Edward McNamara, LC
(ZENIT News / Rome, 03.26.2025).- Answered by Legionary of Christ Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy and sacramental theology and director of the Sacerdos Institute at the Pontifical Regina Apostolorum university.
Q: A priest has added “Blessed be Jesus in the poorest of the poor” to the Divine Praises in our Benediction service. Is that permitted? — P.S., Montreal
A: We wrote some months ago (October 27, 2024) regarding the recitation of the Divine Praises at Benediction.
We recalled that the prayers called the Divine Praises, or the prayers of reparation for profanity and blasphemy, are a sequence of acclamations, blessing God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and all the angels and saints.
They were originally composed in 1797, in Italian, by Jesuit Father Luigi Felici (1736-1818). He composed them after working pastorally with the sailors of Ripa Grande, a fluvial port on Rome’s Tiber River.
The original version had eight praises. Over the centuries the popes have added another six: “Blessed be her holy and Immaculate Conception” added by Pius IX in 1851; “Blessed be his Most Sacred Heart” by Leo XIII in 1897; “Blessed be St Joseph, her most chaste spouse” by Benedict XV in 1921; “Blessed be her glorious Assumption, by Pius XII in 1952; “Blessed be his Most Precious Blood” by John XXIII in 1960; “Blessed be the Holy Spirit the Paraclete,” by Paul VI in 1964.
Insofar as there is an official Latin text, it would be that found in the Compendium Eucharisticum published by the Congregation for Divine Worship in 2009, which recovered the Divine Praises within the rite of exposition and Benediction.
According to the rubrics, these may be used as an acclamation of the people while the Blessed Sacrament is being reposed following Benediction. It is implied that alternative acclamations may also be used but these are not provided in the ritual.
However, they are clearly seen as belonging to the area of custom and, at least in practice, the power to add new invocations to the divine praises would seem to be reserved to the popes. However, this possibility cannot be excluded a priori.
I think there are two questions to be addressed.
First, is the proposed new invocation in line with the historical, spiritual and doctrinal context of the Divine Praises?
As mentioned above, the Divine Praises were specifically composed to contrast and make reparation for profanity and blasphemy as these were frequently aimed against the subjects mentioned in the Praises such as the holy names of Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the Holy Eucharist.
The invocation “Blessed be Jesus in the poorest of the poor” is doctrinally correct but does not seem to have been the object of profanity and blasphemy.
We could certainly consider the mistreatment and degradation of the poorest of the poor as a blasphemous insult toward the Christ who is in them, but here we would be broadening the category of blasphemy beyond that used in the composition of the original invocations.
The second question regards the necessity of some form of approval. Because they are habitually used in the context of a liturgical rite, do they require some form of official approval to be publicly used?
Here a clarification is in order.
In Church parlance, the expressions private and public differ from common usage. We usually understand public as signifying something done in full view of all or at least in situations where people gather. This would include any activity done in a church building or an open square. Private usually infers an activity carried out alone or within the confines of a domestic setting or closed group.
In ecclesiastical language, however, the term public commonly refers to that which has been formally approved as part of the Church’s official liturgical rites. Private refers to what falls outside the officially approved liturgical sphere. Under this concept, a text, such as a litany, or certain processions, can be officially approved (insofar as they are doctrinally sound) but only for private, not liturgical, use.
Consequently, these actions do not become public even if recited in common by thousands of people. They would still be considered as belonging to the sphere of private devotion.
It is true that the theological concept of liturgy has expanded so that it is no longer limited to formally approved texts alone and so the sharp lines between the concepts of public and private devotions have become more diffused. And yet, the expressions still have some use and can be found in many spiritual writings on devotions.
Historically, before Pope Clement VIII regulated and limited the publication of public litanies by a decree on September 6, 1601, there were more than 60 known litanies.
Many sources state that 400 years after the Clementine decree there were only six “official” litanies that may be prayed in the public setting – that is, within the Church’s liturgy. According to general liturgical principles, no one should attempt to adjust or alter these prayers, but rather follow the Church’s official texts and norms of use.
These six are: Litany of the saints (first recorded AD 590); Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary (a.k.a. Litany of Loreto) composed originally in France between 1150 and 1200, formally adopted at the Marian Shrine of Loreto in Italy in 1558; the Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus probably inspired by saints Bernadine of Siena (1380-1444) and John Capistrano (1386-1456) and formally approved for public use by Leo XIII in 1886; the Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus originally compiled between 1686 and 1718 and approved for public use by Leo XIII in 1899; the Litany of St. Joseph, approved for public use by Pius X in 1909; and the Litany of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus.
This last litany was drawn up by the Sacred Congregation of Rites and promulgated by John XXIII on February 24, 1960.
Since the Second Vatican Council, however, other litanies and invocations have been composed and published in official sources, including some included in the above-mentioned Compendium Eucharisticum. These, as well as texts such as the Divine Praises, have official approval and may be used in liturgical contexts and yet are not strictly obligatory.
They thus occupy a gray area between a strictly liturgical text and those litanies and invocations which are limited to non-liturgical or “private” contexts.
Since a prolonged period of exposition embraces moments of private devotion and moments of strictly “public” liturgical prayer such as the rites of exposition, Benediction, and reservation, some of the above prayers can be used in either moment while others fall more naturally into one or the other.
Given this ambiguous status, and in the name of theological and spiritual coherence, I think it would be better to leave the Divine Praises as they are found in the official books and in their customary place in the rites of reservation with no personal additions.
That said, the intuition of an expression such as “Blessed be Jesus in the poorest of the poor” could provoke the composition of a beautiful and meaningful new set of invocations dedicated to the multiple ways of the Lord’s presence in the Church and the world.
These other invocations, once approved by the bishop, may be used during the time of adoration and in other moments of prayer that are not part of the strictly liturgical rites.
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Readers may send questions to zenit.liturgy@gmail.com. Please put the word «Liturgy» in the subject field. The text should include your initials, your city and your state, province or country. Father McNamara can only answer a small selection of the great number of questions that arrive.
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