The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) yesterday revised anew the Oratio Imperata against COVID-19 (please see below). I praise and thank God for this. Now I believe God can finally listen to and act on our prayer.
The previous Oratio had two fatal shortcomings.
First, there was no repentance for sin. There was no asking for God’s mercy, even as He is addressed as “merciful and compassionate Father.” Recognizing who God is and actually asking for His mercy are two different things. And if this pandemic is God’s chastisement on an evil world, then repentance was the first necessity. This revised Oratio does this, having it right there in the very first paragraph.
Second, it had the extremely presumptuous and even insulting (to God) part where it said, “We thank you for the vaccines developed made possible by your guiding hands.” Was it actually God who guided those who developed the vaccines? Or was it just men, and men who were globalists and depopulationists. Was it just the greed of Big Pharma? In recent months, more of the truth is being revealed, and how this whole pandemic was manipulated is frightening.
But I would have liked another paragraph to have been revised. This is where it says, “May our concern and compassion for each other see us through this crisis and lead us to conversion and holiness.” Yes, we must be concerned and compassionate towards each other as we together go through the crisis. But no, it is not such compassion that leads us to conversion and holiness. What leads us to conversion is repentance of sin and living according to the will of God. What leads us to holiness is obedience, fear of the Lord, and following in the path of Christ.
In fact, compassion for each other, taken by itself apart from looking to God, is all about modernism, which is what got the world and the Church into trouble in the first place. It is looking to the well-being of man rather than the righteousness of God. It is being nice and welcoming to people but overlooking their grievous sins. It is compassion toward, for example, LGBTs and same-sex couples, and looking to their emotional well-being, but approving or even blessing same-sex unions, which results in spiritual disaster.
Further, looking to compassion for each other is what some in the Church, and certainly governments, are using to force COVID inoculations on those who do not want to be vaxxed, for their own valid reasons. The unvaxxed are being made to feel guilty about infecting their neighbor, when the truth is that both vaxxed and unvaxxed can be infected and can pass on the infection. Vax mandates are totally wrong, immoral and unjust.
Anyway, thank God for this revised Oratio. Lord, hear us, heal us. Amen.
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Oratio Imperata against COVID-19
(Revised January 28, 2022)
Merciful and compassionate Father, we confess our sins and we humbly come to you to find forgiveness and life.
We come to you in our need to seek your protection against the COVID-19 virus that has disturbed and claimed many lives.
We ask you now to look upon us with love and by your healing hand, dispel the fear of sickness and death, restore our hope, and strengthen our faith.
We pray that you guide the people tasked to find cures for this disease and to stem its transmission.
Bless our efforts to use the medicines developed to end the pandemic in our country.
We pray for our health workers that they may minister to the sick with competence and compassion.
Grant them health in mind and body, strength in their commitment, protection from the disease.
We pray for those afflicted. May they be restored to health. Protect those who care for them. Grant eternal rest to those who have died.
Give us the grace in these trying times to work for the good of all and to help those in need.
May our concern and compassion for each other see us through this crisis and lead us to conversion and holiness.
Grant all these through our Lord Jesus Christ your Son who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen.
We fly to Your protection, oh Holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petition in our necessities, but deliver us always from all dangers, oh glorious and blessed Virgin. Amen.
Our Lady, health of the sick, pray for us. St. Joseph, pray for us. St. Raphael the Archangel, pray for us. San Roque, pray for us. San Lorenzo Ruiz, pray for us. San Pedro Calungsod, pray for us.
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