Eucharistic Rosary ¹

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God of hosts.
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

Introduction

Pope Saint John Paul II wrote in the encyclical letter Ecclesia de Eucharistia:

The Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed” (1 Cor 11:23) instituted the Eucharistic Sacrifice of his Body and his Blood …. The Eucharist is indelibly marked by the event of the Lord’s Passion and death, of which it is not only a reminder but the sacramental re-presentation. It is the sacrifice of the Cross perpetuated down the ages. This truth is well expressed by the words with which the assembly in the Latin rite responds to the priest’s proclamation of the “Mystery of Faith”: “We announce your death, 0 Lord”.

[The sacrifice of the Cross] is so decisive for the salvation of the human race that Jesus Christ offered it and returned to the Father only after he had left us a means of sharing in it. [Through the Holy Eucharist] each member of the faithful can ‘” take part in it and inexhaustibly gain its fruits. I wish once more to recall this truth and to join you, my dear brothers and sisters, in adoration before this mystery: a great mystery, a mystery of mercy. What more could Jesus have done for us? Truly, in the Eucharist, he shows us a love which goes “to the end” (cf. In l3:1), a love which knows no measure.

Beginning of the prayers of the Rosary: Creed, Our Father, three Hail Mary’s …

1. From the Gospel of St. John (6:40-45)

V. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
R. Because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him (on) the last day.” The Jews murmured about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and they said, “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Do we not know his father and mother? Then how can he say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Stop murmuring among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets: ‘They shan all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me.

Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) 1336: The first announcement of the Eucharist divided the disciples, just as the announcement of the Passion scandalized them: “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” The Eucharist and the Cross are stumbling blocks. It is the same mystery and it never ceases to be an occasion of division. “Will you also go away?”: the Lord’s question echoes through the ages, as a loving invitation to discover that only he has “the words of eternal life”

Silence

Decade of the Rosary

ALL: Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.

2. Consoling Jesus in the Holy Eucharist

V. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
R. Because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

Every day Jesus in his Eucharist is delivered up, denied by cowardice and human respect. The Holy Eucharist is the Passion continued and renewed! One might object: But Jesus is glorious, immortal, impassable in the Blessed Sacrament! Why picture him to us as suffering, when he can suffer no more and as humiliated when he reigns as King triumphant?

It is true, and very fortunate that Jesus Eucharistic can die no more, that men’s hatred could wreak itself upon his sacred person only once at Jerusalem’ But do sins, insults, and sacrileges wound the living Heart of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament less grievously because He is beyond the physical reach of the tortures, which our arms of flesh would make him undergo? To this we may recall the words of St. Augustine which are very fitting here, – “Give me one who loves, and he will understand what I say.” In the moment when he instituted the Most Blessed Sacrament, there passed before his soul the vision of the outrages, insults, and profanations, which would be heaped upon him in the course of the centuries. By his foreknowledge of the future he saw in their very smallest details, in their most secret and delicate subtleties, the acts of indifference, the sacrileges, and the profanations, which our malice held in store for him.

The connection between Calvary and the Holy Eucharist is so close that no soul can enter truly and at all intimately into union with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament without feeling the need of consoling him, of compassionating His sufferings, even though he does not understand how his poor prayers can be a consolation to Jesus. A soul dedicated to the Holy Eucharist feels in its heart that the Passion still continues. It is the Eucharistic Passion of Jesus with which the soul wishes to sympathize.

Silence

Decade of the Rosary

ALL: Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.

3. Jesus Is Condemned To Death

V. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
R. Because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

Jesus is condemned by his own people by the very ones he showered with his favors. He is condemned as a fomenter of rebellion, he who is goodness itself; as a blasphemer, he who is holiness itself: as one seeking power, he who made himself the least of all. He is condemned to die on the Cross, like the lowest of slaves.

Jesus lovingly accepts this sentence of death: He came down to this earth in order to suffer and die and to teach us to do the same. In his Holy Eucharist Jesus is again condemned to death: primarily in his graces, which are rejected; in his love, which is slighted; in his sacramental state, by the unbeliever who denies him, by horrible sacrilege. By unworthy Communion, the bad Christian sells Jesus Christ to the devil, delivers him up to his own passions, casts him at the feet of Satan, king of his heart, and crucifies him in his sinful body.

