Almighty God,
look, we pray,
on the face of your beloved Son,
and for the sake of his merits
mercifully hear the prayers
which throughout
our Confraternity
we continually offer to you;
and grant us unity, a true faith,
and a life agreeable to your will;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Blessed be God.
Blessed be his holy Name.
Blessed be Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Blessed be the name of Jesus.
Blessed be his most Sacred Heart.
Blessed be his most Precious Blood.
Blessed be Jesus in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar.
Blessed be the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
Blessed be the great Mother of God, Mary most holy.
Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception.
Blessed be her glorious Assumption.
Blessed be the name of Mary, Virgin and Mother.
Blessed be St Joseph, her spouse most chaste.
Blessed be God in his Angels and in his Saints.
Not in lightness of heart, O Christ my God, do I venture to approach you, but as trusting in your infinite goodness, and in the fear that being drawn apart from you, I may become the prey of our spiritual enemy. Therefore do I pray to you, O Lord, who alone are holy, that you would sanctify me in soul and body, in heart and mind; that you would wholly renew me and fill me with reverence of you. Be my help and my guide, govern my life in the ways of peace. Make me worthy to obtain with your saints a place at your right hand, through the prayers and supplications of your most pure Mother, of your ministering Angels and Powers, and of all your saints who from the ages have found favour before you.
St John Chrysostom
We are now in the presence of the infinite majesty of God, who was once pleased, for love of us, to come down from heaven and become Man on earth, and to die on a cross to save us; and is now in the Blessed Sacrament, to listen to our prayers and grant us the graces we ask of him.
I adore you, O Jesus, true God and true Man, here present in the Holy Eucharist, humbly kneeling before you and united in spirit with all the faithful on earth and all the blessed in heaven. In deepest gratitude for so great a blessing, I love you, my Jesus, with my whole heart, for you are all perfect and all worthy of love.
Give me grace nevermore in any way to offend you, and grant that, being refreshed by your Eucharistic presence here on earth, I may be found worthy to come to the enjoyment with Mary of your eternal and ever-blessed presence in heaven. Amen.
I believe that you, O Jesus, are in the Most Blessed Sacrament! I love you and desire you! Come into my heart. I embrace you. O never leave me! May the burning and most sweet power of your love, O Lord Jesus Christ, absorb my mind, that I may die through love of your love, who was pleased to die through love of my love. Amen.
St Francis of Assisi
It is indeed a tremendous miracle to see God taking flesh and becoming man, and a greater miracle still to see him suspended on the cross. But the highest of all miracles, O Christ our God, is your ineffable presence under the mystic species. Truly you did institute, through this Great Sacrament, a remembrance of all your marvels. How merciful of you, O God, to give yourself as food to those who revere you, to recall your covenant forever, and to remember your passion and your death until the day of your glorious coming! Let us, O faithful, receive our food and our life, our King and our Saviour, and cry out: ‘Save, O Lord, those who worship your glorious and venerable presence’.
Gavin Hamilton (1561-1612)
Glory be to God in the highest, the Creator and Lord of heaven and earth, the Preserver of all things, the Father of mercies, who so loved mankind as to send his only begotten Son into the world, to redeem us from sin and misery, and to obtain for us everlasting life. Accept, O gracious God, our praises and thanksgivings for your infinite mercies towards us. And teach us, O Lord, to love you more and serve you better; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
from the Melkite Greek Catholic Liturgy (for Corpus Domini)
My Jesus, I believe that you are present in the Blessed Sacrament, I love you above all things and I desire you in my soul. Since I cannot receive you now sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my soul. As though you were already there I embrace you and unite myself wholly to you; permit not that I should ever be separated from you. Amen.
St Alphonsus
you gave us the eucharist
as the memorial of your suffering and death
May our worship of this sacrament of your body and blood
help us to experience the salvation you won for us
and the peace of the kingdom
where you live with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
one God, for ever and ever.
in this great sacrament
we come into the presence of Jesus Christ, your Son,
born of the Virgin Mary
and crucified for our salvation
May we who declare our faith in this fountain of love and mercy
drink from it the water of everlasting life.
