St. Paul s Church, Lasalle Prayers before the Blessed Sacrament
Prayers before the Blessed Sacrament Introduction Let's begin by asking why we are reviving this rather ancient practice of inviting people to pray before the Host in the monstrance on the altar. There are certain non-catholic Christians who believe that there is a presence of Jesus to some extent when Communion is distributed during their liturgical service. But that ends the presence. We Catholics hold firmly that Jesus remains present in the consecrated Hosts that remain after Mass. We genuflect/bow towards the tabernacle and have a sanctuary lamp burning constantly. The practice of having a Host in the monstrance really highlights our faith in the abiding presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. It also calls us to deepen our relationship with the Lord. We receive special graces during the sacred moments of
our visit with the Lord, graces for self and for the community. Some of us may be a bit tongue-tied at the beginning of our visits. The following prayers are suggestions to get us started. We will follow the time honoured acronym, ACTS - Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication. It is necessary to take time with these, to stop with what strikes us, to pray in that space. It is not required of us that we read/pray the whole booklet. We begin by quieting ourselves down from our daily preoccupations. These may return, in which case we pray about them and then put them aside again. We are quiet. We pray. We listen in silence to allow God to speak to us.
Introduction ADORATION Adoration means giving God the honour due to Him. It is not a case of God demanding that we bow down and abase ourselves before Him, rather like a despot king might do. Nor is it like the craven abasement before some pagan god. It is a matter of our being creatures before our Creator - a matter of our very being. God couldn't let us off being adorers. Creatures find their true being as adorers of the sublime Creator. We have added motivation to do this when we consider the immensity of our God. This God is not a being somehow like us, though incredibly mightier. When we look at the starry skies on a clear night, we get some insight into the otherness of God. We can see only a small fraction of the worlds God keeps in existence and which would disappear in an instant were He to withdraw His sustaining hand. And this God, immense beyond our puny intellects, comes close to us and invites us into a love relationship.
Prayer Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, we acknowledge Your divinity and Your humanity. As the Word of God, You exist with the Father and the Holy Spirit in complete harmony in the Oneness of Your being. You are all perfect. Nothing can add to Your being. That our God should have deigned to call creatures into being is beyond our understanding, save to remind ourselves that our God is Love. You called humankind into being as special objects of Your love. For the love that accomplished our creation, we adore You, God One and Three. We adore You, Son of God, present in the monstrance. We are now silent before our God for a few moments. As Word made flesh, Jesus, you are in Heaven and with us on earth in different ways. Today we acknowledge your presence in the Blessed Sacrament, before us on our altar. In Your humanity, You are yet a divine person. We adore You as the Word made flesh. In Your humanity, You draw very near to us. You are Brother and Friend as well as God. We adore You as the One whose coming was heralded by
an angel, who was born in Bethlehem, who spent the first 30 years of Your life with Mary and for a time along with Joseph. You walked the earth announcing the Kingdom of God, calling people to conversion, telling of the Father's love, curing the sick and comforting the afflicted. You died on the Cross to set us free and rose from the dead to put the seal on our redemption. In this wonderful gift that You left us on the night before You died, we can be present to Your own supreme act of love to the Father, Your sacrifice on Calvary. We adore You for this gift beyond comprehension. Holy God, we praise Your name. Lord of all, we bow before You. Amen.
Introduction CONTRITION In a world where the sense of sin is depleted, evil is yet all around us. Our media is full of stories, one more horrific than the next, of man's inhumanity to man. Men and women of our day seem to embrace the excesses of earlier generations and bring them to new depths. Only an acknowledgement of the sins of humanity will enable our escape from misery. It is not a matter of engendering guilt feelings, nor of making ourselves groveling low-lives. It is getting to the reality of our need of God's forgiveness which embraces us into his love. Before I point the finger at others, I have to look into my own heart to find the evil lurking there. The seven deadly sins might be a good place to start, those sins which are the driving force behind so much that is evil:
Pride - Covetousness - Lust - Anger - Gluttony - Envy - Sloth One doesn't have to be a moral detective to be able to detect the traces of these sins in oneself. The process can also be reversed and one can see how one's actions and omissions reflect the seven deadly sins within. The same is true of my participation - sometimes voluntary, sometimes not in the structures that put or keep people in misery. Many of the things we can enjoy so cheaply are at the cost of a family's destitution through lack of a living wage, for example. Prayer Jesus, Son of the God of love and compassion, look on me a sinner. With utter honesty, I stand before You as one who acknowledges my sinfulness and my sins. I ask for forgiveness, so that I can walk in Your presence, loving You in newness of life, and serving my brothers and sisters. With the help of Your grace, I will try to leave my sinful habits aside and to embrace the life You showed us as You walked the earth. Son of David, have mercy on me. Amen.
Introduction THANKSGIVING Jesus once asked the Samaritan who returned to give thanks to God for his cure, where were the other nine who also had been cured? There is a hint coming here from the human nature of Jesus that ungratefulness is hurtful to the giver. But it is much more serious that ungratefulness is deadly to the one who is ungrateful. Just as we, as creatures, find our true self in adoring God, so we grow in love as we thank God for his gifts. The ingrate shrivels and dies. Where do we begin to thank the Lord, our God? for our very being for the beauty of creation for our family and friends for the abundance of material things to satisfy our needs home, employment, food, transport. Beyond all this, we have the gift to us of God's very own life. We have the gift of his
Son, come to earth to save us from our sins, to teach us the way of salvation, to make us children of God. For the gift of the Holy Spirit, with His sevenfold gifts (wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, piety, fortitude and fear of the Lord). We have the sacraments, above all the Eucharist. We are also thankful that when our days are darkest and our sorrow heavy, our God loves us and is with us with His sustaining grace. The list of things for which we should thank our God is endless in depth and in length. Prayer Jesus, I thank you for the many gifts of nature and grace that you have given me, the gifts that are listed above... Let me, also, in this prayer, thank you for the gifts that only you and I know... Giver of all gifts, my best thanks for your gifts rests in their use. Let me show my thanks in this way.
Introduction SUPPLICATION Jesus said, Ask and you shall receive. Knock and the door will be opened to you. God knows what we need before we ask Him. But God wants a dialogue of love between Himself and us, and so encourages us to ask. In our asking, several realities come together. We acknowledge that God is the God of love and that He is all powerful. We recognize that God loves us individually and hears the prayers of each of us. We know that we have been forgiven our sins and that there is no barrier between us and God. Prayer Lord Jesus, You can see into the very core of my being. You know my needs far better than I. I ask You to give me the graces necessary to love You above all things and to love my neighbour as myself.
Lord, there are the special needs in my life that I wish to bring before You today. Some of these are very important to me, concerning the good of relationships and the good of family and friends. Let me quietly list these petitions... Conclusion Jesus, I thank you for our time together. Please walk with me through the rest of my day and my week.