Prayer Before Meals
Bless us, O Lord, and these your gifts
which we are about to receive from your goodness.
Through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
The English translation of the Prayer Before Meals and the Prayer After Meals from Book of Blessings © 1988, International Committee on English in the Liturgy, Inc. (ICEL). All rights reserved.
I made a startling discovery when I was reading a biography of St. Catherine Laboure.* The story takes place in early 1800s France and describes the sisters as saying the same meal grace that my family has always said—the one that Catholics use most of the time that starts out, “Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts…” According to The Life of Catherine Laboure by Fr. Rene Laurentin, this is the grace that monastics have used for centuries.
How come I didn’t know that?
No one ever told me we were saying grace around our little kitchen table the same way that monks and nuns say it in their refectories. And then, when I looked up “refectory,” I found out that it literally means, the place where one goes to be restored, and it shared the same root word as “restaurant.”
Wait. This realization left me with lots of questions. When we eat together as a family and we ask the same blessing on our food those communities of vowed religious do, then does that mean we are “restored” by our ordinary hot dogs, hamburgers, and pizzas? Even when we eat them in restaurants? Does our simple, family mealtime grace connect us to the historical, worldwide Church? Could it be that family prayer binds the Church together as much as the other way around?
Anyway, it was a good book. I recommend it.
*St. Catherine is the Daughter of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul who received a vision of Our Lady when Mary wanted the Miraculous Medal to be distributed.
By Jane Knuth