👑The Little Crown of the Infant Jesus!👑
The Infant of Prague Chaplet
This beautiful chaplet is prayed in honor of the Holy Childhood of Our Lord Jesus Christ and is traditionally known as the Little Crown of the Infant Jesus.
The Little Crown is associated with Venerable Margaret of the Blessed Sacrament (1619–1648), a Carmelite nun who had an extraordinary devotion to the Child Jesus. According to the traditional account, the Divine Infant made known to her this little chaplet as a special way of honoring the mysteries of His Holy Infancy.
The chaplet consists of 15 beads. Three Our Fathers are prayed in honor of the Holy Family—Jesus, Mary and Joseph—and twelve Hail Marys honor the first twelve years of the life of the Child Jesus.
Throughout the chaplet we recall the beautiful mystery of the Incarnation:
“And the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among us.”
A Special Promise
Tradition tells us that the Infant Jesus promised special graces, particularly purity of heart and innocence, to those who carry the Little Crown and devoutly recite it in honor of the mysteries of His Holy Childhood.
The Infant of Prague in Times of Financial Distress
The Infant Jesus of Prague has also been invoked for centuries in times of financial difficulty and temporal need.
The history of this devotion is especially beautiful. In the 17th century, Princess Polyxena gave her treasured statue of the Child Jesus to the poverty-stricken Carmelite monastery in Prague. According to tradition, she told the friars:
“As long as you venerate this image, you will not lack anything.”
The Carmelites attributed an improvement in their circumstances to the Divine Infant’s assistance. Later, after war had devastated their monastery, Father Cyril rediscovered the damaged statue and renewed devotion to the Child Jesus. From Prague, devotion to the Miraculous Infant spread throughout the Catholic world.
For this reason, the Infant of Prague has become particularly beloved by Catholics experiencing financial distress, family needs, employment difficulties and other pressing temporal concerns.
One of the best-known sayings associated with this devotion is:
“The more you honor Me, the more I shall bless you.”
We do not approach the Divine Infant expecting riches or treating prayer as a guarantee that every financial difficulty will disappear. Rather, we come to Him with the confidence of a child—placing our worries, our families and our genuine necessities into the hands of the Child Jesus and trusting in His Providence.
The Little Crown is a simple and beautiful way to foster this childlike confidence in Our Lord, while honoring the hidden years of His Holy Childhood.
Each chaplet comes with a prayer guide explaining how to pray the Little Crown.
For more about devotion to the Infant of Prague during financial difficulties, you can read my Finer Femininity article:
Financial Distress? There Is an Answer…. The Infant of Prague
The Infant of Prague Chaplet ~ Available here.
God Watches Over Us
An Easy Way to Become a Saint – Fr. Paul O’Sullivan
The Gift of Divine Grace
Scarcely had we been born when our parents took us to the baptismal font. We had come into the world covered with a hideous leprosy, the filth and corruption of Original Sin, which we inherited from our First Parents.
The baptismal water was poured on our heads; we were bathed in the Precious Blood of Jesus, the same that was shed for us on Calvary.
These saving waters cleansed our souls from this hideous leprosy, leaving them as pure as the Angels in Heaven, while God, by an infinitely divine act of love, clothed our souls with a dazzling mantle taken from His own shoulders, viz., with the robe of Divine Grace.
This is a real participation in His own divine nature, as St. Peter assures us.
Did we see our soul clad in this divine mantle, we should be inclined to fall down and adore it. Nothing on this earth can give us even a faint idea of a soul in Grace – an image of God, radiant, resplendent with divine beauty.
This divine grace is not only a robe of beauty; it is a divine force, a new life, which raises up our natures, giving them a new dignity.
It penetrates into our faculties, illuminates our intellects and strengthens our will.
With it we can see and do what would be otherwise utterly impossible for poor human nature.
How little do we understand the wonders God has done for us!
Foolish, ignorant parents are so blind that they sometimes leave their children for days without Baptism.
The life of the newly born babe is so fragile that is may die at any moment, and then! That dear soul will never see God, through the culpable neglect of those who should love it most.
And even if the child does not die, why leave it wallowing in the corruption and filth of Original sin?
Fathers and mothers strive to save their children from the least bodily defect, yet owing to crass ignorance, they allow them to remain so long under the curse and malediction of sin. Sad, woeful ignorance!
God Watches Over Us
Nothing perhaps manifests so clearly God’s personal love for each one of us as His Divine Providence, which is watching over us every moment and in every event of our lives.
God has never taken His eyes off us since the moment of our creation, but is ever watching over us with loving care.
Nothing happens to us that He does not see and permit. Not even a hair falls from our heads without His consent.
Every moment of our lives is a new creation; our preservation is, as it were, a continual series of creations.
Did God forget us or take His Hand off us for a single moment, we should not only die, but fall back into our former nothingness.
He takes care of the beasts that roam in the forests, of the little birds that fly in the air; He clothes the lilies of the field in a garb more beautiful than that of Solomon in all his glory,
He sees every movement of the little fishes in the ocean, of the insects which are hidden in the earth.
With far greater reason, He tells us, does He watch over us who are His dear children, so that all that happens to us is for our welfare and happiness, as St. Paul tells us: “All things work together unto good.” (Rom. 8:28)
Nothing is so touching as the care a mother takes of her little one who is playing at her side. She is apparently intent on her sewing or knitting, but not for an instant does she lose sight of the child.
At the first sign of danger, throwing aside what she has in hand, she rushes toward the little one and snatches it from the peril that threatened it.
This is exactly how God watches over us. His eyes are ever on us. Though we may think that our troubles come from an enemy or from some other cause or by chance, we may be sure that nothing happens to us that God does not will.
What is lacking is our want of confidence. If we only ran to God in all our troubles, our lot in life would be very different from what it is, very much happier.
Do not be concerned if prayer does not go as you would wish; It is enough that it be as God wishes. This is not difficult; You need only avoid voluntary negligence. ~Venerable Bruno Lanteri (1759-1830)
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While attaining sanctity is the most important thing in the world (for ourselves and for others, because everyone benefits from one’s personal sanctification), sanctity need not be seen as the hardest thing in the world. It is always the greatest challenge, but nothing “extraordinary” is required of us. In fact, the perfection of the ordinary is precisely where God calls most of us to grow: “Whoever is faithful in the least thing also will also be faithful in greater things” (Luke 16:10).
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