Could you not watch one hour with me?

Prayers to carry you through sixty minutes.

The holy hour takes its name and its reproach from Gethsemane: <em>Could you not watch one hour with me?</em> Venerable Fulton Sheen made a daily holy hour for fifty-five years and credited it with everything. These are the prayers most often used to keep one.

To Begin

Lord Jesus, truly present before me in this sacrament,
I have come to be with You.
I bring nothing but my attention, and not much of that.
Quiet me. Hold my wandering mind.
And if I do nothing this hour but sit here,
let that be enough, because You asked for it. Amen.

In the Middle

Use the Anima Christi, the Adoro Te Devote, the Divine Praises, a psalm, or the Gospel of the day. Many pray a Rosary in the second half-hour. Some simply sit.

A Prayer of Reparation

Jesus, in the Blessed Sacrament, You are left alone in a thousand churches tonight.
I cannot be in all of them, so let this hour count for them too.
For every tabernacle without a visitor,
for every Mass attended without attention,
for every Communion received without love —
I am sorry, and I am here. Amen.

To Close

Lord, the hour is over and I am no holier than when I came in,
as far as I can tell.
But You saw it, and that is the point.
Keep me faithful to this hour when it feels useless,
which is most of the time,
and let it work in me the change I cannot feel. Amen.

About the Holy Hour

Fulton Sheen’s counsel to priests and laity alike was to keep the hour whatever the mood, and never to judge it by how it felt. The one hour a day, he said, is not a devotional extra but the source of everything else — and the only hour in a busy life that gives more than it takes.