Supplica to Blessed Vladimir Ghika
Monsignor Vladimir Ghika, priest and martyr, was beatified yesterday, 31 August 2013, in Bucarest, Romania. His liturgical feast is fixed on May 16th, the date of his heavenly birthday. I want to honour his beatification and seek his intercession by sharing this Supplica (prayer of supplication) with my readers:
O glorious priest and martyr, Blessed Vladimir Ghika, thy life was a continuous surrender to the fire of Divine Love.
Love claimed thee for Himself, and in the abandonment of Thyself to Love’s crucifying embrace, thou didst become a priest according to Love’s pierced Heart: another Saint John, a son of Mary, the father of a multitude of souls.
In the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar thou didst find the Face of Love and, resting upon Love’s beating Heart, thou wast inflamed with a tender charity for the poor, for the sick, and for souls in the throes of every manner of suffering.
So attentive was thy charity, so expansive, and so inventive that thou becamest another Saint Vincent de Paul: the servant of Love in a world torn by war and shrouded in the darkness of the indescribable horrors wrought by men in the grip of Evil.
Thou didst persevere in reading the Sacred Scriptures; holding the Word of God in thy heart, it became in thee an incense of prayer rising in the sight of the Father with the sweet fragrance of the Son, the Lamb immolated upon the altar of the Cross.
Thou didst understand the priceless worth of suffering and infirmity accepted and offered in union with the sacrifice of the Cross, and thy priestly heart sought to impart to the sick the mission of participation in the mystery of Redemption.
The hour of thy death found thee imprisoned, hungry, thirsty, humiliated, and tortured for the sake of Love, and it was Love who carried thee in His strong arms into the glory prepared for thee in His Father’s heavenly dwellings.
Blessed Vladimir Ghika, pray for us unceasingly to the God of Love; hear our requests and make them thine own. Grace us with thy princely friendship in this valley of tears, so that with thee we may forever sing the mercies of the King of Love in the Divine Liturgy of heaven, where He liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, thrice–holy and ever–to–be adored, unto the ages of ages. Amen.
