If you were to hear, “Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord,” you most likely would assume it is the month of December, as you recall these as lyrics coming from the famous Christmas-time hymn, “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” However, adoring our Lord is not supposed to be resigned to just the four weeks of Advent or the twelve days of Christmas. Catholics should adore, worship, and revere Jesus Christ every day of our lives. There is a way to do this – it’s called Eucharistic Adoration.
Eucharistic Adoration, also called Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, is a form of worship that is offered to the Lord through His most Blessed Sacrament – the Body of Christ as we see in the Eucharist/bread. Parents can draw their children more deeply into the mystery of Christ’s Real Presence in the bread if they model this contemplative type of worship and make attending Adoration a regular occurrence for the family.
It would be helpful prior to attending Adoration for parents to explain to their kids what they will be seeing and doing. The ritual follows these steps:
- Exposition: The Blessed Sacrament is brought to the altar by the priest or deacon and exposed for all to see in a Monstrance.
- Adoration: Prayers, songs, and/or readings may be said by the congregation; a commonly used hymn is O Salutaris Hostia (Latin for O, Saving Victim).
- Benediction: After a set period of a combination of public praying and silent adoration, the priest or deacon says a prayer and gives a blessing;
- Reposition: The Blessed Sacrament is replaced in the Tabernacle.
When a church announces Adoration is taking place throughout the day or evening or holds what is called “Perpetual Adoration,” families can come adore Him at any available timeframe; it’s not necessary to have been there at the beginning when the priest initially exposed the Blessed Sacrament. You simply enter the nave and then before entering a pew, genuflect to the Blessed Sacrament which will already be exposed in a Monstrance on the altar for all to see. Once sitting or kneeling in the pew, you may employ your own way of silently praying before the Blessed Sacrament and speaking with Jesus.
One typically stays for an hour of Adoration, in connection with when Jesus told the Apostles in the garden of Gethsemane during His Passion, “Could you not spend one hour with me?” However, one can visit the Lord in the presence of His most Blessed Sacrament for as short as a few minutes.
What is more important than the quantity of time spent is the quality. When adoring the Blessed Sacrament, one should be acknowledging Jesus deeply as our almighty God and loving Savior, praising and adoring Him. Indeed, the Lord is Himself present in the Blessed Sacrament, and the host that we gaze upon is the Lord Himself! We keep Him company (as He asked his apostles to do in the garden), and we do homage to Him by our very presence.
Catholics call the Eucharist “the source and summit of our faith.” It is sometimes hard to explain to a non-Catholic or to our young Catholic children how the bread and wine we receive at Mass are the pinnacle of what it means to be Christian. We start by explaining that we do not believe the bread and wine are merely bread and wine. After the prayers of consecration by an ordained priest, God works a miracle and transforms the ordinary bread and wine into the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.
If your children or your non-Catholic friends and relatives aren’t sure if they can believe in the True Presence, read and analyze with them “The Bread of Life Discourse” in John 6. In this Gospel chapter, Jesus provides proof that it is His Body that we are receiving. His own words and the reaction of his disciples testify to Christ’s True Presence in the Blessed Sacrament. The discourse goes like this:
Jesus answered them, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any one eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”
This he said in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum. Many of his disciples, when they heard it, said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?
But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples murmured at it, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh is of no avail; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you that do not believe.”
For Jesus knew from the first who those were that did not believe, and who it was that should betray him. And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.”
After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him. Jesus said to the twelve, “Will you also go away?”
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6:53-69).
There are a number of things to point out to your kids or non-Catholics when analyzing John 6. First, notice that four times Jesus vehemently states that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood to attain eternal life. There is no symbolism contained in His words. He is emphatic.
Secondly, it is significant to realize how literal these words are in that the word “eat” does not exist in the Aramaic language, the language that Jesus spoke. The translation of the actual word Jesus used means “chew” or “gnaw.” So it’s obvious why so many people left Jesus when he originally spoke these words because he was actually saying, “He who gnaws on my flesh…” People would not have been shocked enough to leave Him if they thought He was talking figuratively instead of literally.
Furthermore, notice that Jesus does not try to dissuade His followers who decide to leave Him over His discourse. Don’t you think Jesus would have clarified a misunderstanding and done some type of retracting or rewording of His choice of words if what was happening was the people were taking his words literally when he just meant “eat my flesh” to be symbolic? After all, there were other Bible passages where Jesus clarified and amended his words to his disciples, such as when he reexplained the Parable of the Sower or when he clarified to Nicodemus about being born again. But in this passage, Jesus does not clarify or reexplain because there is no symbolism present. He is speaking literally and many people are too disgusted to accept it.
Moreover, Jesus’s reaction to the departure of many of his disciples was to turn to Peter and the Apostles and ask, “Will you also go away?” Here He isn’t trying to water down His words and calm down the shock of telling people to chew his flesh. Jesus is prepared to start all over again with new followers, if necessary, if his Apostles refuse to accept His weighty truth.
If Jesus walked into your church similarly to how He appeared to the disciples 2,000 years ago, you would run to welcome Him. But Jesus remains hidden in the Blessed Sacrament under the appearance of bread because He is calling us to faith. It was Jesus who declared, “Blessed are they who do not see and yet believe.”
Eucharistic Adoration is for many of the faithful an overpoweringly, personal way to encounter Jesus. You are spending time adoring Him while also carrying on an intimate conversation. When you – and hopefully your kids – public pray and silently speak in front of the Blessed Sacrament, you are being given an extraordinary time to listen to Christ and build your relationship with Him.
Given how today’s culture values work and productivity, and realizing many parents’ days outside of work and chores are already full with everything from countless kids’ sporting events to excessive social media scrolling, making the choice to spend an hour each week just sitting in silence can be extremely hard to come by, let alone to justify. But families are highly encouraged to give Eucharistic Adoration a try in the prospect that they will experience a type of “system reboot” to their spiritual lives.
If you will just take some time to rest from our hectic society, to sit or kneel in silence before the Lord, to praise and thank Him, and to ask for renewed strength, Christ will bestow you with countless graces that will be effective in repairing faults, warding off sin, and increasing your understanding of how much Jesus loves you.
