger

for truth, freedom, justice and peace.

Stay with us, Living Word of the Father, and teach us words

and deeds of peace; peace for our world consecrated by your

blood and drenched in the blood of so many innocent victims;

peace for the countriesof the Middle East and Africa, where

so much blood continues to be shed; peace for all of humanity,

still threatened by fratricidal wars.

Stay with us, Bread of eternal life, broken and distributed to

those at table; give to us also the strength to show generous

solidarity with the multitudes who are even today suffering

and dying from poverty and hunger, decimated by fatal

epidemics or devastated by immense natural disasters.

By the power of your Resurrection, may they too become

sharers in new life. We, the men and women of the

third millenium, we too need you, Risen Lord!

Stay with us now, and until the end of time. Grant that

the material progress of peoples may never obscrue the

spiritual values which are the soul of our civilization.

Sustain us, we pray, on our journey. In you do we believe,

in you do we hope, for you alone have the words of eternal life.

Mane nobiscum, Domine!