O salutáris Hóstia, Quæ cæli pandis óstium: Bella premunt hostília, Da robur, fer auxílium.
Uni trinóque Dómino Sit sempitérna glória, Qui vitam sine término Nobis donet in pátria. Amen.
O saving Victim, opening wide The gate of heaven to man below; Our foes press on from every side, Thine aid supply, thy strength bestow.
To thy great name be endless praise, Immortal Godhead, One in Three; O grant us endless length of days In our true native land with thee. Amen.
The O Salutaris Hostia is the hymn with which the Church opens Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament — sung as the Sacred Host is placed in the monstrance and raised in exposition upon the altar. In two short stanzas it names what is before the eyes of the faithful: the saving Victim who, by His one sacrifice, has flung open the gate of heaven that sin had shut.
The verses are not a separate composition but the last two stanzas of a longer hymn, Verbum Supernum Prodiens, which St. Thomas Aquinas wrote for Lauds of the Divine Office of Corpus Christi. When Pope Urban IV instituted that feast for the universal Church in 1264 by the bull Transiturus de hoc mundo, he charged the Angelic Doctor with composing its liturgy; from that single commission came both this hymn and its companion at the close of Benediction, the Tantum Ergo.
The prayer is a soldier's prayer as much as an adorer's. "Bella premunt hostília" — "hostile wars press upon us" — sets the Eucharistic Lord against the enemies of the soul, and asks of Him strength and help (da robur, fer auxílium) for the combat. There is a deliberate music in the Latin: Hóstia, the saving Host, stands beside hostília, the pressing foes. The closing stanza lifts the whole prayer to the Holy Trinity, begging that the God who is adored under the veil of bread would one day grant "life without end" in the fatherland of heaven (in pátria), where He will be seen unveiled.
O saving Victim, opening wide
The gate of heaven to man below;
Our foes press on from every side,
Thine aid supply, thy strength bestow.
To thy great name be endless praise,
Immortal Godhead, One in Three;
O grant us endless length of days
In our true native land with thee. Amen.
O salutáris Hóstia,
Quæ cæli pandis óstium:
Bella premunt hostília,
Da robur, fer auxílium.
Uni trinóque Dómino
Sit sempitérna glória,
Qui vitam sine término
Nobis donet in pátria. Amen.
O saving Victim, opening wide
The gate of heaven to man below;
Our foes press on from every side,
Thine aid supply, thy strength bestow.
To thy great name be endless praise,
Immortal Godhead, One in Three;
O grant us endless length of days
In our true native land with thee. Amen.