The Praying Francis

(part 2)

We Adore You,
O Lord Jesus Christ!

The one who is faithful in little things will be faithful also in large things,
our Lord said in the Gospel.  To Francis of Assisi, the Holy Spirit entrusted a prayer,
brief in words but powerful in meaning:
My God and my All.
And because Francis was faithful in making this prayer the center of his spiritual striving,
the Holy Spirit was able to entrust to him a larger prayer,
one of universal dimensions.

     
     That the prayer We Adore You (in Latin, Adoramus Te) was the fruit of divine inspiration St. Francis makes quite clear in his Testament:

And God inspired me with such faith in churches
that I used to pray with all simplicity, saying:

WE ADORE YOU, O LORD JESUS CHRIST,
 HERE AND IN ALL THE CHURCHES IN THE WHOLE WORLD,
AND WE BLESS YOU,
BECAUSE BY YOUR HOLY CROSS
YOU HAVE REDEEMED THE WORLD!

     What a tremendous prayer this is!   A prayer that has come down to us directly from our Seraphic Father, whom God placed at the head of sinful yet grateful humanity bowed down in wonder and in worship before His Son truly present in the Blessed Sacrament.   What a call to faith… to praise… to adoration!

     Let us keep company with St. Francis in offering to God an unceasing hymn of praise, glory, love, thanksgiving, blessing and adoration.  Let us give the Most High that which is His by right; let us acknowledge our indebtedness to His crucified and risen Son, with us always in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar.   Let us often greet our hidden Lord with this burning prayer – as did Francis and his first followers – when we receive Him in Holy Communion, when we visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament, when we pass by churches where He dwells.   Then we shall become, as our Father St. Francis was, true “heralds of the Great King,” real apostles of the Eucharist.

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