Prayer before receiving the Holy Eucharist
San Augustine

Oh Jesus, our redemption, our love and our desire, I invoke and pray to you with a great desire and with all my heart, I supplicate that you come to my soul, that you enter it and that you adjust and unite it with You so that you may possess it without a wrinkle or stain; since, it is very just that the dwelling in which a Lord so holy as you has to live must be clean.

You have made this vessel in my heart; sanctify it then, empty it of the evil you find in it, fill it with your grace, and keep it full so that it becomes a perpetual temple worthy of You.

Most sweet, most benign, most loving, most dear, most powerful, most desired, most precious, most kind and most beautiful Lord, You are sweeter than honey, whiter than snow, softer than manna, more precious that pearls and gold, and most loved of my soul than all the treasures and honors of this earth.

But when I say this, my God, my hope, my mercy, my sweetness, what am I saying? I say, Lord what I can and I don’t say what I must. Oh, if I could say what those celestial choirs of angels say and sing! Oh, how nicely I would use everything in your praises, and how much devotion in the midst of your predestined, my soul would sing of your greatness, and glorify incessantly your holy name.

Since I don’t find words to worthily glorify you, I beg you not to look so much to what I say now, but to what I wish to say.

You know very well, my God, to whom all hearts are manifest; that I love you and love you more than the heaven and the earth and all the things that there are in them. I love you with great love and I desire to love you more.

Grant me the grace to always love you as much as I desire and must, so that in You only I loose my sleep and meditate, that in you I think continually during the day; that in you I dream during the night, that my spirit speak with you, and that my soul always talk to you.

Illustrate my heart with the light of your holy visitation, so that with your grace and direction I may walk from virtue to virtue. I beg you, Lord, by your mercies, with which you saved me of eternal death, that you soften my heart, and that you burn me with the fire of compunction, in such way that I merit every hour to be your living host.

28twgep©