We ask this through Christ Our Lord.
To him who has power to open our hearts to the words of Christ:
Be glory and praise for ever,
To him who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, to proclaim to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the coming resurrection:
Be glory and praise for ever,
To him who rose from the dead that we might rise with him:
Be glory and praise for ever,
To him who ascended into heaven by the power of the Father and the Holy Spirit:
Be glory and praise for ever,
To him who sits on the right of the throne of the Almighty:
Be glory and praise for ever,
To him who is to come with power and glory to judge the dead and the living:
Be glory and praise for ever,
(adapted from the Didascalia of the Apostles, 3rd century)
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me.
O God, forgive me for all the sins of my life:
the sins of my youth and the sins of my age,
the sins of my body and the sins of my soul,
the sins I have confessed and the sins I have forgotten,
the sins against others in thought, word and deed; my sins of omission.
O my God, I am sorry for all my sins, because you are so good;
and I will not sin again with the help of God.
God be merciful to me, a sinner.
Divine Heart of Jesus, convert sinners, save the dying, deliver the holy souls in purgatory.
Irish prayer
Christ earned the bread of life for us
He gave his body to be our bread. From the moment when the Holy Spirit came upon Mary and she conceived the Son of God, his body was given to us. Given in the first instance, just as the seed of bread is given by being buried in the earth, the seed of Christ, the Bread of Life, was hidden in the darkness, buried in the dust of human nature…. From the moment of his conception Christ was earning the bread of life for us, in his acceptance of suffering in infancy, in his own necessity, his hunger and thirst, his need for sleep. As a small child learning slowly and painstakingly to use his hands, refusing to turn stones to bread, that the Living Bread might be sifted and threshed for us. In long journeys on foot and long days, meeting the incessant demands of the crowds, in the agony before his passion when the sweat of his face ran down to the ground in drops of blood, and in the consummation of his labours on the Cross.
When, at the Last Supper, Christ took the bread into his hands, and gave it to us, changed into his Body, he gave us his Flesh and Blood, his Divinity and Humanity, for these are inseparable in him, he gave us himself. He gave us himself – that is what the Christ-life means; it means that Christ is the life of our souls. Our souls are alive because Christ is in them…
Because Christ has given himself to us, our lives have the redemptive quality of his, and our relationships with one another are a communion in him. They are a meeting and a oneing of Christ with Christ, the never-ceasing generation and increase of Eternal Love on earth, the fulfilment of Christ’s words: ‘I came that they should have life and have it more abundantly’.
We give our Christ-life, offer our Christ to God, and give Christ to one another by the means that Christ used on earth: by natural means; we give him with our hands and eyes and ears, with the words we speak, the journeys we make, by our human friendships and human loves.
C. Houselander, “The Passion of the Infant Christ’.
What has revealed the love of God, where we are concerned, is the mission on which the only-begotten Son of God was sent into the world by the Father. He was to be made man, to ransom the whole human race, give it fresh birth, bring it together into one. Before he made the offering of himself – he, the unspotted victim, the cross his altar – the Son of God prayed to the Father on behalf of believers with these words: ‘That they may all be one; that they too may be one in us, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee; so that the world may come to believe that it is thou who hast sent me’ (Jn 17:21). He also founded the Eucharist in his Church, the wonderful sacrament which indicates and brings about the Church’s unity. He gave his disciples the new commandment of love for each other and promised them the Holy Spirit who would befriend them, the Lord and giver of life who would stay with them for ever.
Second Vatican Council,
Decree on Ecumenism, 2
Our Saviour, at the Last Supper on the night on which he was betrayed, instituted the eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and Blood whereby he might perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come, and, moreover, entrust to the Church, his beloved Bride, a memorial of his death and resurrection: the sacrament of love, the sign of unity, the bond of charity, the paschal banquet, in which Christ is received, our mind and soul are filled with grace and a pledge is given us of glory to come.
Second Vatican Council,
Constitution on the Liturgy, 47