By Debbie Shelley
Assistant Editor
In anticipation of hurricane season, June 1 through Nov. 30, the National Hurricane Center provides information, which can be found at weather.gov, on how to plan for a hurricane, including gathering emergency contact information and forming a plan of action that includes care for pets and recovery. The church emphasizes the importance of spiritually preparing for hurricane season through praying.
Many Catholic faithful in the state particularly seek the intercession of the Blessed Mother under the name of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, also known as Our Lady of Quick Help, patroness of Louisiana. Our Lady of Prompt Succor has been credited with many miracles.
The seven Louisiana dioceses have established a day of prayer and fasting at the beginning of each hurricane season. Bishop Robert W. Muench will celebrate the seventh annual Day of Prayer and Fasting for Hurricane Protection on Friday, June 1, at noon, at St. Joseph Cathedral. This diocese issued a statement encouraging people to, “implore God, through the intercession of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, patroness of Louisiana, to preserve us from storms that might wreak havoc on our state.”
Throughout hurricane season, Catholics are encouraged to pray the Prayer for Safety in Hurricane Season that Bishop Maurice Schexnayder, second Bishop of Lafayette, wrote and dedicated to the victims of Hurricane Audrey in 1957.
Some people and church congregations recite established prayers that have been modified to include petitions about current circumstances.
Our Lady of Mercy Church in Baton Rouge modified Bishop Schexnayder’s prayer after the BP oil spill in 2010 to include natural and man-made disasters, according to Randy Arabie, Our Lady of Mercy liturgy director.
Peggy Sedotal, a member of St. Joseph the Worker Church in Pierre Part, read a Prayer for Hurricane Season in the New St. Joseph’s People’s Prayer Book, added to it a request for protection from all disasters of nature and introduced it to the “Come Lord Jesus” prayer group she meets with at the home of Barbara Theriot, who is also a member of St. Joseph the Worker.
Sedotal said because of the devastating tornados occurring in the south last year, the group began praying the Prayer for Hurricane Season in March this year.
She and Theriot agreed that when praying, people should confidently give their requests to God.
“We have to pray with faith, through the Holy Spirit, to have enough confidence to accept whatever God gives us. But we have to ask,” Theriot said.
Sedotal added, “Without prayer and faith we are nothing. Without God we are nothing.”
At St. Jules Church in Belle Rose, a novena to Our Lady of Prompt Succor is prayed at the conclusion of the 6 p.m. Monday Mass during hurricane season. As part of the novena, people pray for Our Lady of Prompt Succor’s intervention in war, disasters, epidemics and illness.
Ivy Landry, who attends daily Mass at St. Jules, said she ends her daily recitation of the rosary with a prayer for protection from hurricanes. She also belongs to a rosary group that prays for safety in hurricane season. An image of the Blessed Mother is present as the group prays.
Gloria Falcon, a member of St. Francis of Assisi and Ascension of Our Lord churches in Donaldsonville who attends the Monday Mass at St. Jules, said different kinds of storms happen during life, but people can be confident that God is faithful and will do what’s best for them.
“It’s reassuring to know that no matter what goes on, as long as we have been faithful and pray, God will see us through,” Falcon said.

Prayer for Safety in Hurricane Season
“God, master of this passing world, hear the humble voices of your
children.
The Sea of Galilee obeyed your order and returned to its
former quietude.
You are still the master of land and sea.
We live in
the shadow of a danger over which we have no control:
the Gulf, like
a provoked and angry giant, can awake from its seeming lethargy,
overstep its conventional boundaries, invade our land, and spread chaos and disaster.
During this hurricane season we turn to you, O loving father. Spare us from past tragedies whose memories are still so vivid and whose wounds seem to refuse to heal with passing of time.
O virgin, star of the sea, Our beloved mother, we ask you to plead with your son in our behalf, so that spared from the calamities common to this area and animated with a true spirit of gratitude, we will walk in the footsteps of your divine son to reach the heavenly Jerusalem
where a stormless eternity awaits us. Amen.”
Bishop Maurice Schexnayde