Grace Before Meals

"Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts" — Benedic, Domine — is the customary grace of the Roman tradition, said by Catholics before their meals for many centuries. In a single sentence it does two things: it asks God's blessing on those who are about to eat, and it acknowledges that the food itself is His gift, received "from Thy bounty." To say it is to confess, before ever lifting a fork, that daily bread is not merely earned but given.

The blessing of food is as old as the Church, and older. Our Lord Himself gave the pattern at every meal recorded in the Gospels: taking the loaves, He blessed and broke them (Matthew 14:19); at Emmaus the disciples knew Him "in the breaking of bread," when He blessed it and gave it to them (Luke 24:30). St. Paul draws out the reason: "every creature of God is good, and nothing to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer" (1 Timothy 4:4–5).

So the Church teaches her children to sanctify the table. The grace is traditionally said with the Sign of the Cross, and it is paired with a grace of thanksgiving after the meal, so that the table is framed at both ends by prayer. The custom comes down especially from monastic life, where the community blessed God before eating and thanked Him after, remembering even their departed benefactors.

Brief as it is, the prayer teaches a whole spirituality of gratitude. It answers directly the petition of the Our Father — "Give us this day our daily bread" — by receiving that bread, when it comes, as the gift it truly is, and blessing the Giver before the gift.