A most adequate devotion for Holy Thursday, in which Catholics commemorate the institution of the Eucharist, is the Holy Hour.

The "Holy Hour" is a form of Eucharistic adoration made in response to a revelation by Christ to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque (1647-1690), as a part of her devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Our Lord promised various things in return for receiving the Eucharist frequently (especially on the first Friday of each month for nine consecutive months, called "First Friday" Devotions), celebrating the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and spending one hour on Thursdays in Eucharistic adoration; this last is "Holy Hour."

A Holy Hour at a particular church can be designated officially by one's priest, or it can be made privately if one's parish doesn't offer it as a public devotion. The focus of Holy Hour is Christ in the Garden of Gethsemani. In response to His question, "Couldst thou not watch one hour?" (Mark 14:37), we respond, "Yes, Lord, we are here with Thee." Pope Pius XI, in Miserentissimus Redemptor (1928), writes of these reparative acts of consolation to the Sacred Heart:

But how can these rites of expiation bring solace now, when Christ is already reigning in the beatitude of Heaven? To this we may answer in some words of St. Augustine which are very apposite here, "Give me one who loves, and he will understand what I say" (In Johannis evangelium, tract. XXVI, 4).

Any one who has great love of God, if he will look back through the tract of past time may dwell in meditation on Christ, and see Him laboring for man, sorrowing, suffering the greatest hardships, "for us men and for our salvation," well-nigh worn out with sadness, with anguish, nay "bruised for our sins" (Isaias liii, 5), and healing us by His bruises. And the minds of the pious meditate on all these things the more truly, because the sins of men and their crimes committed in every age were the cause why Christ was delivered up to death, and now also they would of themselves bring death to Christ, joined with the same griefs and sorrows, since each several sin in its own way is held to renew the passion of Our Lord: "Crucifying again to themselves the Son of God, and making him a mockery" (Hebrews vi, 6). Now if, because of our sins also which were as yet in the future, but were foreseen, the soul of Christ became sorrowful unto death, it cannot be doubted that then, too, already He derived somewhat of solace from our reparation, which was likewise foreseen, when "there appeared to Him an angel from heaven" (Luke xxii, 43), in order that His Heart, oppressed with weariness and anguish, might find consolation. And so even now, in a wondrous yet true manner, we can and ought to console that Most Sacred Heart which is continually wounded by the sins of thankless men, since - as we also read in the sacred liturgy - Christ Himself, by the mouth of the Psalmist complains that He is forsaken by His friends: "My Heart hath expected reproach and misery, and I looked for one that would grieve together with me, but there was none: and for one that would comfort me, and I found none" (Psalm lxviii, 21).

To this it may be added that the expiatory passion of Christ is renewed and in a manner continued and fulfilled in His mystical body, which is the Church. For, to use once more the words of St. Augustine, "Christ suffered whatever it behooved Him to suffer; now nothing is wanting of the measure of the sufferings. Therefore the sufferings were fulfilled, but in the head; there were yet remaining the sufferings of Christ in His body" (In Psalm lxxxvi). This, indeed, Our Lord Jesus Himself vouchsafed to explain when, speaking to Saul, "as yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter" (Acts ix, 1), He said, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest" (Acts ix, 5), clearly signifying that when persecutions are stirred up against the Church, the Divine Head of the Church is Himself attacked and troubled. Rightly, therefore, does Christ, still suffering in His mystical body, desire to have us partakers of His expiation, and this is also demanded by our intimate union with Him, for since we are "the body of Christ and members of member" (1 Corinthians xii, 27), whatever the head suffers, all the members must suffer with it (Cf. 1 Corinthians xii, 26).

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