As
Catholics, we are blessed to have some wonderful devotional practices that help
us grow closer to Christ. One of the most
profound of these is Eucharistic Adoration.
My wife and I were recently asked to help encourage participation in Adoration
in our parish, in the course of which we ourselves came to see dimensions of
this great gift that we hadn’t considered before.
For one
thing, we both thought immediately of scriptural connections. My lovely bride
thought of the passage from First Kings (1 Kings 19:10-13) where the Lord
tells the prophet Elijah to stand on the mountain, for “The Lord is about to
pass by”. There’s a mighty wind, an
earthquake, and a roaring fire, but God is not in any of those things; instead,
Elijah encounters the Lord in a “gentle whispering”.
Just as
God does not appear to Elijah in any of the grand and dramatic forms we might
expect, so Jesus enters the world as a tiny baby, and continues to manifest
himself to us as a simple piece of bread.
Eucharistic Adoration gives us a chance to shut out all the storm and
stress of our daily lives while we contemplate the infinite God embodied in
that piece of bread, and hear his gentle whisper.
My own
first thought was the passage from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 10:38-42) where
Jesus is visiting the sisters Martha and Mary.
Martha, who is “worried about many things”, is frantically bustling
about the house, while Mary simply sits at the feet of Jesus, watching and
listening. When Martha complains that
Mary isn’t helping her, Jesus answers that Mary has chosen “the better part,
and it will not be taken away from her”.
Most of
us can probably identify with Martha: always “worried about many things”, and
too distracted to notice the Lord.
Adoration is a great opportunity to give our “inner Martha” a rest and,
like Mary, choose “the better part”. After all, what is Eucharistic Adoration,
if not watching and listening at the feet of Jesus?
What’s
true for us as individuals also applies to us communally. However important, even necessary, all of our
various activities, committees, and causes may be, they can overshadow “the one
thing”, as Jesus tells Martha, “that is needful”. What better reminder that Christ is the
Center than a parish putting aside twelve hours in the middle of the week to
sit at the Master’s feet? It keeps us
from becoming nothing but noisy gongs and clanging cymbals (1
Corinthians 13:1).
My brief
comments here can’t even begin to explore the depth of meaning contained in the
Eucharist. God who created us knows what we need; having given us both body and
soul, he knows we need material means to understand spiritual realities. The opportunity to kneel in adoration before our
Eucharistic Lord is a gift we can’t afford to pass up.
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