Prayer Cenacle of the Marian Movement of Priest
We at Seton are privileged to have a small prayer cenacle of 8 to 10 people who meet faithfully every Tuesday at 7:00 PM in the Church Chapel. This group has been in existence for about 10 years. We follow the prayer format faithfully as outlined below including a message of affirmation and hope from one of Fr. Gobbi's interior locutions.
- Invocation to the Holy Spirit
- Recitation of the Holy Rosary
- Prayers for our Holy Father, the Pope.
- Readings and meditation of a message from Fr. Gobbi's book of locutions.
- The Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
You are invited to join us if you want to be part of this important cenacle dedicated to the sanctification of Priests throughout the Church.
BACKGROUND OF THE PRAYER CENACLE OF THE MARIAN MOVEMENT OF PRIESTS
On the 8th of May, 1972, Father Stefano Gobbi, a priest from Milan, Italy, was taking part in a pilgrimage to Fatima. While praying for some priests who, besides having given up their own vocations, were attempting to form an association in rebellion against the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, an interior force urged Fr. Gobbi to have confidence in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. What Fr. Gobbi had just experienced was an interior locution. It is not an apparition or other communication perceived by the human senses, but a spiritual phenomenon present in the life of the Church and described in manuals of Catholic theology. The messages (interior locutions) are the gift by which God wishes to make something known to humanity, in Fr. Gobbi's particular case by means of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Starting in July 1973, Fr. Gobbi began to write down these interior locutions he was receiving. The messages number over 600 and are published in the book entitled, "To the Priests, Our Lady's Beloved Sons." These interior locutions ended December 31, 1997, 25 years after they began.
These locutions also gave rise to the M.M.P. movement dedicated to the sanctification of the priesthood, a movement fully supported by the Church and by Pope John Paul II who has himself dedicated his own priesthood to Mary and particularly to her Immaculate Heart as she has asked.
Beginning in 1974, the first cenacles of prayer among priests and faithful took place. "Cenacle" is a word for the upper room where Jesus' apostles gathered together in prayer with his mother Mary, and the Holy Spirit powerfully descended upon them. It was during this original Pentecost that the Catholic Church was born.
These "cenacles" gradually spread and by the end of 1996, Fr. Gobbi had many times visited the five continents. The membership of the M.M.P. now numbers at least 400 cardinals and bishops, more than 100,000 priests, and millions of religious and faithful around the world.
There are three things Mary asks of those who want to support this movement and she summarized them in one of her locution messages to Fr. Gobbi
- To My Faithful Cohort Of the faithful, who are supporters of my Movement, I ask:
That they consecrate themselves in a special way to my Immaculate Heart, without being concerned for external or juridical bonds, but only for giving themselves completely to me, so that I may dispose freely of their whole being and arrange their whole life according to my plans. They must let themselves be led by me, like little children. They must begin again to pray more, to love Jesus more, to adore Him more in the mystery of the Eucharist, so that He becomes the Sun, which illuminates their whole life. What joy and what a gift of love will Jesus in the Eucharist communicate to these faithful who are consecrated to me!
- Let them recite the holy rosary every day so as to hasten my great return. That they be faithful to the Pope and to the Church united with him, by a total obedience to his commands, anticipating and seconding his desires, spreading his teachings, defending him from every attack, ready to fight even to the shedding of their blood in order to remain united to him and faithful to the Gospel. There will soon come a time when only those who are with the Pope will succeed in keeping the faith of my Son and being preserved from the great apostasy that will be spread everywhere.
- That they must observe the commandments of God and carry out everything that my Son Jesus has taught so that they may be his true disciples. Thus they will be a good example to all. Let them be just that especially by an austere manner of life, by repudiating styles, which are ever increasingly provocative and indecent, by opposing in every way possible the spread of immoral literature, and let them be a good example to all by their purity, their sobriety and their modesty. Message 25 told to Fr. Gobbi on November 1, 1973, the feast of all Saints:
For a complete explanation of this movement
