SR
← Orationes sive Meditationes — Collection for Princess Adeliza of Normandy/Book 1 · Orationes sive Meditationes
Chapter 28Ansl.1.28

ORATIO XXVIII. AD CHRISTUM. Facienda a sacerdote ante consecrationem corporis Christi.

The Soul's Cry for Mercy and Love

The priest pours out his misery before God, begs mercy and protection from sin, asks grace to love God above all and neighbor as self, and intercedes for all believers and unbelievers.

O sweetest Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and died for my redemption — every desire of mine is before you, and my groaning is not hidden from you.✦ See, most kind God — my misery is before you, and in my hands is your mercy: the misery of my sinful soul, the mercy of your redemption.1 Have mercy on me, then, God, according to your great mercy, and according to the abundance of your compassions blot out my iniquity, and from this hour guard my life to the very end.✦2 Defend my soul from every iniquity, so that from now on I may no longer be able to do anything by which I would offend the eyes of your majesty.3 Grant me, most kind God, to love you above all things, as you command and as is right; and then to love my neighbor no less than myself, as you again command.✦ For this is most just and altogether reasonable: that we ought to love you above all things, and even more than ourselves, because you loved us before we existed, and in loving us you created us, and you cared to lead us to the knowledge of your most holy name; but we, on the other hand, do not even have this — that we love you or anything good — from ourselves, but only from you.4 You command us to love our neighbor rightly, as we love ourselves, and we do not love him rightly, as you command — because you created us all with equal love, with equal love you underwent suffering for all, and you have prepared eternal life equally for all. Grant to all, most merciful Father, who have right faith, to live rightly and holily, and to deviate in no way at all from what you command; but to those who do not yet believe in you, grant that before they depart this life they may receive faith and love for your most holy name, and that, once received, they may keep it right and unviolated to the very end.5

The Sacrifice of the Altar for All

A single Eucharistic intercession asks that Christ's Body and Blood be the remission of sins for all the living and the dead.

May the sacrifice of your Body and Blood bring the forgiveness of all sins to all the living and the dead: to the living, indeed, who are living rightly, and to those who are not yet living rightly but desire at some point to live rightly; and to the dead, who through this sacrifice hope in your mercy to receive the forgiveness of their own iniquities, and after that to arrive at the eternal glory and kingdom of heaven.6

Faith in Christ: One Person, Two Natures

The priest confesses the creedal faith: Christ is the eternal Word made flesh, the Son of God and Son of the Virgin in one person, who suffered and died in his humanity for our salvation.

We believe in you, Lord Jesus Christ, that you are one and the same: you who are the Son of God are also the Son of the Virgin; you are that same one who in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and through whom all things were made. Begotten of the Father before all ages, in time you were born of the Virgin — though you are of a nature other than the Father's. After you became the Son of the Virgin and dwelt among us, you exist in another nature, inasmuch as you are the Son of God — though in your one person, in two natures, God and man, you are equal to the Father in your divinity and less than the Father in your humanity.✦✦✦ Because indeed you are that same one — God who became man, and man who is God — the most holy Virgin who carried you is proclaimed and believed by all the faithful to be Theotokos, that is, the Mother of God.✦ And because you are not one person as Son of God and another as Son of man, but you are one and the same — Son of God who became Son of man — you undertook suffering and death for the salvation of the human race, not in the nature of your deity but in the nature of your humanity. You are that same one, and not another, despite the difference of nature, just as there is not one nature existing because of the unity of person.✦✦

The Ineffable Love Given to Be Eaten

The priest marvels that Christ not only died for enemies but gives himself to be eaten and drunk, and asks grace to serve the altar worthily so as to come at last to eternal beatitude.

