Believing that the Eucharist is God and adoring Him in what looks like a piece of bread requires becoming like children. Perhaps these simple prayers will help you to do this, as Jesus told us. These prayers are from children whom today the Church recognizes as saints or blessed, or who perhaps soon will be.
Anyone of any age can pray them and listen to them easily. They express the spiritual childhood of those who recognize their littleness and trust in Jesus and his Church. That is why it’s easy to make them our own and let what we feel and need flow through them … because we’re all children before God!
1
BLESSED CARLO ACUTIS
“Jesus, take a seat! Make yourself at home!” Blessed (soon to be saint) Carlo Acutis is said to have prayed upon receiving Communion. He used to say that the Eucharist was his highway to heaven. From the time he made his First Communion, he went to Mass every day until his death at only 15 years old.
2
LAURA VICUÑA
“O my God, I want to love You and serve You all my life. I give you my soul, my heart, my whole self.”
Laura Vicuña wrote these words for her First Communion. This little girl offered her life in sacrifice to Jesus asking especially for her mother, as she confessed to Him before dying at the age of 12.
3
THE LITTLE SHEPHERDS OF FÁTIMA
“My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love you! I ask your forgiveness for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope, and do not love you!”
Francisco, Jacinta, and Lucia, the three little shepherd seers of Fatima, prayed this prayer on their knees with their foreheads on the ground, as they claimed an angel had instructed them to do.
4
ST. JOSÉ SÁNCHEZ DEL RÍO
“Long live Christ the King!”
The last words of the Mexican boy St. José Sánchez del Río — like those of many martyrs — can become a simple praise before the Blessed Sacrament.
5
ST. DOMINIC SAVIO
“I need nothing from this world in order to be happy. I need only to contemplate you in Heaven, Jesus, whom I now see and adore on the Altar, with the eyes of faith.”
This prayer is an adaptation of some words from the personal diary of little St. Dominic Savio, who spent hours in ecstasy before the Eucharist.
6
JOSEPH RATZINGER
“I would like to be always with you … but above all, be always with me.” Benedict XVI made this prayer to Jesus the first time he received Communion, when he was 9 years old.
7
ST. THERESE OF LISIEUX
“Living Bread, Bread of Heaven, divine Eucharist, soul-stirring mystery that produced love! Come and dwell in my breast, Jesus, my white host, just for today!”
St. Therese of the Child Jesus, teacher of spiritual childhood, wrote these words which belong to a longer poem she dedicated to her older sister for her saint’s day.
And today we celebrate...