Ancient and beautiful Post Communion Prayer

From the great Dom Prosper Gueranger, a prayer from The Liturgy of The Apostolic Constitutions that ABS has used for a very very long time. It is sublime, inspiriting and teeming with treasured thoughts

Let us once more borrow from the Liturgy of the Apostolic Constitutions (Book 8th). The following formula of Thanksgiving after Communion will tell us what is the spirit of the Church, and what she would have us do at that precious time. We find what she is intent upon,—she is all taken up with the great interests of Jesus, her Spouse. In this ecstasy of her love, in this moment of her intimate union with her God, she strives to keep her children from having narrow-minded thoughts, and intentions which look to nothing beyond one’s self, the result of private devotion, so unseasonable for such grand acts of the Christian life as are the Sacrifice of Mass and Communion in the universal Victim, as we have heard the Fathers expressing it. Scarcely, then, have the sacred species been distributed, than the Deacon cries out: Surgamus, Let us rise! Thereupon, all stand up, and unite in this prayer, which is read by the Bishop:


Invocatio Post Communionem

O Lord God almighty, thy blessed Son! who graciously hearest them that call upon thee in uprightness, who knowest the prayers of those even who are silent; we thank thee for thou hast deemed us worthy to partake of thy sacred mysteries thou hast given to us, for fully strengthening our faith in those things which we so well know, for the preservation of piety, and for the forgiveness of our sins; for the name of thy Christ has been invoked upon us, and we have been joined to thee.

O thou that has separated us from communion with the ungodly, unite us with them that are consecrated to thee, strengthen us in the truth, by the coming of the Holy Ghost, teach us the things we know not, supply our deficiencies, confirm us in the truths we already know.

Preserve they priests blameless in thy service. Keep kings in peace, magistrates in justice, the air salubrious, thy fruits in abundance, the world in thy almighty providence. Pacify nations that are waging war. Convert them that are astray. 

Sanctify thy people; preserve thy virgins; keep in fidelity them that are in wedlock; strengthen the chaste; lead little ones to mature age; confirm the newly initiated; teach the catechumens and make them worthy of initiation; and gather us all together into the kingdom of heaven, in Christ Jesus our Lord.


To whom, together with thee, and the Holy Ghost, be glory, honor, and adoration for ever. Amen