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We fly to thy patronage, O holy Mother of God; Despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, O glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.
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Five Helps for the New Year


Five Helps for the New Year
by Archbishop Michael Ramsey, former Archbishop of Canterbury

1. Thank God – often and always. Thank Him carefully and wonderingly for your continuing privileges and for every experience of His goodness. Thankfulness is a soil in which pride does not easily grow.

2. Take care about confession of your sins. As time passes the habit of being critical about people and things grows more than each of us realise.

3. Be ready to accept humiliations. They can hurt terribly but they can help to keep you humble. (Whether trivial or big, accept them). All these can be so many chances to be a little nearer to our Lord. There is nothing to fear if you are near to the Lord and in His Hands.

4. Do not worry about status. There is only one status that our Lord bids us be concerned with, and that is our proximity to Him. “If a man serves me, let him follow me, and where I am there also shall my servant be.” (John 12:26). That is our status: to be near our Lord wherever He may ask us to go with Him.

5. Use your sense of humour. Laugh at things, laugh at the absurdities of life, laugh at yourself. Through the year people will thank God for you. And let the reason for their thankfulness be not just that you were a person whom they liked or loved, but because you made God real to them.

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O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
O Blessed Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Walsingham, Mother of God and our most gentle Queen and Mother, look down in mercy upon us, our parish, our country, our homes, and our families, and upon all who greatly hope and trust in thy prayers. By thee it was that Jesus, our Saviour and hope, was given to the world; and He has given thee to us that we may hope still more. Plead for us your children, whom thou didst receive and accept at the foot of the Cross, O sorrowful Mother. Intercede for our separated brethren, that with us in the one true fold they may be united to the Chief Shepherd, the Vicar of thy Son. Pray for us all, dear Mother, that by faith, fruitful in good works, we all may be made worthy to see and praise God, together with thee in our heavenly home. Amen.