The Divine Praises

The Divine Praises — in Latin the Laudes Divínæ — are a litany of blessing usually recited after Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, the priest saying each line and the people repeating it. They were composed in 1797 by an Italian Jesuit, Father Luigi Felici, and their first purpose was reparation: to make amends for the sins of blasphemy and profane, cursing speech, by blessing aloud the very Names that men misuse. Where the world curses, the Church blesses.

The praises rise in a deliberate order. They begin with God himself and His Holy Name; then Jesus Christ, "true God and true Man," His Name, His Sacred Heart, His Precious Blood, and above all "Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar" — the Eucharistic Lord just adored in Benediction. From the Son they pass to the Holy Spirit the Paraclete, and then to Our Lady under her greatest titles, to St. Joseph her most chaste spouse, and finally to God as He is blessed "in His Angels and in His Saints."

The list grew over time. Father Felici's original praises of 1797 blessed God, His Holy Name, Jesus Christ true God and true Man, the Name of Jesus, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, the Mother of God, the name of Mary, and God in His Angels and Saints. Later popes added the remaining invocations one by one: the Immaculate Conception (Pius IX, 1851), the Sacred Heart (Leo XIII, 1897), St. Joseph (Benedict XV, 1920), the Assumption (Pius XII, 1952 — two years after he defined the dogma), the Precious Blood (John XXIII, 1960), and the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete (Paul VI, 1964). Pope Pius VII had attached indulgences to their recitation in 1801, and they remain one of the most familiar of all Catholic prayers — said in reparation whenever the holy Name has been dishonored, and in thanksgiving at the close of every hour of adoration.