Prayer to be said by the priest after celebrating Mass (Wednesday)
O my Jesus, I see how much you have done and suffered so that you might impose on me the necessity of loving you: and how ungrateful to you I have proved to be! How many times have I exchanged your grace for vile delectation and evil desire and lost you, O God of my soul? To the benefits of created things I have shown grateful appreciation; to you alone have I have shown myself ungrateful. Forgive me, my God; I grieve the crime of such an ungrateful soul, I mourn with all my heart, and I hope for forgiveness from you because you are infinite goodness. If you were not infinite goodness, I would have to despair and never again dare to implore your mercy.
Thanks be to you, my love, because you have sustained me for so long and have not damned me to hell which I have deserved. Indeed your patience alone with me, my God should draw me to love you. Who could ever have tolerated me except you, God, who are infinite mercy. It is long now since you invited me to love you; I do not wish to resist your love any longer; behold I give my whole self to you. I have sinned against you enough, now I wish to love you. I love you, O my highest Good, I love you, O infinite goodness, I love you, my God who are worthy of infinite love, and I wish to repeat always in time and in eternity, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
O God how many years have I lost in which I could have loved you and progressed in your love, and I have used them up in sinning against you! But your blood, O Jesus, is my hope. I hope never to cease loving you. I do not know how much longer I have to live, but I consecrate the rest of my life to you, whether it be long or short. For this, you have so far waited for me. And so I wish to please you; I wish to love you always, most loving Lord, and I wish to love you alone. What are delights to me? What are riches? What are honours? You alone, my God, you are and always will be my love and my all.
But I can do nothing unless you assist me with your grace. Wound my heart, I pray you, inflame it with your holy love and join me wholly to you: and thus join me that I can never be separated from you. You promised to love the one who loves you: “I love those who love me.” (Prov 8.17) Now I love you; forgive my audacity, love me also and do not permit me to do anything that would prevent me from loving you. “Who does not love remains in death.” (1 Jn 3.14) Free me from this death by which I may be impeded from loving you. Make me always love you so that you are able always to love me; and thus may our love be eternal and never again may it be dissolved between you and me. Grant me this, eternal Father, through the love of Jesus Christ. Bestow this, most lovable Jesus, through your merits in which I trust that you may always be loved by me and I may always be loved by you.
O Mary, Mother of God and my mother, pray also to Jesus for me.
6 comments:
Thanks be to you, my love, because you have sustained me for so long and have not damned me to hell which I have deserved.
I have to confess that I really struggle with this aspect of Catholic spirituality that I find in the writings of many Saints: that we are called to love with all our heart a God who apparently will damn/allow the majority of the human race to be damned for the briefest lapse into unrepented mortal sin.
Earlier this year I read a leaflet available at a FSSP church called the "Reality of Hell" the burden of which was to prove how easy it is to be damned. There was mention of a story about how on the day that St Bernard died only he and one other went to Heaven, three souls went to Purgatory, and 30,000 souls went to Hell. After reading it I felt it would be impossible to truly love God if one really believed that the majority of people end up in Hell. Fear Him - yes, but love Him - no.
The are other examples, such as the dream of Hell that St John Don Bosco had wherein his schoolboys were damned for not correctly confessing the number of times that they had sinned. For me this paints God as either incredibly callous or incredibly cruel. And, of course, Christ Himself said that "many are called but few are chosen".
I am really struggling with this right now.
Few who know about him will deny the greatness of St Alphonsus but, Father, with the best will in the world, he was an c18 saint and his spirituality was of a piece with his time and place: Southern Italy. Nothing gets staler than spiritual writing once it has outlived its time - and that includes much modern writing. Look at the stacks of old piety sometimes found in second hand book shops. Most of it has become inaccessible at a time when Lectio Divina and scripture-based prayer is generally used. The florid prose and sentiments of these prayers strike few chords today. Surely the official forms of preparation and thanksgiving after Mass are perfectly adequate? Which brings me to the point. How often are they used anyway? At one time priests said these prayers in the sacristy. I have not seen this done anywhere these days. Most priests breeze in before Mass and breeze out afterwards chatting to whomever is there. The laity, especially old women, frequently seize the moment to catch a priest while he is vesting to talk trivia, gas for hours about Mass intentions, shove Mass cards under his nose for signing, or make a fuss about flower vases and votive candles. Occasionally there is a genuine reason. Recollection, in the old sense, becomes almost impossible. If a priest politely asks them to leave it till later he is accused of being unfriendly or unapproachable. When, or if, priests actually use the official forms of preparation and thanksgiving is a mystery to me and I suspect that, as a rule and with rare exceptions, they don't. Newly ordained priests might try but it rarely lasts. But to suggest that they add long and prolix prayers to what are already fairly wordy ones seems unnecessary, even artificial. I am seventy and when I was young I said the Ambrosian preparatory prayers for Holy Communion as a matter of course through the week as well as making the preparation and thanksgiving before and after Mass daily. This was not obligatory by that's the way I, and others, were brought up. In those days, as I have already said, some (but not all) priests made their preparation and thanksgiving in the sacristy. I cannot see that practice returning. Good though they are in essence, St Alphonsus's prayers have become anachronisms.
Recommending this stuff is as loopy as promoting devotion to St Philomena. Reading ten lines has brought on a headache.
Anonymous, respectfully I disagree with your comment that the spirituality of the great saints that preceeded us is outdated and can be written down as belonging to another century. I think this is pure mental laziness and the view that anything "old" is outdated and cannot be used in the present day modern society.
I believe this exactly is what our holy father is warning us when he speaks about the hermenautic of rupture and I will just recall his wise and recent words
"What earlier generations held as sacred, remains sacred and great for us too, and it cannot be all of a sudden entirely forbidden or even considered harmful".
If you considered all the great fruits the "old" spirituallity gave to the church both in terms of great saints and in terms of the growth of the church throughout the centuries vs. the loss of faith and shrinkage of the church (reduced mass attendence, disobidence to catholic doctrine in faith and morals,decrease in baptisms/marriages, sexual abuses by the clergy and a long etc.) throughout the western world, it should be a natural option to look closer to the basics of our faith (Father Tim has already elaborated on this in another post) and try the things that worked in the past.
Anon sinner... I think the St Alph prayer is meant to have the opposite effect.. it`s meant to encourage us: Yes we`re all sinners, but thank God, there is a way out, with His help. I`d never read it before, but it struck me as very much " from the heart" - a personal need to rely on God's grace every minute of the day, and it left me with a feeling of great hope, but also a nudge that maybe I should go to confession a bit more often...
I am really sure St Aplh didnt mean to paint God as callous or cruel... His humility comes across in the prayer I think. I think his starting point really is that God is total love. And as every parent knows, that sometimes means telling us off a bit till we get back on track. Please don`t be discouraged. Your home really IS in heaven, nowhere else, but unfortunately, we can`t escape the journey getting there. I have to say, left to my own devices, I could very well end up in The Very Hot Place, but my hope and belief is that I will not.
The Paulist press publication of many of the great classics of Catholic spirituality seems to indicate that there are not enough second hand copies to go round.
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