'Into thy blessed trust and special custody… I this day, every day, and in the hour of my death, commend my soul and my body.' Indulgenced by Leo XIII in 1890.
Most holy Mary, my Lady, to thy faithful care and special keeping and to the bosom of thy mercy, to-day and every day, and particularly at the hour of my death, I commend my soul and my body; all my hope and consolation, all my trials and miseries, my life and the end of my life I commit to thee, that through thy most holy intercession and by thy merits all my actions may be directed and ordered according to thy will and that of thy divine Son. Amen.
Morning and night; on 21 June, the saint's feast; by the young, whose patron he is.
Aloysius Gonzaga, the Jesuit scholastic who died at twenty-three nursing plague victims in Rome, made a vow of virginity before an image of Our Lady in Florence at about the age of ten, and his devotion to her was the fixed point of a short life. This is his prayer of entrustment: soul and body, anxieties and miseries, 'my life and the end of my life', given into her keeping so that everything may be ordered 'according to thy will and that of thy Son'.
Leo XIII indulgenced it in 1890 and the Raccolta printed it among the prayers to the Blessed Virgin. The English is the New Raccolta's of 1903.
Two hundred days, once a day — Leo XIII, 15 March 1890 (New Raccolta, 1903).
