Catholic Prayer: A Prayer for the Wheat (Feast of Corpus Christi)

Description:

This prayer is from the lovely prayerbook The Rural Life Prayerbook, written and compiled by Alban J. Dachauer, S.J. and printed by the National Catholic Rural Life Conference in 1956 (and recently reprinted by TAN Books).

Prayer:

DEAR Lord, in many broad fields of this vast country of ours, the wheat is growing now. Some is still young and green, some is headed out, and all, before very long, will be golden ripe.

Most of it, dear Lord Jesus, will go to feed the hungry. In countless loaves of bread and in cereals, it will find its way to tables in city and country almost all over the world.

Some of it will be used at another table. It will be ground into fine flour and used to make the hosts, the altar-breads for Holy Mass. Priests will take it into their anointed hands and pronounce over it the words of consecration, and it will cease to be ordinary bread, and will become the Bread of angels. It will look as it did before, but we know and believe that it will be the Body and Blood, the Soul and Divinity of You, Lord Jesus Christ, there really present, under the appearances of bread.

O Jesus, bless the broad, rich fields of wheat in our whole land. Protect them from hail and beating rains, from blight and rust, from windstorms and drought. Let them be full and rich, so that the hungry may be fed, and may praise You and thank You as You deserve. And may all the Holy Masses that will be said with hosts made of this wheat hasten the day when at last there will be enough reapers working in Your harvest, which is ripe and ready now, waiting only to be gathered home. Amen.

Prayer Source: Rural Life Prayerbook by Alban J. Dachauer, S.J., National Catholic Rural Life Conference, 4625 Beaver Avenue, Des Moines, Iowa 50310 ncrlc.com, 1956