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The Chaplet of St Colette

  

WELLSPRINGS

The Essential Good News

Mary

Saint Francis - wounded healer

Saint Clare, the new woman

Saint Colette, Faith in the future

 

 


Introduction
     Colette's intercession with the Lord has spanned the five centuries since her death, calling forth miracles of love. The deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk and the dead are restored to life.
     Colette's method of proclaiming the Good News of the Gospel was not to preach but to pray. Her whole life was spent in prayer. Even when she was asked to help her brothers the Friars Minor, in their reform, and was invited into their chapter room, she did not tell them what they ought to do, she simply knelt down and prayed, and those who watched, one by one, also fell on their knees.
     This Chaplet combines three prayers of St Colette.

Blessed be the Hour....
     Colette lived in a France lacerated by the Hundred Years War. She was a contemporary and friend of St Joan of Arc. She had supporters and benefactors on both sides of the political divide. Her sisters have always got up in the middle of the night to pray. But on one occasion in a besieged city the sisters in the monastery where St Colette was at the time, woke up much too soon and began ringing the bell. Immediately the soldiers defending the city assumed that it was a sign to the besiegers, and raced to the monastery in rage at an act that seemed to imply betrayal. Peace was restored when all the bells in the city began to chime midnight. It is then that Colette is said to have composed this prayer.
     Blessed be the hour - midnight - in which the Incarnate Word was born - when night was half spent your Almighty Word leapt forth
[Wis 18,15 ].
     Blessed be the Hour is a prayer of intercession. We ask the Father to hear our prayer through the intercession of Mary and in memory of that answer to all prayer - the Word of the Father taking flesh on earth.

As God pleases....
     A Dieu playse was one of St Colette's mottos - and it was her way of life. Not just as God wills but as it pleases God. The Lord is a God who can be pleased, who takes delight in his children and the loveliness of Colette's prayer is her longing to give delight to the Lord.

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Let us praise....
     This Trinitarian formula is taken from the end of St Colette's testament.


The Chaplet

Blessed be the hour
in which our Lord Jesus Christ,
God and Man was born.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit
by whom he was conceived.
Blessed be the glorious Virgin Mary
of whom the Incarnate Word was born.
     May the Lord hear our prayers
through the intercession
of the glorious Virgin Mary
and in memory
of that most sacred hour
in which the Incarnate Word was born,
that all our desires may be accomplished
for your glory and our salvation.
     O good Jesus!
O Jesus our Redeemer,
do not abandon us as our sins deserve,
but hear our humble prayer
and grant what we ask
through the intercession
of the most blessed Virgin Mary
and for the glory of your Holy Name.
Amen.


As God pleases*
As God wills                ten times

Let us praise the Father in his mercy
and the Son by his passion
and the Holy Spirit
the fountain of peace and sweetness and love.
Amen, amen without recall!
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Ways to pray the Chaplet

The Chaplet as Intercession
     Simply take the first format and offer it as a prayer of intercession for someone in need or a special intention.
     When we pray for someone we are offering them to the Lord and identifying ourselves with his beautiful plan for their lives. We are not trying to persuade God to do something - as it were - against his Divine will . We are making ourselves one with that will. God never wills evil and we have all been given the power to overcome evil. But God does not look at our lives as mere appearances, he sees to the heart and he leads us all to live in the likeness of his Son. In his mortal life and pilgrimage on earth Jesus' prayer was always heard, and he prayed, "Father, glorify me now with the glory which I had before the world began." That glory - before the world or sin had being - included the love that is symbolised for us on the Cross. The Father heard his prayer for that primal glory - by the cross and not in spite of it. The Resurrection is not grafted on like a reward, as it were, for the suffering. The Resurrection begins on the cross. That is the pattern for our lives.

