Browsing The Seed

We Need to Come and See Him

adorationLast weekend we had an adoration sign-up drive at Mass, and I’m grateful for everyone who joined the effort to have perpetual adoration at Saint Wendelin. The Adoration Committee and I have been pleased with the progress that’s been made, and the schedule of adorers is filling out nicely. Of course, there is still room for growth, and we don’t have every hour filled, and there are some hours that don’t have anyone volunteering. But this is a good project, and the Lord will bless us with the grace to accomplish the task. We just need to respond! If you haven’t signed up, please keep praying and considering. It will be a blessing for you, the parish, the Church, and the world to sit and spend time with Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration – not to mention, He deserves that time from all of us, and the Holy Spirit is calling us to the task. Consider everything for which you must be thankful to God, consider how much you ought to express that gratitude to Him, and then adoration begins to make good sense.

We all want to find God, and each of us could echo that plea of the disciples to abide where Jesus dwells: “Rabbi, where are you staying?” (John 1:38). Lord, show us where you live, show us where we can always find you. Jesus responded: “Come and see” (John 1:39). And He says the same to us today. Jesus truly lives in the Tabernacle, and “adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a natural consequence of the Church’s faith in the real substantial presence of Christ in the Eucharist” (Feingold, The Eucharist, 587). As a parishioner said, when we believe that Jesus is in the Eucharist, and when we believe that prayer “works”, those two things together equal adoration. I don’t think we will be able to fathom how God will pour out graces upon our parish as a result of this plan to offer Him such faithful and continuous prayer. While we don’t do it for “what we can get out of it”, nonetheless, God is never outdone in generosity, and the more we give the more He gives in return. Generosity is a competition God always wins. Whatever we may think our parish needs to be “successful”, none of it matters if we don’t pray, and how good it will be for us to give the best kind of prayer (after the Mass of course!) always. To help “nudge” you along in your discernment, I share below a few more thoughts on adoration from our recent popes. All of this is great food for thought, and even better food for prayer, especially in adoration of Jesus, present to us in the Eucharist.  May God bless you in the week ahead and may Mother Mary lead you more deeply into the Sacred and Merciful Heart of Jesus. I remain,

Affectionately Yours in Christ,

Fr. Hess

No one can fail to see that the divine Eucharist bestows an incomparable dignity upon the Christian people. For it is not just while the Sacrifice is being offered and the Sacrament is being confected, but also after the Sacrifice has been offered and the Sacrament confected – while the Eucharist is reserved in churches and oratories – that Christ is truly Emmanuel, which means “God with us.” For he is in the midst of us day and night; He dwells in us with the fullness of grace and of truth” – Saint Paul VI

The Church and the world have a great need of eucharistic worship. Jesus waits for us in the Sacrament of love. Let us be generous with our time in going to meet Him in adoration and in contemplation that is full of faith and ready to make reparation for the great faults and crimes of the world. May our adoration never cease” – Saint John Paul II

Receiving the Eucharist means adoring Him whom we have received. Only in this way do we become one with Him... Only in adoration can a profound and genuine reception mature. It is this personal encounter with the Lord that then strengthens the social mission contained in the Eucharist, which seeks to break down not only the walls that separate the Lord and ourselves, but also and especially the walls that separate us from one another” - Benedict XVI

I want to encourage everyone to visit the Blessed Sacrament, preserved in our churches and often abandoned… we cannot know the Lord without this habit of worship, to worship in silence, adoration. If I am not mistaken, I believe that this prayer of adoration is the least known by us, it’s the one we do the least. Allow me to say this: waste time in front of the Lord, in front of the mystery of Jesus Christ. Worship Him. There in silence, the silence of adoration. He is the savior and I worship him” – Pope Francis

Eucharistic Adoration at St. WendelinBeacons of Light Updates

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