Forty Hours Devotion — St Bernadette’s, 2026
“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Let us stay with those words for a moment. Love… with all your heart.
The heart with which we love our family. The heart that carries hopes and disappointments. The heart that sometimes feels generous, and sometimes feels tired or closed. This is the heart God asks for. What could it mean to give it to him?
For nearly a decade, we have celebrated the Forty Hours devotion at our parish. This tradition developed in sixteenth-century Italy and was promoted in Rome by St Philip Neri, the founder of the Oratory. Its forty hours traditionally recall the time Our Lord’s body lay in the tomb. We keep watch before the One who died and rose for us, and who remains with us in the Blessed Sacrament.
Over the weekend, people came into our church and knelt before him. Some remained for a few minutes; others for an hour or more. Perhaps you sat wondering what to say. Perhaps you brought many intentions. Perhaps you simply remained in silence.
Before we find words, can we become conscious of the One who is present? Long before we came to pour out our hearts to him, God poured out his heart to us, and for us. In Jesus, he came among us. He allowed himself to be known, to be approached, to be loved—and even to be rejected.
Look at him in the Gospels. He stops for someone whom everyone else passes by. He welcomes someone who expects to be condemned. He sits at table with sinners. He kneels to wash the feet of his friends. Then he gives himself into their hands: “This is my Body, which will be given up for you.”
The One before whom we kneel is this same Jesus. Can we receive his words as spoken to us? “This is my Body, which will be given up for you.”
We may find it easier to think of his love for the world than to receive his love for ourselves. Yet he knows the person kneeling before him. He knows the life we bring: the things we willingly show him, and the things we hardly know how to name. And he gives himself to us. Can we remain before that gift?
As we remain with him, perhaps a response begins to awaken. A desire to know him better. Thanksgiving. Contrition. A wish to entrust something to him that we have kept firmly in our own hands.
Can we allow that response to become prayer? Father, united with Jesus, I offer you my life: my body, my time, my work, my love. Receive me with Jesus.
And within this self-offering, Jesus brings our neighbour before us. Someone we love easily. Someone whose need we have overlooked. Someone we find difficult. He knows and loves that person too. Can we make room for his love for them within us? Perhaps loving God with our whole heart also means making room in that heart for someone we would rather keep outside.
Our Forty Hours devotion has concluded, but this invitation continues. Each time we come before Our Lord, receive Holy Communion, or make a spiritual communion, we can attend afresh to what he gives us. Himself. The One who asks for our whole heart gives himself to us. Lord, help us receive your love. Lord, we love you with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our mind. Amen.