Prayer for the Addicted

This week we are going to pray for the addicted. Just in the US there are over 40 million people suffer from some form of drug or alcohol disorder. So we are going to pray for them and those who care for them.

Prayer for the Addicted
God of mercy, we bless You in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ, who ministered to all who come to Him. Give Your strength to N.________, Your servant, bound by the chains of addiction. Enfold them in Your love and restore them to the freedom of God's children.
Lord, look with compassion on all those who have lost their health and freedom. Restore to them the assurance of Your unfailing mercy and strengthen them in the work of recovery.
To those who care for them, grant patient understanding and a love that perseveres. We ask this through Christ our Lord.
Amen.

Through this prayer we are seeking the intercession of St. Maximilian Kolbe, the patron saint of drug addicts.
St. Maximilian Kolbe was born in 1894. At the age of 12, he saw a vision of Mary. She offered him two crowns one white for purity and one red for martyrdom, which he willingly choose both. His journey began when he and his older brother joined a seminary in Austria-Hungary where he was given his religious name of Maximilian. In 1918 he was ordained a priest. In his early years of priesthood, he published a periodical titled ‘Knight of the Immaculata’. He opened monasteries Poland, Japan, and India. He returned to Poland in 1936 and opened a hospital. During WWII in 1941 the monastery where he resided was shut down and he was arrested by the German Gestapo, then transferred to Auschwitz.
During his arrest he claimed, “No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict.” The only way to change what surrounds us is first accepting the truth and then welcoming the battle within ourselves.
After a prisoner escape, the Nazi guards selected 10 people to be starved to death, he volunteered to take the place of an inmate, who had a wife and kids to return to. It is said during the last days of his life Kolbe led prayers to Our Lady with the prisoners and remained calm. After two weeks of dehydration and starvation, he was the last of the group to remain alive. The guards gave him a lethal injection of carbolic acid. The stories tell that he raised his left arm and calmly awaited death.
The message in his story is that no illicit drug we voluntarily take will be safe. When we ask St. Kolbe to pray for us, he protects those struggling with drug abuse and addiction.
Kolbe is often depicted in a prison uniform and with a needle being injected into an arm. He is the patron saint of drug addicts, prisoners, families, and the pro-life movement.

I hope this prayer has touched you or a loved one in a positive way.
I love you guys, God bless you and have a blessed week.

References:
Prayers to St. Maximilian Kolbe – Militia of the Immaculata
Saint Kolbe- Patron of Addiction – El Cid (elcidonline.com)
Prayers to St. Maximilian Kolbe | Kolbe Mission
St. Maximilian Kolbe - Saints & Angels - Catholic Online
About St. Maximilian Kolbe - Patron Saint Article (catholicsaintmedals.com)