Eucharistic adoration has long been a balm for my soul. I don’t often get the opportunity these days, but tonight, there was a lull in the action at exactly the right time, so G and I snuck away together for a few moments with Jesus at the church across the street. As I knelt there with my sweet daughter coloring beside me, my mind went back to other moments of adoration, other chapels, other times, other versions of myself who have knelt before the Lord.
The Catholic Center at Emory University has a tiny little chapel that was once a sunroom. It’s beautiful and simple. As a fresh-faced college freshman, I found a home in that chapel during Wednesday adoration. My adoration hour dovetailed into an hour of praise and worship led by our pastor, and so I would often stay for both, then hang around and study at the Catholic Center until Wednesday evening mass and dinner afterwards. Adoration was the cornerstone of my week. And I was so earnest, so excited, so full. I was in my honeymoon stage of faith, and all I wanted to do was be with Him. . .
There’s a small parish just off Emory’s campus with a perpetual adoration chapel. An icon of St. Michael sits to the right of the monstrance. I can still see it. In my final year at Emory I spent a lot of time in that chapel, especially in the middle of the night. It became a place of refuge for me. I had grown into my faith in new ways and had become a leader in the community on campus. I was learning how to find a balance in my faith life- that tricky act of balancing serving and being served, filling others and allowing yourself to be filled. Adoration in the quiet hours of the night, alone with Jesus was where I went to be filled. . .
There’s a tiny white chapel in the North Georgia mountains named St. Stephen’s where I prayed each day during my mission year with Life Teen. It’s worn floorboards and musty smell speak peace to my heart even to this day. Sliding into the pew there is every bit a homecoming no matter how many years it’s been. Each and every morning at 7:15am we missionaries would file for our Holy Hour. Everyone had a preferred pew, and in the winter we would arrive wrapped in our blankets because of the drafts. A holy hour a day even then seemed a luxury to me, looking back it does even more now. I filled pages and pages of conversations with Jesus, quotes from the Scriptures or the Saints. My faith grew and steadily deepened with the day in and day out time with the Lord. . .
St. Brigid in Roswell, GA is about as different from St. Stephen’s in looks as you can get. Large and beautiful in it’s design, it was my parish for my last years in Georgia. I struggled to feel at home there. But when at the end of the Sunday evening mass, we would sing the Tantum Ergo, and the Blessed Sacrament would be processed to the adoration chapel, my heart sung and my soul felt peace. It was a time in my life when I was blessed beyond measure to care for four precious children who I love as my own flesh, but was in over my head and unprepared for the situation I found myself in. I clung to Jesus then, especially in the Blessed Sacrament, and would try to sneak moments in the adoration chapel before car line. I only wish I had taken more time there. . .
When I first moved to Michigan, I was in a terrible place. I had made some very poor decisions, had lost myself so entirely that I wasn’t even sure where to begin the process of being found again. But by God’s grace, the job I took soon after moving was at a school down the street from a convent, and the sisters had an adoration chapel that was open to the public. And so I would go on my lunch break and slip into the quiet, sink down onto the cool stone floor and cry. I knew I certainly didn’t deserve God’s forgiveness, and I knew that I was completely to blame for my own sins, but I also knew in my core that I needed Him. And I knew that He loved me unconditionally. So like the prodigal son in the Gospel story, I ran home. Day after day we would sit together He and I. I looked at Him, and He looked at me. And in the sisters’ chapel, I found healing. . .
Mark and I were newly married and living in Ann Arbor. We had agreed on doing a holy hour together, but were arguing over the time. I desperately wanted an hour in the middle of the night. Prayer at night has always felt like bonus time to me, something extra special. Loving his sleep and finding it difficult to wake up, Mark was less of a fan. We agreed to look at the sign up list and see what was needed- to my complete and total delight, we arrived at the chapel to find a sign on the door, in big bold all capital letters proclaiming the need for adorers at 2am on Fridays. I was overjoyed. Each week we would wake up in the dark, and spent an hour with Jesus. Sometimes the drowsiness was too much and one or both of us would fall asleep, but there was always a sweetness to that hour, the extra grace God pours out on those who stay awake with Him. . .
My faith has grown so much in the decades since I began attending Eucharistic adoration regularly, and I think that the practice is a large part of why. Time with Jesus, fully and truly present in the Eucharist is a gift beyond measure. It’s no longer as easy to get to adoration for me as it once was. But tonight I was reminded of how much I need that time with Him. Fittingly, the day’s meditation from the Magnificat began with the sentence, “Let us now be mindful of the needs of our souls.” It is certainly advice I aim to take.