PGCA 44th Annual Convention INVOCATION

The following was my prayer during the Invocation portion of the PGCA 44th Annual Convention and Workshops:

Our loving Heavenly Father, Your grace has brought us all here today to convene this year's event of the PGCA. We thank and praise you! It was also through Your will that all will learn to live as your beloved sons and daughters, entrusting gifts to those You have deemed the task of helping others - the Guidance Counselors. Bless each and everyone here present today that we may live up to the mission You have entrusted to us.

Our Lord, Friend, Counselor and Savior Jesus Christ, You have shown us through Your life the way to fulfill the Father's plan. You gave Your life in order that we may learn and understand what loving service is all about. You lived and moved about with people, and became intimately involved in the struggles we all face to be free, strong, generous, compassionate, and empowered with life as we all came from the One Who truly lives and gives life.

Holy Spirit, our Paraclete, hover over us and recreate each one here anew, that whatever we do, think, feel and envision will always be aligned with whatever the Father has planned for all of us. Stay with us. Inspire us. Make us docile to Your promptings so that we may truly be Yours and for others.

All our concerns we pray them to you: for our fellow Counselors who are in situations of difficulty, both in body, work, money and spirit, accompany them with Your strength, peace and joy. And for our fellow Counselors who have died, especially Drs. Gabriel, our first PRB Chair, and former PGCA President Naomi Ruiz, we ask Your forgiveness for their failings and sins, and in Your mercy, grant them your peace and joy together with the angels and saints.

For You, Father, Son, & Holy Spirit live and reign forever and ever. Amen.

One of the Counselors attending the event approached me and requested a copy of the above prayer, and so that others may also get it (as I only had 1 handwritten copy then), I told her I'd blog it here. You may copy it, and may I request that this site be cited too so that others can read the news in here, particularly as the field of Guidance and Counseling, and/or Counseling Psychology in the Philippines continues to grow and become more participative in Philippine society. May God bless us all.