Return to Prayer of the Month

A Communion Prayer

August 2005

Grant, O Lord, that when I draw near to you to communicate, I may discern the infinite perspectives hidden beneath the smallness and nearness of the bread and wine in which you are concealed. Let me see in that piece of bread a devouring power, which far from being consumed by me, consumes me. Give me the strength to rise above my illusions, which tend to think that Communion is just a small tasting of a liquid and a solid.

Help me to understand that through these material things, these elements of bread and wine, you touch me, and so material things are not to be despised in contrast to so-called spiritual things, but rather matter leads us on to spirit just as the universe leads us on to God.

In a true sense, Lord Jesus, the arms and heart that you open to me are nothing less than the united powers of your world, which penetrated to their depths by your will, converge upon my being to fill me, nourish me, and bear me along towards the center of your fire.

Thus in this sacramental supper, Lord Jesus, it is my life you are offering to me.

How can I respond to your universal and enveloping love? How can I even comprehend such love? To the total offer that is made to me, I can respond only with total acceptance. I can react to your presence in the Eucharist only with the entire effort of my life.

Lord, in the days and weeks and months ahead, I may forget this moment of communion. I will do many other things, have many other thoughts. But no communion is ever wasted. Each time I receive your heavenly supper, I am drawn a little more deeply into your omnipresent being. I am drawn forward toward your kingdom. Your Eucharist invades my life, and gradually changes my way to your way.

As the waters of baptism unite me with you and your church, so the Lord’s Supper now reveals itself as a communion with you through the world. It is the sacrament of life, the sacrament of my life.

Lord Jesus, because you ascended to heaven after having descended into hell, you have filled the universe in every direction; so it is impossible for anyone to escape from you.

Now I know that neither life, whose advance increases your hold on me, nor death, which throws me into your hands, nor the energies of matter into which you have plunged, nor the irreversible stream of time whose flow you control, nor the unfathomable abysses of space, which are the measure of your greatness—none of these things can separate me from your great love, because they are all only the veil though which you take hold of me so that I can take hold of you. Lord, all things lead me to you

To “adore” means to lose myself in the unfathomable, to plunge myself into the inexhaustible, to find peace in the incorruptible, to offer myself to the fire, to give myself to the highest and the best that I know. Whom then can I adore? Only my risen savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Lord Jesus, disperse the clouds with your lightning. Show yourself to us as the Mighty, the Radiant, the Risen. Come to us as the all-creator who fills the solitude of our hearts. Amen.

If you have questions or comments, email Tony Grant

Last Modified: 08/16/05