Pray
Beloved Jesus, thank you for the gift of tears. Protect me from hiding my emotions, feelings, pains and tribulations for fear of what others may think of me. Make me recognize, by Your tears poured out today, the courage to cry for my sins – to cry for good things and for bad, to cry for the suffering, for the ones deprived of their freedom, for the ones in need of encouragement, for those persecuted for their faith. Oh, Jesus, for Your tears that have been ignored, give us the grace to be available to comfort and console the hearts of all your children, especially your little ones that are being tortured and isolated from their own lands. Tears of Jesus that console, thank You because we know that Your love never fails and that our tears are stored in Your Sacred Heart. Give us the gift of tears, to pray with them for my forgotten brothers who live in anguish and despair because of their poverty, so that our prayers will be an investment for eternity, sowing tears to gather an imperishable harvest. Mighty tears of Jesus, not a single tear has been poured out in sincere prayer, that has been forgotten by You. Today I cry with You for those broken, enchained and destroyed by wars. Lord Jesus, I weep with You so that You may soften my heart and will open it to a more sincere encounter with You, knowing that You did not come to this world to be served but to serve. Oh, tears of Jesus that while liberating us, give us courage to respond to Your call of love and mercy. Oh, tears of Jesus that we have inflicted upon You when we have forgotten our brothers that have been stripped of their land, abandoned in the anonymity of poverty and ignored in the scourge of war. Oh, meritorious and restorative Tears, give us the grace to know, feel and assume life in all its circumstances. May our thousands of prayers that intercede for the end of abortion, discrimination, and lack of love to each of our brothers be heard by the merits of Your holy tears. Oh, triumphant tears of Jesus, we pray for the unbelief of so many men who ignore You in The Most Holy Eucharist and who cannot see You with eyes of faith. Jesus’ tears of the resurrection, awaken us, shake us, make us participate in Your feelings and understand that we must be available to the service of our brothers without taking justice into our own hands. May each affliction and trial serve to bring glory to Your name and be perfected by You, because You do not grieve or sadden Your children voluntarily. Lord Jesus, thank You that none of our tears have gone unnoticed.
Lamentations 3:33 “For it is not for His own pleasure that He torments and grieves the human race.”
Psalm 56:8 “You yourself have counted up my sorrows, collect My tears in your wineskin.”
Rosary of Jesus’ Tears
“To relieve my disfigured Sacred Face and prevent more tears from spilling over Me, I give you this Rosary of Tears.
They are the tears shed when seeing the sins of men.”
First Mystery
For the tears that Jesus sheds today for the unborn. /R: My Jesus, free the world of abortion and have mercy on us. (Repeat 10 times)
Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
Second Mystery
For the tears that Jesus sheds today for the persecution and death of Christians. /R: My Jesus, have compassion on us. (Repeat 10 times)
Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
Third Mystery
For the tears that Jesus sheds today for the reunification of all nations. /R: My Jesus, free the whole world from the horror of war and have mercy on us. (Repeat 10 times)
Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory.
Fourth Mystery
For the tears that Jesus sheds today when the presence of God is denied in the Holy Eucharist. /R: My Jesus,heal our souls deeply. (Repeat 10 times)
Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
Fifth Mystery
For the tears that Jesus sheds today for untruth and hypocrisy. /R: My Jesus, may Your truth set us free. (Repeat 10 times)
Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be.
Hebrews 5:7 “In the days when he was in the flesh, he offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the One who was able to save Him from death, and He was heard because of his reverence.”
Isaiah 50:6 “I have offered My back to those who struck Me, My cheeks to those who plucked My beard; I have not turned My face away from insult and spitting.”
Isaiah 52:14 “As many people were aghast at Him — he was so inhumanly disfigured that He no longer looked like a man.”
Isaiah 53: 3-6 “He was despised, the lowest of men, a man of sorrows, familiar with suffering, one from whom we averted our gaze, despised, for whom we had no regard.
4 Yet ours were the sufferings He was bearing, ours the sorrows He was carrying, while we thought of Him as someone being punished and struck with affliction by God;
5 whereas He was being wounded for our rebellions, crushed because of our guilt; the punishment reconciling us fell on Him, and we have been healed by His bruises.
