As I write I am within sight of the Rocky Mountains, preparing to preach at Masses during a parish’s Forty Hours’ Devotion, also called by the Italian Quarant’ore.
We will expose the Blessed Sacrament for continuous adoration and have Solemn Masses in the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite with processions in honour of the Eucharist.
The Quarant’ore devotion prays for protection from evils, reparation for sins, and deliverance from political, material and spiritual calamities. We implore Christ to pour down abundant graces for own immediate needs, but also for our Church, our nation and the whole world. Until recent decades, parishes rotated in a fixed annual observance of the Forty Hours so that it was always going on somewhere in the diocese.
