Dom Prosper Guéranger's Prayer to St Louis

Below is the Prayer to St Louis, King & Confessor, written by Dom Prosper Guéranger for the Feast of St Louis in his Liturgical Year: 

Jerusalem the true Sion, at length opens her gates to you, O Louis, who for her sake gave up your treasures and your life. From the eternal throne on which the Son of God gives you to share His own honours and power, ever promote the kingdom of God on Earth. Be zealous for the faith. Be a strong arm to our Mother the Church. Thanks to you, the infidel East, though it adores not Christ, at least respects His adorers, having but one name for Christian and Frank. For this reason our present rulers would remain protectors of Christianity in those lands, while they persecute it at home, a contradiction no less fatal to the country than opposed to its traditions of liberty, and its reputation for honour and honesty. How can they be said to know our traditions and our history, or to understand the national interests, who misunderstands the God of Clovis, of Charlemagne and of Saint Louis? In that Egypt, the scene of your labours, what has now become of the patrimony of glorious influence which had been held by thy nation for centuries?

Your descendants are no longer here to defend us against these men who use the country for their own purposes and exile those who have been the makers of it. But how terrible are the judgements of the Lord! You yourself has said: “I would rather a stranger than my own son should rule my people and kingdom, if my son is to rule amiss.” Thirty years after the Crusade of Tunis, an unworthy prince Philip IV, your second successor, outraged the Vicar of Christ. Immediately he was rejected by Heaven and his direct male line became extinct. The withered bough was replaced by another branch, though still from the same root. But the nation had to suffer for its kings, and to expiate the crime of Anagni: the judgement of God allowed a terrible war to be brought about through the political indiscretion of the same Philip the Fair, a prince as discreditable to the State as to the Church and to his own family. Then for a hundred years the country seemed to be on the brink of destruction, until by a wonderful protection of God over the land, the Maid of Orleans, Joan the Venerable, rescued the lily of France from the clutches of the English leopard.

Other faults, alas, were to compromise still further, and then, twice over, to wither up or break the branches of the royal tree. Long did your personal merits outweigh before God the scandalous immorality which our princes had made their family mark, their odious privilege: a shame, which was transmitted by the expiring Valois to the Bourbons, which had to be expiated, but not effaced, by the blood of the just Louis XVI and which so many illustrious exiles are still expiating in lowliness and sorrow in a foreign land. Would that you could at least recognise these your remaining sons by their imitation of your virtues! For it is only by striving to win back this spiritual inheritance that they can hope that God will one day restore them the other. For God, who commands us to obey at all times the power actually established, is ever the master of nations and the unchangeable disposer of their changeable destinies. Then every one of your descendants, taught by a sad experience, will be bound to remember, O Louis, your last recommendation: “Exert yourself that every sin be abolished from your land, especially, to the best of your power, put down all wicked oaths and heresy.”