6 We had all gone astray like sheep, each taking his own way, and Yahweh brought the acts of rebellion of all of us to bear on Him.”
Mathew 26:67 “Then they spat in his face and struck him; and some slapped him, saying “Prophesy to us, you Christ! Who is it that struck you?”
Promises to those who pray the Rosary of Tears
- I will not deny anything to the souls who ask with confident trust through the tears shed on My Sacred Face.
- Through this holy devotion you will dry My tears and will bring joy to My outraged face.
- Those who seek Me and contemplate Me through My Sacred Face and my Shed Tears, I promise to help them during persecution, temptation and falling into sin.
- I promise the restoration of families and their reconciliation.
- I promise the inner healing of their souls and true contrition by the shedding of their tears.
- I will give the opportunity to live in the state of grace through the sacrament of confession.
- I promise the total conversion of their soul.
- On the Day of Judgment, I will forgive them so that they may enter into eternal glory with me.
Meditations and reflections by Pope Francis about the tears shed by Jesus
Pope Speaks about what ‘Pains God’s Heart’ at Morning Mass
Casa Santa Marta, November 17, 2016
God is seeking us…Are we allowing Him to visit us? To seek us and give us love and happiness?
According to Vatican Radio, during his morning Mass at Casa Santa Marta today, Pope Francis called on those present to ask themselves these questions.
The Holy Father drew his inspiration from today’s readings about the episode proclaimed from the Gospel according to St. Mark, in which Our Lord wept for the sins of Jerusalem.
The Jesuit Pontiff reflected on the great contrast between God’s unceasing love for us and His people, and our faithlessness. Francis reminded those gathered that what really pains the Lord’s heart is that despite how much He loves us, looks for us and desires our happiness, we do not acknowledge Him.
“Jesus saw in that moment [when, shortly before His passion, He wept over Jerusalem’s sinfulness] what awaited him as the Son – and He wept … ‘because they did not recognize the time of their visitation’,”
Francis reflected, noting, “This drama has not only happened in history and ended with Jesus. It is the drama of every day. It is even my drama.”
Can we really say… Can any of us really say, ‘I know how to recognize the hour in which I have been visited? Does God visit me?’”
The Pope went on to highlight the way the Liturgy of two days ago – Tuesday – offered occasions to reflect on three moments of God’s visitation: correction, entering into dialogue with us, and inviting himself into our home.
Pope Francis then asked the faithful to make an examination of conscience, to ask whether each one of us listens to the words of Jesus when He knocks on our door and says, “Amend your life!”
Everyone in fact runs a risk. “Each of us,” Francis warned, “can fall into the same sin of the people of Israel, the same sin of Jerusalem, not recognizing the time in which we have been visited – and every day the Lord visits us, every day He is knocking at our door – but we must learn to recognize this, that we not end up in that so painful situation: ‘The more I loved them, as I called them, the more they fled from me.’
‘But I am sure of things. I go to Mass, I’m sure …’ Francis said, calling on them to ask themselves: “Do you make a daily examination of conscience on this? Did the Lord visit me today? Have I heard some call, some inspiration to follow Him more closely, to do a work of charity, to pray a little more? I do not know, so many things to which the Lord invites us every day to meet with us.”
Given this, the Pope stressed, it is central therefore to recognize when we are “visited” by Jesus and open ourselves to His love.
“Jesus wept not only for Jerusalem, but for all of us. He gives His life that we might recognize his visitation. St. Augustine said a word, a very strong sentence: ‘I am afraid of God, of Jesus, when He passes!’
Is He visiting you…. “But why are you afraid? ‘I’m afraid I will not recognize it!’ If you’re not careful with your heart, you’ll never know if Jesus is visiting you or not.”
Pope Francis concluded, praying, “May the Lord give all of us the grace to recognize the times we have been visited, we are visited and shall be visited, so that we open the door to Jesus and so ensure that our heart is more enlarged by love, and that we might therefore serve the Lord Jesus in love.”
MAY 5, 2016
Here is a Vatican translation of Pope Francis’ prepared text for the prayer vigil ‘to dry tears’ held on the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord in St. Peter’s Square:
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
After the moving testimonies we have heard, and in the light of the word of the Lord that gives meaning to our suffering, let us first ask the Holy Spirit to come among us. May He enlighten our minds to find the right words capable of bringing comfort. May He open our hearts to the certainty that God is always present and never abandons us in times of trouble. The Lord Jesus promised His disciples that He would not leave them alone, but at all times in life He would remain close to them by sending His Spirit, the Comforter (cf. Jn14:26) to help, sustain and console them.
