During this month of the Holy Rosary, I invite you to join me along with other bishops, priests and laity on Shalom Media USA, Inc. to pray for the upcoming U.S. Presidential Election. This 24 hour Rosary starts at 12 AM on October 20 bringing together various Catholic organizations to pray for the good of our country. As health care professionals, we are challenged in many ways to live out our vocation in the medical field, which is why it’s so important to join hands and hearts in prayer for God’s providence and mercy to be poured out on the United States.

The Catholic Medical Association exists to inspire physicians to imitate Jesus Christ and prayer is central to this vision as we saw in our recent Annual Educational Conference (AEC). I want to express my tremendous gratitude to Dr. Felix Rodriguez, the conference chair, for the successful AEC in Orlando! God bestowed many gifts during that conference. How can we give back to Him a small token of this grace?

I would invite you to consider one way –– by participating in the Walk With One initiative. This initiative was started by our Bishops and announced at the Eucharistic Revival, where they encouraged us to participate in this special form of heart-to-heart accompaniment. It is our opportunity to be God’s instrument in the life of another person. In this initiative we are called to identify someone God is calling us to accompany, someone on their journey home to the Church. Intercede for that person, connect and form a deeper relationship with that person, and invite that person to a deeper relationship with Jesus and the Church.

CMA finds its reason to be always in the heart of the Church, which is always in union with our Bishops. Right now, the heart of the Church in the United States is calling us to renew our personal relationship with Jesus in the most Blessed Sacrament, and to lead others there. Our Bishops have started more than a program but rather a fire, so let us, each one of our local CMA guilds, along with the national CMA, help spread this fire across our land.

Sharing in Christ’s work of serving and saving souls requires us to cultivate our interior life daily. We pray that more souls make it to heaven because of our personal work in the field of medicine and as members of the Catholic Medical Association.