Jesus is more cruelly treated by bad Christians than by the Jews. In Jerusalem he was condemned only once but in the Blessed Sacrament he is condemned every day and in thousands of places, and by an appalling number of unjust judges.

And yet Jesus allows himself to be insulted, despised, condemned: he still continues his sacramental life in order to show us that his love for us is without condition or reserve, that it is greater than our ingratitude.

ALL: O Jesus forgive, I beseech you, all sacrileges! Should I ever have committed any, I want to pass my life making reparation for them and loving and honoring you for those who despise you. Grant me the grace to die with you!

Silence

Decade of the Rosary

ALL: Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.

4. Jesus Is Made To Bear His Cross

V. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
R. Because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

In Jerusalem the Jews lay a shameful and heavy Cross upon Jesus. It was the instrument used at that time for the punishment of the basest of men. Jesus joyfully takes upon himself this overburdening Cross; he receives it eagerly, kisses it lovingly, and bears it with meekness.

In this way he wishes to make it sweet to us, lighten it for us, and consecrate it in his Blood.

In the divine Sacrament of the altar, bad Christians lay a much heavier Cross upon Jesus, one much more shameful for his Heart. This Cross is their acts of irreverence in the holy place, their distracted thoughts, their coldness of heart in his presence, their lukewarm devotion. What a humiliating Cross it is for Jesus, to have children so lacking in respect, disciples so worthless!

Jesus also bears my crosses in his Sacrament. He places them on his Heart to sanctify them; he covers them with his love, with his kisses, in order to make them attractive to me, but he wants me to carry them for him, to offer them to him; he is even willing to listen to the outpourings of my grief, to let me weep over my crosses and ask help and consolation of him.

Oh, how light is the cross that comes by way of the Holy Eucharist! How beautiful and radiant it comes forth from the Heart of Jesus! How good it is to receive it from his hands and to kiss it after him! To the Eucharist then I will run for refuge in my troubles; to him will I go for comfort and strength; to him will I go to learn to suffer and to love!

ALL: Forgive, O Lord, all who treat you irreverently in your Sacrament of love! Forgive my moments of indifference, of forgetfulness in your presence! I wish to love you; I do love you with an my heart!

Silence

Decade of the Rosary

ALL: Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.

5. Jesus Falls The First Time

V. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you.
R. Because by your holy Cross, you have redeemed the world.

Jesus has lost so much blood during the three hours of his agony and beneath the blows of the scourge, he is so weakened by the cruel night passed under the guard of his enemies, that after walking a short distance he falls beneath the weight of his Cross. How many times Jesus Eucharistic falls in particles of the Sacred Species without anyone being aware of it!

But what makes him fall from grief is the sight of a soul sullied by mortal sin!

Ah, how much more painfully Jesus falls in a young heart that receives him unworthily on the day of its First Holy Communion! He falls on that icy heart which the fire of his love cannot melt; on that proud and dissembling spirit without being able to touch it; in that body which is but a tomb full of rottenness. Alas, ought we to treat Jesus like that the first time he so lovingly visits us? 0 God! So young and already so guilty! To begin so soon to be a Judas! How painful to the Heart of Jesus must be the sin of this sacrilegious First Communion!

ALL: O Jesus! I thank you for the love, which you showed me in my First Communion: never shall I forget it! I am yours, wholly yours, for you are wholly mine: do with me, as you will.

Silence

Decade of the Rosary

ALL: Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. And through the infinite merit of His Most Sacred Heart, and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of Thee the conversion of poor sinners.

If time permits, the leader (or each one Silently) can pray:

Jesus, I beg You for a drop of Your most Precious Blood in this hour of Your most bitter agony for [insert intention]
-for the Holy Church
-for our Holy Father
-for our bishops
-for the sanctification of priests
-for vocations to the priesthood and religious life
-for the conversion of sinners
-for our country
-for an end of abortion and contraception
-for an end of divorce
-for sanctification of family life
-for all who are dying
-for the Poor Souls in purgatory
( … for personal intentions)
Prayers for the intention of the Holy Father

Holy, holy, holy …

*Meditations taken from
Eucharistic Stations of the Cross, by St. Peter Julian Eymard