At times of sadness, suffering and sickness, amid the anguish of persecution and grief, everyone looks for a word of consolation. We sense a powerful need for someone to be close and feel compassion for us. We experience what it means to be disoriented, confused, more heartsick than we ever thought possible. We look around us with uncertainty, trying to see if we can find someone who really understands our pain. Our mind is full of questions but answers do not come. Reason by itself is not capable of making sense of our deepest feelings, appreciating the grief we experience and providing the answers we are looking for. At times like these, more than ever do we need the reasons of the heart, which alone can help us understand the mystery which embraces our loneliness.
How much sadness we see in so many faces all around us! How many tears are shed every second in our world; each is different but together they form, as it were, an ocean of desolation that cries out for mercy, compassion and consolation. The bitterest tears are those caused by human evil: the tears of those who have seen a loved one violently torn from them; the tears of grandparents, mothers and fathers, children; eyes that keep staring at the sunset and find it hard to see the dawn of a new day. We need the mercy, the consolation that comes from the Lord. All of us need it. This is our poverty but also our grandeur: to plead for the consolation of God, who in His tenderness comes to wipe the tears from our eyes (cf. Is 25:8; Rev 7:17; 21:4).
In our pain, we are not alone. Jesus, too, knows what it means to weep for the loss of a loved one. In one of the most moving pages of the Gospel, Jesus sees Mary weeping for the death of her brother Lazarus. Nor can He hold back tears. He was deeply moved and began to weep (cf. Jn 11:33-35). The evangelist John, in describing this, wanted to show how much Jesus shared in the sadness and grief of His friends. Jesus’ tears have unsettled many theologians over the centuries, but even more they have bathed so many souls and been a balm to so much hurt. Jesus also experienced in His own person the fear of suffering and death, disappointment and discouragement at the betrayal of Judas and Peter, and grief at the death of His friend Lazarus. Jesus “does not abandon those whom He loves” (Augustine, In Jn 49: 5). If God could weep, then I too can weep, in the knowledge that He understands me. The tears of Jesus serve as an antidote to my indifference before the suffering of my brothers and sisters. His tears teach me to make my own the pain of others, to share in the discouragement and sufferings of those experiencing painful situations. They make me realize the sadness and desperation of those who have even seen the body of a dear one taken from them, and who no longer have a place in which to find consolation. Jesus’ tears cannot go without a response on the part of those who believe in Him. As He consoles, so we too are called to console.
In the moment of confusion, dismay and tears, Christ’s heart turned in prayer to the Father. Prayer is the true medicine for our suffering. In prayer, we too can feel God’s presence. The tenderness of His gaze comforts us; the power of His word supports us and gives us hope. Jesus, standing before the tomb of Lazarus, prayed, saying: “Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that you always hear me” (Jn 11:41-42).
We too need the certainty that the Father hears us and comes to our aid. The love of God, poured into our hearts, allows us to say that when we love, nothing and no one will ever be able to separate us from those we have loved. The apostle Paul tells us this with words of great comfort: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness or the sword? … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:35, 37-39).
The power of love turns suffering into the certainty of Christ’s victory, and our own in union with Him, and into the hope that one day we will once more be together and will forever contemplate the face of the Blessed Trinity, the eternal wellspring of life and love.
At the foot of every cross, the Mother of Jesus is always there. With her mantle, she wipes away our tears. With her outstretched hand, she helps us to rise up and she accompanies us along the path of hope.
[Original Text: Italian] [Vatican-provided translation]
HOLY MASS
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
Ciudad Juárez Fair Grounds
Wednesday, 17 February 2016
Jonah helped them to see, helped them to become aware. Following this, his call found men and women able to repent, and able to weep. To weep over injustice, to cry over corruption, to cry over oppression. These are tears that lead to transformation, that soften the heart; they are the tears that purify our gaze and enable us to see the cycle of sin into which very often we have sunk. They are tears that can sensitize our gaze and our attitude hardened and especially dormant in the face of another’s suffering. They are the tears that can break us, capable of opening us to conversion. This is what happened to Peter after having denied Jesus; he cried and those tears opened his heart.
