The Anima Christi Prayer (Soul of Christ), Line by Line

The Anima Christi is a chain of short petitions, each spoken straight to Jesus. The first five call on what is his: his soul, his body, his blood, the water from his side and his Passion. Each is asked for a gift. The rest ask him to listen, to hide us, to hold on to us, to defend us and, at the end, to call us home. It is a prayer for when Christ is very close, which is why Catholics have prayed it after Holy Communion for centuries.

“Soul of Christ, sanctify me.” Anima Christi is Latin for “soul of Christ.” Jesus is true God and true man: the Church teaches that “the eternal Son also assumed a rational, human soul” (CCC 471). The prayer begins with that soul and asks it to make ours holy.

“Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me.” After Communion these lines are literal: they name what you have just received. In the Eucharist the whole Christ, his “body and blood, together with the soul and divinity,” is “truly, really, and substantially contained” (CCC 1374). That is why the prayer can greet his soul, his body and his blood one after another: it is speaking to the one Lord who has come to you. If you received the Host alone, you still received him whole, Body and Blood (CCC 1390). Jesus said, “For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed” (John 6:56, Douay-Rheims). The Catechism calls the chief fruit of Communion “an intimate union with Christ Jesus” (CCC 1391), and says it cannot unite us to him without “cleansing us from past sins and preserving us from future sins” (CCC 1393). It wipes away everyday, venial sins; a grave sin is brought first to confession (CCC 1394 and 1395).

Inebriate is the word that puzzles people most. Literally it means to make drunk; in the prayer it is an image of being filled to overflowing, the way wine fills a cup and gladdens the heart. The psalms already use it of God’s goodness: “They shall be inebriated with the plenty of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the torrent of thy pleasure” (Psalm 35:9, Douay-Rheims; Psalm 36 in most modern Bibles). To ask the Blood of Christ to inebriate you is to ask for a love strong enough to carry you out of yourself. It asks for that fullness of love, not for drunkenness. For a longer prayer to the Blood of Christ, there is the Prayer of the Precious Blood.

“Water from the side of Christ, wash me.” On the cross, “one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water” (John 19:34, Douay-Rheims). The Church has always seen the sacraments flowing from that wound: the Catechism calls the blood and water “types of Baptism and the Eucharist, the sacraments of new life” (CCC 1225). So this line asks Christ to go on doing what Baptism began, and wash us clean. The same pierced side is at the center of the Consecration to the Sacred Heart.

“Passion of Christ, strengthen me.” The prayer does not ask to be spared every suffering. It asks for strength from his own suffering, of which Isaias wrote, “by his bruises we are healed” (Isaias 53:5, Douay-Rheims).

After Holy Communion. This is its home. The Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life” (CCC 1324), and the minutes after Communion are a time to stay with the Lord you have received instead of hurrying on. The Anima Christi gives those minutes words. The Roman Missal places it among the prayers of thanksgiving after Mass, and the Church’s handbook of indulgences names it as an example of a thanksgiving after Communion, to which a partial indulgence is attached. Kneel or sit, close your eyes, and say it slowly, one line at a time.

When you cannot receive. If you are at Mass but not receiving, whatever the reason, or praying at home, say it after a spiritual communion, asking Jesus to come to you in spirit: the longing is already a prayer. If you are sick or housebound, say it after Communion is brought to you, and as your spiritual communion on the days no one can come. Many also pray it before the Blessed Sacrament. In Spanish it is the Alma de Cristo, prayed after a spiritual communion.

In temptation and in fear. “Within Thy wounds, hide me” and “From the malicious enemy, defend me” are short enough to say under your breath at the very moment you need them: on a hard night, before confession, or when you feel spiritually under attack.

Beside the sick and the dying. Its last lines ask for a good death. The Church gives the dying a last Communion, Viaticum, food for the journey: “the sacrament of passing over from death to life” (CCC 1524). The Anima Christi is a natural thanksgiving after it, so if someone you love is near death, ask a priest to bring it. At the bedside it is also a gentle prayer to say aloud, as it is or quietly changing “me” to “him” or “her.” At night, say it for yourself as well.

With the Passion. Its wounds, its pierced side and its blood place it beside the cross: after the Stations of the Cross, at three o’clock on a Friday, or with the Divine Mercy Chaplet. In the AngelGuard app it is prayed aloud inside the guided prayer for Good Friday.

The Ignatian way. St. Ignatius describes a slow way to pray a prayer you know by heart: one word with each breath, staying with the meaning of that word. The Soul of Christ is one of the prayers he names for it. Try it once with this prayer. Soul, breathe. Of Christ, breathe. Let each word land before the next.

A short prayer of our own, for the moments after Communion:

No one knows. The prayer is older than the saint whose name it often carries. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1907 dates it to the first half of the fourteenth century and gives the evidence: a manuscript in the British Museum from about 1370; a prayer book of Cardinal Peter of Luxembourg, who died in 1387, with the prayer “in practically the same form as we have it today”; and the prayer inscribed on a gate of the Alcázar of Seville in the time of King Pedro the Cruel, who reigned from 1350 to 1369.

Pope John XXII? The same article says that Pope John XXII attached an indulgence to the prayer in 1330, and that he perhaps wrote it. It adds that this is not certain: other prayers were credited to him wrongly, and it is easy to confuse the pope who granted an indulgence with the author. John XXII was pope from 1316 until his death at Avignon in 1334. So the honest answer is that the Anima Christi is a prayer of the fourteenth-century Church, perhaps by John XXII, though no one can name its author for sure.

This is the Latin as the Holy See prints it in the current edition of the Church’s handbook of indulgences, the Enchiridion Indulgentiarum. Older books spell two words with a J: Jesu and jube.

The prayer has been put into English many times. One of the most beloved is a rhymed version printed in 1857 in the English Raccolta, the collection of indulgenced prayers translated by Ambrose St. John of the Birmingham Oratory. It has long been credited to his friend John Henry Newman, now St. John Henry Newman: