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Spiritual Communion (Opus Dei)

Opus Dei

1 min

I wish, my Lord and my God, to receive You with the purity, humility and love with which your Most Holy Mother received You, and with the spirit and fervour of the Saints.

About this prayer

A single sentence, made many times a day: the desire to receive Christ with the purity, humility and love of His Mother, and with the spirit and fervour of the saints.

History

Spiritual communion is old — St. Thomas Aquinas treats it as the *votum*, the desire, that already reaches the sacrament's grace, and St. Teresa and St. Alphonsus both urged it constantly. What is proper to the Work is the form: one sentence, short enough to be prayed walking, at a desk, in a queue.

It is used in two ways. When sacramental Communion is impossible — travel, illness, a day that gives no Mass — it stands in for it. And through an ordinary day it is one of the standard aspirations, a repeated act of desire that keeps the morning's Communion working through the afternoon. St. Josemaría made it the closing prayer of the customary visit to the Blessed Sacrament.

How to pray it

Pray it slowly, meaning the comparison rather than reciting it: with *her* purity, *her* humility, *her* love — because yours will not do, and you are asking to borrow.

Make it several times a day: passing a church, at the start of a difficult task, when you remember that this morning you received Him and have half-forgotten it since. It closes the visit to the Blessed Sacrament, and it is the natural prayer on any day you cannot get to Mass.

Opus Dei *Pocket Prayer Book*, section on Eucharistic adoration. Spanish original: *Yo quisiera, Señor, recibiros con aquella pureza, humildad y devoción con que os recibió vuestra Santísima Madre, con el espíritu y fervor de los santos.*