Adore te devote

Categories: hymns

Date: 25 June 2007 10:41:36

A hymn composed by St Thomas Aquinas. I find the translation in verse found in the Monastic Diurnal, where it appears as part of the Thanksgiving after Mass, particularly beautiful to pray when I get home from Divine Liturgy.

Humbly I adore thee, Deity unseen,
Who thy glory hidest 'neath these shadows mean;
Lo, to thee surrended, my whole heart is bowed,
Tranced as it beholds thee shrined within the cloud.

Taste and touch and vision to discern thee fail;
Faith, that comes by hearing, pierces through the veil.
I believe whate'er the Son of God hath told;
What the Truth hath spoken, that for truth I hold.

On the Cross lay hidden but thy Deity,
Here, too, is concealed thy Humanity;
But in both believing and confessing, Lord,
Ask I what the dying thief of thee implored.

Thy dread wounds, like Thomas, though I cannot see,
His be my confession, Lord and God, of thee.
Lord, my faith unfeigned evermore increase;
Give me hope unfailing, love that cannot cease.

O Memorial wondrous of the Lord's own death,
Living Bread, that givest all thy creatures breath,
Grant my spirit ever by thy life may live,
To my taste thy sweetness never failing give.

Pelican(*) of mercy, Jesu, Lord and God,
Cleanse me, wretched sinner, in thy precious Blood;
Blood, whereof one drop for humankind outpoured,
Might from all transgression have the world restored.

Jesu, whom now veiled I by faith descry,
What my soul doth thirst for, do not, Lord, deny,
That thy face unveiled I at last may see,
With the blissful vision blest, my God, of thee.

Amen.

(*) For the pelican as symbol of Christ's Passion and the Eucharist, see this Wikipedia article.