     The blessed hour is now. In love I surrender to the Spirit by whom the Incarnate Word was conceived. My prayer is Yes, Lord. I ask through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary that the Lord will tenderly fill my surrender with his love - as he pleases and as he wills - so that through the Holy Spirit I may know the peace, the sweetness and the love that is the heart of the Trinity into which I am drawn.
     As God pleases as God wills. This is not a prayer of weakness. I live this strongly and eagerly, consciously opening myself completely to the Lord. I may choose to precede the Chaplet with a reading from scripture or I may take one of the Lord's self revealing proclamations:-
I am the Way.
I am the Truth.
I am the Life.
I am the Resurrection.
I am the Good Shepherd.
I am the Gate of the Sheepfold.
I am the Light of the world.
I am the Alpha and the Omega.
I am the First and the last.
I Live.
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The Chaplet for Meditation

     In the arrangement that follow the chaplet prayers have been laid out in a Rosary like formulation: Blessed be the hour on the Pater bead, ten As God pleases as God wills on the little beads of the Rosary, and Let us praise as the Gloria Patri.
     To focus meditation on the fifteen mysteries with which the Rosary is usually associated, Blessed be the Hour has been given in three variants.
     The first - St Colette's original - is for the Joyful Mysteries - the first coming of the Lord.
     The second is for the Sorrowful Mysteries which relate to what the Fathers of the Church have called the second or intermediate coming of Christ: his presence in the sacraments through which his passion and resurrection are worked out in our lives now.
     The hour of grace is for us the hour in which we received the Sacrament of Sacraments; the Eucharist.
The third version is for the Glorious Mysteries. It looks to the last coming of the Lord at the end of time when we shall enter into his kingdom in the final resurrection.
     This also reflects Colette's identifications of the vows of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience as the weapons against the world, the flesh and the devil. The world is overcome by poverty [Jesus - Incarnate Word in the humility of the Crib], the flesh is overcome by chastity [Christ - innocent on the Cross, redeeming our guilt], and the Devil, the disobedient one, is overcome by obedience to God [the final end of time in which even the gates of hell shall not prevail against the Church]. This is a meditative approach to the Chaplet.

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The Joyful Mysteries

The first coming of the Lord

Blessed be the hour
in which our Lord Jesus Christ,
God and Man was born.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit
by whom he was conceived.
Blessed be the glorious Virgin Mary
of whom the Incarnate Word was born.
     May the Lord hear our prayers
through the intercession
of the glorious Virgin Mary
and in memory
of that most sacred hour
in which the Incarnate Word was born,
that all our desires may be accomplished
for your glory and our salvation.
     O good Jesus!
O Jesus our Redeemer,
do not abandon us as our sins deserve,
but hear our humble prayer
and grant what we ask
through the intercession
of the most blessed Virgin Mary
and for the glory of your Holy Name.
Amen.

As God pleases*
As God wills

Let us praise the Father in his mercy
and the Son by his passion
and the Holy Spirit
the fountain of peace and sweetness and love.
Amen, amen without recall!
Top

The Sorrowful Mysteries

The second coming of the Lord

Blessed be the hour
in which our Lord Jesus Christ
is our Passover
Blessed be the Holy Spirit
given to us from the Cross
Blessed be the glorious Virgin Mary
on whom the Incarnate Word bestows the Church
May the Lord hear our prayers
through the intercession
of the glorious Virgin Mary
and in memory
of that most sacred hour
in which we receive the Passover of Christ.
that all our desires may be accomplished
for your glory and our salvation.
     O good Jesus!
O Jesus our Redeemer,
do not abandon us as our sins deserve,
but hear our humble prayer
and grant what we ask
through the intercession
of the most blessed Virgin Mary
and for the glory of your Holy Name.
Amen.

As God pleases*
As God wills

Let us praise the Father in his mercy
and the Son by his passion
and the Holy Spirit
the fountain of peace and sweetness and love.
Amen, amen without recall!
Top

The Glorious Mysteries

The last coming of the Lord

Blessed be the hour
in which our Lord Jesus Christ,
King and Judge will come
Blessed be the Holy Spirit
who prepares our hearts for his reign
Blessed be the glorious Virgin Mary
with whom the Incarnate Word will come again.
     May the Lord hear our prayers
through the intercession
of the glorious Virgin Mary
in memory of that most sacred hour
in which heaven shall be opened to our eyes.
that all our desires may be accomplished
for your glory and our salvation.
     O good Jesus!
O Jesus our Redeemer,
do not abandon us as our sins deserve,
but hear our humble prayer
and grant what we ask
through the intercession
of the most blessed Virgin Mary
and for the glory of your Holy Name.
Amen.

As God pleases*
As God wills

Let us praise the Father in his mercy
and the Son by his passion
and the Holy Spirit
the fountain of peace and sweetness and love.
Amen, amen without recall!
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