Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome. I'm Father Chris Alar here at the National Shrine of the Divine Mercy.

I've been out of commission for a couple days, had a bad fever, real sick. It's one of a few times in my life that I literally couldn't get off the floor.

So it's nice to be back, and we're grateful that you could be with us for this first Saturday. We're coming to you live

We have a nice group of people here at the shrine today

Even though there's a lot of snow out and we're gonna ask you to offer these prayers today. It's a first Saturday

To the Immaculate Heart of Mary and normally I do a Marian apparition or Marian devotion on

first Saturday, but today is the feast day of perpetua and felicity. And this is an amazing story.

The reason I'm doing this is because I said I wanted to get through the women of the Roman canon,

Eucharistic Prayer 1.

And we've always said that, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia, and all the saints.

Well, I've done Agatha, I've done Lucy, I've done Agnes, I've done Cecilia.

But I've never done perpetua and felicity. And one was the slave of the other. This is a whole different concept of slavery that we know about. And so we're

going to talk about this important day. And then after we finished with the shorter talk today,

stay with us because we'll power down for Brother Mark.

We'll then come back up and we'll do the first Saturday devotion.

So thank you for being with us.

In the name of the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, we ask you the intercession of saints for felicity and perpetual that you help us to be pure in mind and body and heart.

We ask that you give us the grace to withstand all trials and the perseverance to enter into your heavenly kingdom.

We ask all this through Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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