INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana, July 19, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A Catholic organization is calling for an intense level of prayer for youth purity leading up to and during World Youth Day, taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on July 23-28.
“We invite you to pray a Novena to the Most Holy Trinity through the intercession of Our Lady of America that Pope Francis will have a fruitful and safe trip, and that He will become an instrument of purity for the young people at Rio de Janeiro,” said the Our Lady of America newsletter on July 13.
“Let us pray that His Holiness, Pope Francis, experiences a spiritually fruitful encounter with the faithful attending World Youth Day,” the Lady of America newsletter concludes, so that “the young persons attending the World Youth Day celebration at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil will receive extraordinary graces of purity of heart.”
The group suggests that all those offering their prayers for the youth at World Youth Day conclude with this prayer, “especially directed against the impurity pervasive throughout the United States of America” and its youth: “By your holy and immaculate conception, O Mary, deliver us from evil.”
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The group was formed to promote devotion to the Mother of God under the title of “Our Lady of America,” with a focus on a return to sexual purity in America and across the world.
The apostolate has been a project of the BVM Foundation, Inc. of Indiana in cooperation with Kevin B. McCarthy who a number of U.S. Bishops personally asked 'to get the devotion going.'
Beginning on September 26, 1956, the Blessed Virgin Mary, under a specific appearance as “Our Lady of America,” manifested herself to Sister Mary Ephrem (Mildred Neuzil) in the Convent of the Precious Blood Sisters at Rome City, Indiana.
From the start, those messages called for purity. The first words that Sister Mary Ephrem heard from the Lady were: “I am Our Lady of America. I desire that my children honor me, especially by the purity of their lives.”
Essentially, the messages teach that purity in love is pleasing to Jesus and call for reformation of lives regarding purity, a change that is impossible without great love for God.
They also warn that if people do not amend their ways, there will be great suffering.
Sister Mary Ephrem recorded these words in September, 1957: “My beloved daughter, what I am about to tell you concerns in a particular way my children in America. Unless they do penance by mortification and self-denial and thus reform their lives, God will visit them with punishments hitherto unknown to them.”
However, the messages also offer the hope of peace — but only if Americans and the people of the world embrace sexual purity.
“My child, there will be peace, as has been promised, but not until my children are purified and cleansed from defilement, and clothed thus with the white garment of grace, are made ready to receive this peace, so long promised and so long held back because of the sins of men,” Our Lady told Sister Mary Ephrem.
For more information about Our Lady of America, visit their website here. https://www.ourladyofamerica.