Prayer before a crucifix
Here I am, O good and most sweet Jesus, kneeling before you. With all the longing of my soul I pray and implore you to press deep into my heart a living faith, hope and love, true sorrow for my sins, and a firm will to amend my life, while with great love and grief I look upon your five wounds and ponder them in my mind, keeping before my eyes the words that the prophet David long ago put on your lips, O good Jesus:
“They have pierced my hands and my feet; they have counted all my bones.” Amen.
Text: our own text or translation, written for Verso.
In Latin
En ego, o bone et dulcissime Iesu, ante conspectum tuum genibus me provolvo, ac maximo animi ardore te oro atque obtestor, ut meum in cor vividos fidei, spei et caritatis sensus, atque veram peccatorum meorum paenitentiam, eaque emendandi firmissimam voluntatem velis imprimere; dum magno animi affectu et dolore tua quinque vulnera mecum ipse considero ac mente contemplor, illud prae oculis habens, quod iam in ore ponebat tuo David propheta de te, o bone Iesu:
“Foderunt manus meas et pedes meos: dinumeraverunt omnia ossa mea.” Amen.
About this prayer
A Latin prayer of unknown authorship, said kneeling before an image of Christ crucified and closing with words from Psalm 22:16-17. It became a favourite prayer after Communion in the nineteenth century, and Catholics still pray it especially on the Fridays of Lent. Our English follows the Latin; the Spanish is the form widely prayed today.