Traditional prayer
The Morning Offering
O Jesus, through the immaculate heart of Mary,
I offer Thee my prayers, works, and sufferings of this day
for all the intentions of Thy sacred Heart,
in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world,
for the intentions of all our associates,
and in particular for the intention recommended this month by the Holy Father.
About this prayer
Before the day can claim a single hour, this prayer gives all of it away. It is the morning offering of the Apostleship of Prayer, a league of prayer in union with the Heart of Jesus founded at Vals, in France, in 1844 by the Jesuit Father François-Xavier Gautrelet. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907 records that the first of the three practices asked of its members was exactly this: a daily offering of one’s prayers, good works and sufferings.
The Holy See’s 2024 statutes for the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network trace that work to the same 1844 initiative of Father Gautrelet, developed from the original Apostleship of Prayer. The words above are as Father F. X. Lasance printed them in 1908. His book also gives a second form (“O my God, I offer Thee my prayers, works, and sufferings this day in union with the Sacred Heart of Jesus…”), and later prayer books add or change a phrase. The wording has varied; the act has not. “Our associates” meant the members of the league, who prayed for one another. Anyone may pray it today and mean the whole Church.
Why it matters: the Church teaches that the ordinary life of the lay faithful (their prayer and work, married and family life, rest, even the trials they bear with patience), when it is lived in the Spirit, becomes a spiritual sacrifice pleasing to God through Christ, and in the Eucharist it may be offered to the Father together with the Body of the Lord (CCC 901, drawing on Lumen Gentium 34). St. Paul asks the same: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing unto God, your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1, Douay-Rheims).
So the hours given to a husband, to children, to patients or pupils, to a religious community, or to a quiet house are not lost to God. Given in the morning, they are offered, as the prayer itself says, “in union with the holy sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world.” The Catechism adds a simple anchor: the Christian begins the day with the Sign of the Cross, dedicating it to the glory of God (CCC 2157). Many make the Offering in the same breath.
When to pray it
- On waking, before the phone and before the first demand: kneeling at the bedside if you can, standing at the kettle if you cannot.
- At midday, if the morning was taken from you. Offer what remains, and the morning with it.
- At breakfast with children, so the youngest learn that the day is given before it is spent.
- Each month with the Holy Father’s intention in mind, the monthly intention he entrusts to the Church through the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network.