Eucharistic Adoration
Prayer before the exposed sacrament, often silent and often for a set hour.
Prayer before the consecrated host, which Catholics believe remains the body of Christ after Mass. The host may be reserved in a tabernacle or solemnly exposed on the altar, and parishes schedule periods of adoration, sometimes around the clock. The practice is quiet and largely unscripted: Scripture reading, the rosary, or silence. An hour spent this way is commonly called a holy hour.
Adoration is prayer in the presence of the consecrated host, displayed in a monstrance or reserved in the tabernacle. Much of it is silent. Parishes that keep perpetual adoration divide the day into hours and sign people up for them, so someone is present at every hour including the small ones.
It is unstructured in a way most Catholic prayer is not: there is no script, and a person may read, pray a rosary, sit, or do nothing in particular.
Benediction, the blessing given with the sacrament at the end of a period of adoration, does have a fixed shape and its own hymns.
Does it have a text?
The adoration itself has no text. The hymns and prayers around Benediction do, and this site holds the Anima Christi, traditionally said after communion, from two named editions of 1889 and 1910.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Catholic
- The Mass — The central act of Catholic worship, fixed in text and repeated daily worldwide.
- The Liturgy of the Hours — The prayer of the psalms at set times of day, obligatory for clergy and open to anyone.
- The Rosary — A counted devotion pairing repeated prayers with meditation on events in the life of Christ.
- Novenas — Nine days of prayer for a particular intention, usually to a particular saint.
- Catholic personal and meditative prayer — Prayer in a person's own words, and the meditative disciplines the tradition teaches.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.