This word echoes forcefully today among us; this word is the voice crying out in the wilderness, inviting us to conversion. In this Year of Mercy, with you here, I beg for God’s mercy; with you I wish to plead for the gift of tears, the gift of conversion.
Apostolic Journey to Sri Lanka and the Philippines
MEETING WITH YOUNG PEOPLE
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS
Sports field of Santo Tomás University, Manila
Sunday, 18 January 2015
Impromptu speech of the Holy Father
Dear young men and women, our world today needs weeping. The marginalized weep, those who are neglected weep, the scorned weep, but those of us who have relatively comfortable life, we don’t know how to weep. Certain realities of life are seen only with eyes that are cleansed by tears. I ask each one of you to ask: Can I weep? Can I weep when I see a child who is hungry, on drugs and on the street, homeless, abandoned, mistreated or exploited as a slave by society? Or is my weeping the self-centered whining of those who weep because they want to have something else? This is the first thing I would like to say to you. Let’s learn to weep, the way [Glyzelle – girl that gave her testimony] taught us today. Let’s not forget this witness. She asked the big question – why do children suffer? – By weeping; and the big answer which we can give, all of us, is to learn how to weep.
In the Gospel, Jesus wept. He wept for His dead friend. He wept in His heart for the family which lost its daughter. He wept in his heart when He saw the poor widowed mother who was burying her son. He was moved and He wept in his heart when He saw the crowds like sheep without a shepherd. If you don’t learn how to weep, you are not a good Christian. And this is a challenge. Jun Chura and his friend who spoke today posed this challenge. When they ask us: Why do children suffer? Why does this or that tragedy occur in life? Let us respond either by silence or with a word born of tears. Be brave. Don’t be afraid to cry!
HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS
Basilica of Santa Sabina
Wednesday, 18 February 2015
The Prophet (Joel) pauses particularly on the prayer of the priests, pointing out that it is to be accompanied by tears. It will do us good, all of us, but especially for us as priests, at the beginning of Lent, to ask for the gift of tears, so as to render our prayer and our journey of conversion ever more authentic and free from hypocrisy. It will do us good to ask ourselves this question: “Do I weep? Does the Pope weep? Do the cardinals weep? Do bishops weep? Do the consecrated weep? Do priests weep? Is there weeping in our prayers?” And this is precisely the message of today’s Gospel. In the passage from Matthew, Jesus again reads the three works of mercy called for by Mosaic Law: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. He distinguishes the external disposition from the interior disposition, from the weeping of the heart. You know, brothers, that hypocrites do not know how to weep, they have forgotten how to weep, they do not ask for the gift of tears.
“Crying prepares us to see Jesus” said Pope Francis in his homily at Santa Marta
Vatican City (Tuesday, 04-02-2013, Gaudium Press)
At the Mass he celebrated in the Casa Santa Marta, where he lives, Pope Francis has made the panegyric of the Magdalena, which was – after Jesus – the main “character” of the Gospel of today.
Mary of Magdala is the woman “of whom Jesus has said that she has loved so much and because of this her many sins were forgiven her,” said the Pontiff. In the meantime, she feels desolation at the death of Jesus, she “has had to face the failure of all her hopes.” “It is the moment of darkness in her soul”.
“Sometimes in our lives,” continued the Pontiff, “the glasses to see Jesus are our tears, like those of the Magdalene in those moments of pain. In the meantime, after the appearance of the Risen Christ, the Magdalene announces with promptitude and joy this message: I have seen the Lord.”
She had seen Him during her life, and now she gives testimony: “an example for the path of our life,” said Pope Francis. “All of us, in our lives, have felt joy, sadness, pain and in the darkest moments, we cry. Have we had that experience of tears that prepare the eyes to look, to observe the Lord?
Before the example of the Magdalene, we can also ask the Lord for the grace of tears, it is a beautiful grace …. Crying for everything: for good, for our sins, for graces, for joy too. Crying prepares us to see Jesus. The Lord gives us all the grace, to be able to say with our lives: “I have seen the Lord,” because “I have seen it in my heart.”
-With information from Vatican Radio