There is still more, sweetest Lord Jesus Christ, that we can and should think about: your ineffable love with which you love us, that you show us, wretched sinners, as a sign of your great love, in this mystery of your body and blood. When one person loves another as much as possible, beyond other things, perhaps by the power of love that person can die for the other, if love so demands; yet this rarely happens — that anyone would choose to suffer this for their beloved. If a friend ever does something for a friend that arouses great admiration and great amazement in all who hear of it — it transforms them. But you, sweetest Lord Jesus, not only chose to die for friends but also for enemies; and not only this, but also that which no one would choose to do for a friend you did — and you still do: when you give yourself, who endured death for us, to be eaten and drunk in this mystery of your body and blood, we eat your body and we drink your blood, the price of our redemption. Grant me therefore, Lord Jesus, so to live, so to perform the service of your altar chastely and holily from now on, that so living, so doing, so eating flesh and drinking blood, after the death of the flesh, absolved from all sins, I may be able to come to you, my Creator and Redeemer, by a straight path, where with all the saints in eternal happiness without end I may be able to praise and bless you.

Read the original Latin

O dulcissime Domine Jesu Christe, qui pro mea redemptione crucifixus es et mortuus, ante te est omne desiderium meum, et gemitus meus a te non est absconditus. Ecce benignissime Deus, coram te est miseria mea, et in manibus meis est misericordia tua, miseria peccatricis animae meae, misericordia redemptionis tuae. Miserere ergo mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam, et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum dele iniquitatem meam, et ab hac hora usque in finem custodi vitam meam. Defende ab omni iniquitate animam meam, ut jam amplius agere non valeam unde oculos tuae majestatis offendam. Da mihi, benignissime Deus, te, sicut jubes et rectum est, super omnia diligere; deinde proximum non minus quam meipsum, sicut iterum praecipis, amare. Est enim hoc justissimum et omnino rationabile ut te super omnia, et etiam plusquam nos debeamus diligere, quia tu nos antequam essemus dilexisti, diligens creasti, creatos ad notitiam sanctissimi nominis tui adducere curasti; nos vero neque hoc ipsum, quod te vel aliquid boni diligimus, a nobis ipsis nisi a te habemus. Proximum vero nostrum et tu nobis, sicut nos ipsos, recte diligere praecipis, et non recte diligimus eum, sicut praecipis quia aequali dilectione nos omnes creasti, aequali dilectione pro omnibus passionem suscepisti, aequaliter omnibus vitam aeternam praeparasti. Da omnibus, clementissime Pater, qui fidem rectam habent, recte et sancte vivere, nec in ulla omnino re ab his quae praecipis deviare; his vero qui nondum in te credunt, antequam de hac vita exeant, da fidem et dilectionem sanctissimi nominis tui suscipere, et susceptam usque in finem rectam et inviolatam custodire.

Sit omnibus vivis et defunctis sacrificium tui corporis et sanguinis remissio omnium peccatorum: vivis quidem, qui recte vivunt, et, si nondum recte vivunt, recte quandoque vivere volunt; defunctis autem, qui per hoc sacrificium se sperant in misericordia tua accipere remissionem suarum iniquitatum, et post haec pervenire ad gloriam sempiternam regnumque coelorum.

Credimus de te, Domine Jesu Christe, quia tu idem ipse, qui es Filius Dei, es Filius Virginis tu idem ipse, qui in principio eras Verbum, et Verbum eras apud Deum, et Deus eras Verbum, et per quod omnia facta sunt; a Patre ante omnia saecula genitus, in tempore es ex Virgine natus quamvis altera natura sis quam Pater, postquam factus es Filius Virginis et habitasti in nobis; altera natura existens, secundum quod Filius Dei es quamvis in duabus naturis tua persona, Deus et homo, existis aequalis Patri secundum divinitatem, minor Patre secundum humanitatem. Quia vero tu idem ipse Deus qui homo, et qui homo Deus; propterea sanctissima Virgo quae te portavit, ab omnibus fidelibus Θεοτόκος praedicatur et creditur, hoc est Mater Dei. Et quia tu non alter Filius Dei, alter Filius hominis, sed tu idem ipse Filius Dei, qui Filius hominis passionem et mortem pro salute humani generis suscepisti, non in natura deitatis, sed in natura humanitatis; tu idem ipse, non alter propter distantiam naturae, sicut nec una natura existens propter unitatem personae.

