Harvesting The Fruits of Contemplation

Older people who adore the Lord find refreshment in the living water of Christ's presence. Young people in adoration find that Christ guides them, fills them with purpose, and calls them to holiness and vocation. (Image Source: Wikimedia Commons ) Kneeling before Christ in the Eucharist, the hopeless find hope. The weak find strength. Captives find freedom. The afflicted find comfort. The mourning find consolation. The lonely find friendship. Sinners find mercy. Kneeling before Christ in the Eucharist, all of us find love. And love is what we are longing for. Before Christ in the Eucharist - love made visible - each one of us discovers that the enduring, satisfying, life-giving answer to the questions of our lives is Love: love poured out from Jesus, and love poured out from us in the world, as missionaries of Christ's Salvation. (From A Pastoral Letter on Adoration of the Most Holy Eucharist by Bishop James Conley)

"Pope Benedict XVI said that when we look upon Christ in the Eucharist 'we enter into the very dynamic of His self-giving.' For that reason, adoration of the Eucharist, exposed to our view in the monstrance, is particularly important for us, and a particularly powerful encounter with the Lord. I often ask children to imagine walking by the house of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Children who love the Lord might remember that Jesus lives there, and make a gesture of reverence, or say a short prayer. But if we walked by the Lord’s house, and He was out on the porch, and we could look directly at Him, we would stop, and talk to Him, and know that He was hearing us, and talking to us. So it is with adoring Christ in the Eucharist, visible to us in the monstrance. We see Him, and we know that He sees us. We speak to Him, and we know that He hears us. When we adore Christ in the Eucharist, exposed in the monstrance, the Lord engages all of our senses, thro...

"Encountering Christ in adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is an invitation, for all people, to deepen their relationship with the Lord, and to grow in communion with his Church. In adoration, we grow in unity and friendship with Him—we learn to hear His voice, to know His will, and, most especially, to know and trust the power of His love. Everyone—no matter his circumstances—can kneel before the Eucharist, and encounter, in visible reality, the mystery of God’s transformative and powerful love. We all long for love, and in the gift of Eucharistic adoration, we can all experience the love of the Lord. No one needs to be a mystic to kneel before the Lord in adoration. Everyone begins the practice of prayer without knowing much about how to pray. But in silence, kneeling before Jesus, we learn how God speaks to us. We learn to hear his “still, small voice,” and we learn to speak to God from the depths of our own hearts. In silence, we learn to put aside the...

"There are prayerful steps we can take, in the silence of Eucharistic adoration, to hear the Lord’s voice. We can begin by thanking God for His presence, and by asking Him to help us to know Him, and to love him. We can acknowledge our distractions, and ask the Lord to give us the gift of silence. And, through Scripture, or the mysteries of the rosary, through some other spiritual practice or reading, or through simple contemplation of God’s goodness, we can begin to hear the Lord’s voice. We can share our hearts with the Lord, and ask him to fill our minds, our imaginations, and our hearts with His presence. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons) God speaks to us when He is present before us in the Eucharist. We need only learn His language: we need only dare to kneel humbly before the Lord and, with trust in God, begin a dialogue of silence—intimate, powerful, and real." (From Pastoral Letter On Adoration of the Most Holy Eucharist by Bishop James Conle...