164/365 Eucharistic Adoration

[Benedict] would have been terribly uncomfortable with many of today's so-called Eucharistic devotions, with almost no relation to the specific and only purpose that the Lord gave to this sacrament. --Br. Victor-Antoine d'Avila-Latourrette, osb

I knew I wasn't alone.

Hazel, at a worship meeting sometime in the past year, lamented the fact that there are so few people who attend Eucharistic adoration and benediction after the Friday daily mass. When she talks about these things (as opposed to the monthly prayer reflection, her other big topic), she gets this smug tone in her voice. She even brings up that Gianna brings her girls--such well behaved children, she adds--almost every Friday.

I'm not bringing my kids. Not only are they in school, but it's just not my thing. And I'm an oblate with a group of sisters called Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration. They used to have round-the-clock adoration in the chapel. When one of the new oblates, a convert with that crazy look in her eye, asked them why they didn't do adoration all the time like they used to, one of the older nuns kind of waved her hand. "Oh, we just don't think it's that essential any longer." This from a woman whose main job is to pray.

It's an odd thing. I wasn't even exposed to such a practice until I joined the first parish we belonged to when we got married. There, the pastor lamented how no one came to adoration.

Maybe we should stop lamenting and realize it's a queer devotion. Christ said take this and share it. Do this in memory of me. He didn't say "take this and put it high on a table and look at it from the pews." I don't mean to be flippant. I just wonder about how things have gotten to where they are.