Est adhuc, dulcissime Domine Jesu Christe, quod de ineffabili charitate qua nos diligis, cogitare possumus et debemus quod nobis miseris peccatoribus, ad indicium tuae magnae dilectionis, in hoc mysterio tui corporis et sanguinis ostendis. Cum aliquis homo alterum hominem, sicuti plus potest, diligit; praeter alia, vi dilectionis forsitan potest pro eo mori, si ita dilectio exigit; quod tamen raro accidit ut quis hoc pro suo dilecto velit pati. Quod si unquam amicus pro amico facit in magnam admirationem magnumque stuporem omnes qui hoc audiunt, convertit. Tu vero, dulcissime Domine Jesu, non solum pro amicis, sed et pro inimicis mori voluisti et non solum hoc, sed et istud quod nullus facere pro amico vult fecisti, et adhuc facis, videlicet cum teipsum, qui pro nobis mortem sustinuisti, das ad manducandum et bibendum in hoc mysterio tui corporis et sanguinis, manducamus corpus tuum et bibimus sanguinem tuum, scilicet nostrae redemptionis pretium. Da mihi ergo, Domine Jesu, sic vivere, sic caste et sancte deinceps tui altaris servitium facere ut sic vivendo, sic faciendo, sic carnem manducando et sanguinem bibendo, post mortem carnis ab omnibus peccatis absolutus ad te Creatorem meum et Redemptorem recto itinere valeam pervenire, ubi te cum omnibus sanctis in aeterna felicitate sine fine possim laudare et benedicere.

Scripture echoes

  1. ↩Ps.37.10 — And yet a little while, and the wicked one will be no more; you will look carefully at his place, and he will not be there.
  2. ↩Ps.50.3 — Our God comes and will not be silent; a fire devours before him, and around him a great tempest rages.
  3. ↩Matt.22.39;Mark.12.31;Lev.19.18 — And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Mark.12.31 — The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. Lev.19.18 — You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.
  4. ↩John.1.1 — In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
  5. ↩John.1.3 — All things came into being through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into being that has come into being.
  6. ↩John.1.14 — And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.
  7. ↩Luke.1.43 — And why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
  8. ↩Phil.2.6-Phil.2.7 — who, existing in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to exploit, Phil.2.7 — but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and appearing as a human being.
  9. ↩Heb.2.14 — Since, therefore, the children have shared in blood and flesh, he himself also in like manner partook of the same, so that through death he might destroy the one having the power of death, that is, the devil,

Notes

  1. 1 ↩The Latin is a chain of juxtaposed noun phrases without a main verb; the English supplies 'is' to render the predicative force while preserving the rhetorical parallelism.
  2. 2 ↩The opening 'Miserere ergo mei, Deus' echoes the psalmist's plea; 'ergo' carries inferential force ('then / therefore') linking the petition to the confession of misery and mercy in the previous sentence.
  3. 3 ↩The ut clause is most likely purpose ('so that I may not'), though a result reading is also possible; purpose chosen as the more natural devotional sense.
  4. 4 ↩The ut after rationabile is most likely a complementizer ('that we ought'), though purpose/result is also possible; complementizer chosen as the more natural reading with 'reasonable'.
  5. 5 ↩The semicolon marks a contrastive shift (signaled by vero) between two groups: believers who already have faith and those who do not yet believe; the English preserves this two-part structure.
  6. 6 ↩The prayer extends the Eucharistic sacrifice's efficacy to both the living and the dead, distinguishing two groups among the living (those who live rightly and those who desire to) and one among the dead (those who place their hope in God's mercy through this sacrifice). The theology of Eucharistic intercession for the departed is implicit.

Orationes sive Meditationes — Collection for Princess Adeliza of Normandy companion

There are 90 more prayers where these came from

Chosen Portion delivers the full Anselm collection — and the wider royal devotional archive — one daily prayer at a time, free.

Anselm told Adeliza to take these prayers a little at a time, and Chosen Portion does exactly that — serving the collection as paced daily portions rather than a book to skim.

  • Pray through all 97 of Anselm's prayers and meditations, one portion each day
  • Each prayer is broken into short sections so a 100-sentence meditation fits a 10-minute sitting
  • Morning reminder at your chosen time, so the day starts with a written prayer instead of a blank
Chosen Portion — Daily Prayer (free iOS app) →