When you want to get to know someone what is the first thing
you do? You spend more time with them, often conversing with them.
You become closer to someone by sharing your feelings, thoughts,
hopes and aspirations for the future and listening to them. When
one person loves another, they want to be with this person whom
they love. This is true for whatever type of relationship one
may think of. A mother and her new born infant, a father and his
child, two friends, sweethearts, husband and wife. Love seeks
to be with the object of it's love. This helps us understand the
great mystery of our Faith. If you want to develop a personal
relationship with Jesus you have to make an effort just as you
would in your interaction with others.
Jesus wants to be your best friend. He is the one friend that
will always be there for you. He always loves you and wants what
is best for you. He will never abandon you or reject you. When
you offend Him you only have to turn back to Him and He forgives
you. He loves you still even when you have hurt Him. He can be
closer to you than your best friend if you want Him to. He is
considerate; he will never force you to be with Him. How close
you want the relationship to be is up to you. You have to spend
time with Him in prayer, listening and just being with Him. What
better way to accomplish this than within adoration of the Blessed
Sacrament. Jesus is truly present in the Blessed Sacrament, body,
blood, soul and divinity. That is why it is called the Real Presence.
What a wonderful thing, to be able to be with God, in His Presence,
while still here on earth. This is the means He has given us to
draw closer. Just sitting in His Presence, absorbing his love
for you and listening does wonders for your soul. Spending time
in his Eucharistic Presence will enable you to grow in holiness.
Many people also report being healed of emotional and physical
ailments while spending time in his Presence.
Because Jesus' whole life is a mystery to us we need Eucharistic
Adoration to help us understand this mystery. The Gospels were
written by men who were among the first to have the faith and
wanted to share it with others. They could see and make others
see the traces of Christ's mystery in all His earthly life. Everything
in Jesus' life was a sign of His mystery. His deeds, miracles,
and words all revealed that in Him the fullness of deity dwells
bodily. His humanity appeared as Sacrament that is, the sign and
instrument of His divinity and of the salvation He brings. What
was visible in His earthly life leads to the invisible mystery
of his divine sonship and redemptive mission. Christ's whole life
is a mystery of redemption. Redemption comes to us all through
the blood of His cross. But this mystery is at work throughout
Christ's entire life.
All Christ's riches are for every individual and are everyone's
property. Christ did not live His life for Himself but for us,
for our salvation and for our justification. Jesus brings into
the presence of the Father on our behalf all that He lived and
suffered for us. He is always our advocate before the Father.
The Eucharist is the source and summit of Christian life. For
in the Blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good
of the Church, namely Christ Himself. The Eucharist is the efficacious
sign sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that
unity of the people of God by which the Church is kept in being.
It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world
in Christ and of the worship humanity offers to Christ and through
him to the Father in the Holy Spirit. The Eucharist is the sum
and summary of our faith. Our way of thinking is attuned to the
Eucharist, and the Eucharist in turn confirms our way of thinking.
The species reserved in the tabernacle is called the Blessed Sacrament.
The most Blessed Sacrament is the sacrament of sacraments. The
Most Blessed Sacrament of The Eucharist incorporates the body
and blood together with the soul and divinity of our lord Jesus
Christ. Therefore the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially
contained. It is Christ's real presence because it is presence
in the fullest sense. It is a substantial presence by which Christ,
God and man, makes Himself wholly and entirely present. Eucharistic
Adoration is the worship given to Jesus Christ while He is present
in the consecrated species of bread. This consecrated bread which
is Eucharist can be contained in a closed tabernacle or placed
in a vessel called a monstrance where He can be openly viewed
by all.
As you come to worship Jesus in Eucharistic Adoration you place
yourself, your family, and the world you live in within the real
presence of God. We all know that if we place ourselves in the
presence of the sun it gives us a glow. When the rays of the sun
touch us they change the appearance of our skin, they even penetrate
our being. Though we can't see these rays they still exist and
our skin can attest to it. The Eucharistic species also emanates
rays, divine rays which bring conversions, grace, healing and
holiness into your life and into the lives of others. These rays
penetrate to the very core of your being which is your soul. There
Jesus who is mystery will perform some of His greatest miracles.
He will reveal Himself to you in a most special and personal way.
He will lift for you the veil of mystery surrounding Him in the
way and manner He desires to do so just for you. Can you even
begin to fathom the graces and blessings waiting for you there?
(Catechism of the Catholic Church, #515, #517, #519, #1324, #1325,
#1327, #1330, #1336, #1374.)
Receiving graces From Eucharistic Adoration. The type
of grace received in adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament
is called 'actual grace'. Actual grace is given for a particular
purpose or situation. All grace is oriented toward eternal life
but actual grace is given to us by God to help us grow in virtue.
Through adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, God may give you the
grace to overcome a certain temptation or to be more patient and
loving with others. He knows the graces you are most in need of
to be made more into his image. Scripture says "And we all
with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being
changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another;
for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Cor 3., 18).
In para. 67 of Mysterium Fidei, Pope Paul VI said of Christ present
in the Eucharist: He raises the level of morals, fosters virtue,
comforts the sorrowful, strengthens the weak and stirs up all
those who draw near to Him to imitate Him, so that they may learn
from his example to be meek and humble of heart, and to seek not
their own interest but those of God. Anyone who has a special
devotion to the sacred Eucharist and who tries to repay Christ's
infinite love for us with an eager and unselfish love of his own,
will experience and fully understand-and this will bring great
delight and benefit to his soul-just how precious is a life hidden
with Christ in God and just how worthwhile it is to carry on a
conversation with Christ, for there is nothing more consoling
here on earth, nothing more efficacious for progress along the
paths of holiness. Pope Paul VI goes on to say in para. 69: "Hence
it is that devotion to the divine Eucharist exerts a great influence
upon the soul in the direction of fostering a "social"
love, in which we put the common good ahead of private good, take
up the cause of the community, the parish, the universal Church,
and extend our charity to the whole world because we know that
there are members of Christ everywhere." Just as the body
is one and has many members, and all the members of the body,
though many, are one body so it is with Christ. For by one Spirit
we were all baptized into the body (1Cor 12., 12-13). If one member
suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored all rejoice
together (1Cor 12., 26). The graces we receive in adoration affect
the whole body. We may also pray for others and their needs and
also ask God to give us the graces necessary for us to minister
to others. In para. 2024 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church,
it exhorts us to pray for others while in front of the Blessed
Sacrament, asking our Our Lord to grant them graces.
Many Saints spent hours in front of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Mother Theresa's order, The Missionaries of Charity, spend daily
hours of adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament to give them
strength for their work and for growth in holiness. St. Alphonsus
de Ligouri, in his book "The Holy Eucharist," (Redemptorist
Fathers, Brooklyn, NY), attributes his hearing the call of a vocation
to time spent in front of the Blessed Sacrament. Almost any saint,
whose life you may read, will tell of the graces received while
in front of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.
Only a God of great mystery would allow you to find Him, love
Him, and make Him your own. There is no greater mystery than the
love of God who sent us His only Son to live and die so that we
would be saved from a life of sin and slavery. Jesus promised
that He would not leave us orphaned. He is still here today waiting
for you and me in His silent, loving, and mysterious presence
in The Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist and the Cross are stumbling
blocks for some. They both are the same mystery and this never
ceases to be an occasion of division. "Do you want to leave
Me too?"(John 6:67) The Lord's question echoes throughout
the ages as a loving invitation to discover that only He has the
words of eternal life. To receive the gift of His Eucharistic
Presence is to receive the Lord Himself. When we know this who
of us can refuse?