image of Jesus Crucified were bought at a great price, but that same Jesus is never outdone in generosity. Obtain for me the grace to view suffering as you did, and to walk in your footsteps with joy, though the way be steep and thorny, happy in the thought that even "for the least pain borne with joy I shall love God more for all eternity and make Him loved more by souls who will thereby be saved forever." May God be my ALL, and may I aspire to Him with all my heart, with a soul ever athirst for Him, that my whole spirit and my inmost heart may pant for Him, their true blessedness. May the Sacred Wounds of Jesus Crucified be engraved upon my heart with His most Precious Blood, so that I may read therein all His grief and all His love, and may the sweet memory of these Wounds ever abide in the secret recesses of my heart, there to excite my most lively compassion and most glowing love. May they also inflame me with a deep and tender love for my heavenly Father, who has so loved me as to give His only Son for me, and for the Holy Spirit of Love who kindled this divine fire for me in the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Help me to realize the ineffable love of these Three Divine Persons for me, and their abiding presence in my own heart at all times, the source of strength, peace, and joy which the world cannot give. Obtain for me also a tender and childlike love of our heavenly Mother Mary, that, like you, I may be her "little child." May all creatures be vile in my eyes, all the sweets of earth be bitterness and gall, may I be freed from self and thus be worthy to be numbered among your legion of little victims, living and dying a victim of God's merciful love, giving life for life, death for death, blood for blood, and above all love for love. I also recommend to your intercession the special intentions for which I am making this Novena…. God will refuse you nothing. Amen.
Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be.
Other Novena Prayers on page 46.
