A LITANY FOR
EUCHARISTIC ADORATION

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This Litany for Eucharistic Adoration, printed below, is a fitting and moving tribute to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, which is also commonly referred to as the Blessed Sacrament.

As a brief reminder this litany like all litanies, can be prayed for private use, either individually, or in a group setting with one person reading each petition while the rest of the group says the words that follow printed in most prayer books (such as those given below in italics, the responses in this case being such as “Have Mercy on us” and “we adore you”.)

The elements of bread and wine really and truly become our Lord’s Body, Blood Soul and Divinity under the appearance of those elements at the words of consecration said by the priest at Mass!

This fulfills both our Lord’s claim at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 28, verse 20, that He would indeed be with us until the end of the world as well as his claim in Chapter 6, verse 55 of John’s Gospel that “My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.”

It is a moving tribute to our Lord’s love for us that He wishes to be with us not only in the host in Holy Communion in this manner but also in what we call Eucharistic Adoration, in which Jesus is really present to us in what is known as a monstrance, an ornate vessel.

Jesus fervently desires not only our salvation but our company as well! And we can give Him our time, and most importantly our love and obedience to Him not only in communion.

We can also spend time in what are known as Holy Hours with Him where He is present to us in the monstrance, which is often either placed on an altar or carried by a priest in what is known as a Eucharistic Procession that includes both religious and the laity alike!

It is especially important to note as well that you can spend whatever time you can with Jesus not just when He’s exposed in the monstrance in a scheduled Holy Hour but when He’s in the tabernacle as well.

In case the tabernacle is not front and center behind the main altar, but off to the side, or even in a side room, look for a lighted candle, also known as a Sanctuary Lamp near the tabernacle., It’s usually red and is placed in our churches “to indicate and honor the presence of Christ” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal 316).

Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen once wrote of the Holy Hour that its purpose, as he put it “is to encourage deep personal encounter with Christ. The holy and glorious God is constantly inviting us to come to Him, to hold converse with Him, to ask for such things as we need and to experience what a blessing there is in fellowship with Him.”

Keep Archbishop’s Sheen’s words in mind as we cover some wonderful descriptions of our Lord in the litany which follows:

Lord, have mercy
Lord, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Christ, have mercy
Lord, have mercy
Lord, have mercy

Christ, hear us
Christ, graciously hear us

God the Father of heaven
Have mercy on us
God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us.
God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us.
God the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us.
Holy Trinity, One God, have mercy on us.

Blessed Hope, we adore you (after each line)
Divine Love,
Divine Majesty,
Divine Substance,
Eternal Life,
Eternal Peace,
Eternal Purity,
Eternal Truth,
Healer of all afflictions,
Infinite Goodness,
Living Sacrifice and Glory,
Meeting between heaven and earth,
Merciful Love,
Supreme Being,
Essential Good,
Light in darkness,
Most Blessed Sacrament,
Promise fulfilled,
Source and summit of our faith,
Timeless Perfection,
Our daily Bread,
Our power, strength, and stability,
Our victory,

Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
Spare us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
Graciously hear us, O Lord.
Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,
Have mercy on us, O Lord.

Let us pray.

Lord, who have blessed Your people with Your Presence in the Most Blessed Sacrament, grant us the grace to Know You and love You fully, drawing us closer to You, converting our hearts, and inspiring us that we may come to realize true joy and perfection with You now and Forever. Amen.

Note that you can do a Holy Hour with Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration either with particular prayers and suggestions from various books as how to divide up your time with our Lord. Or you can spend quiet time with Jesus in whatever manner and time frame you feel His Spirit is calling you. And if you can’t spend a full hour don’t let that stop you from giving Jesus whatever time you can spend with him in Adoration.

If you feel yourself coming up short in terms of time and planning for these special moments with our Lord, consider this famous quote from the Patron Saint of Parish Priests, Jean-Marie Vianney, the cure of Ars in France in the 19th century:

“Listen well to this, my children. When I first came to Ars, there was a man who never passed the church without going in. In the morning on his way to work, and in the evening on his way home, he left his spade and pick-axe in the porch, and he spent a long time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Oh! how I loved to see that! I asked him once what he said to Our Lord during the long visits he made Him. Do you know what he told me? ‘Eh, Monsieur le Curé I say nothing to Him, I look at Him and He looks at me!’ How beautiful, my children, how beautiful!”

Your time spent before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, as this litany notes, is spent with the One who radiates Eternal Life, Peace, Purity, and Truth, and certainly wretched humanity is starving for those last three qualities now more than ever!

So much of what passes for enlightened thought these days as a menacing shadow of apostasy, lawlessness and chaos descends on us all is to have us cry out for more bureaucracy, more state control, not less, and ultimately a great soul-stifling technocratic utopia to supposedly “save” us from all this misery.

All the more reason especially now for each of us to spend time with our Real Savior in front of the Blessed Sacrament. He is truly “Our power, strength, and stability”, as we pray in this litany.

As St.Alphonsus Liquori put it so well “You may be sure that of all the moments in your life, the time you spend before the divine Sacrament will be that which will give you more strength during life and more consolation at the hour of your death and during eternity.”

Or as Blessed Charles de Foucauld implored on our behalf “O Jesus, present in the Blessed Sacrament in our churches, You give us solace and refuge; You give us faith, hope, love, and hospitality. You build for us an inner retreat, an ardent repose. Help us to seek You and find You.’