Give us this Bread during these forty days

It is truly meet and just, right and salutary that we give thanks to You, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God, through Christ our Lord, who is Your only-begotten Son and who abides in Your glory, in whom the faith of those who fast is fed, hope is carried forward and love strengthend: for He is the living and true bread, who descended from heaven and always abides in heaven, who is an eternal being and the food of virtue: indeed Your Word, through which everything came into being, is not only the food of human hearts but is also the bread of the angels themselves: with the nourishment of this bread Your servant Moses fasted for forty days and nights when he received Your law, and abstained from the food of the flesh in order to be more receptive to Your sweetness, living from Your Word: he lived in the spirit from His sweetness, and on his face he received His light: therefore he felt no physical hunger and forgot the food of the earth, because the sight of Your glory brightened him and the Word of God, infused through the Spirit, fed him: deign, O Lord, to give us this Bread during these forty days, which we enter today by beginning with the mortification of the forty-day abstinence, and enkindle us, so that we thirst for it unceasingly: when we eat His body, which is sanctified by You, we are strengthened, and when we drink His blood with a longing draught, we are cleansed: through Christ our Lord, through whom…

Missale Gothicum, Prayer of Sacrifice in the Beginning of Lent