Spiritually Lazy
Scott Peck quoted in Falling Upward by R. Rohr p.xix
If you find your spirituality in need of a jump start why not make a commitment to spend time in the Real Presence of our Lord during Eucharistic Adoration. Time in the chapel could be the ‘outside force’ needed to jump start your Spiritual Journey.
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But before we do that; each and everyone has to embrace His gift and use it to experience “the greatest peace, calm and joy that comes from being in the presence of the Bridegroom of our souls.” No one, certainly nothing else on this earth, will ultimately satisfy our deepest longings. In all creation, in all the beautiful things and people He has made, we see something of Him.
In the Eucharist, we see Him. Not as we shall see Him when we leave this world, not as He wants to be known by us in eternity, but in the form in which He has chosen to come to us on our earthly journey. Someday, when this present darkness ends and God is “all in all,” we shall see His beloved face, and we shall be embraced by and love the One Who made us out of love, redeemed us, gave Himself to darkest death for us.
For now, we gaze up at Him as our food encircled by light. The Eucharist we adore is the window to heaven, the true Body of Our Lord truly present. “Oh come let us adore Him.”
(Father Raymond T. Gawronski, S.J.)
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In Him, the wedding feast has begun. And Jesus is God, the Lord of heaven, made visible and tangible for us: seeing Him, we see the Father (Jn 14:9). Our fleshly eyes see bread, for being earth all they see is earth. But cloaked beneath that form of bread and wine is Jesus Christ, whose risen Body is the heart of heaven. About Him dance all the company of angels and saints in mirthful adoration. And some children of earth kneel and sit at the gate of heaven, looking up longingly through the circle of light that is heaven’s heart, and while they are there, all of earth gives way like husks that yield a flower: in His presence all is peace, all is light.
The Eucharist is a real, ongoing presence, not just a moment of communion, but an ongoing being with, and abiding, the eternal reality of the Incarnation, present “in every tabernacle of the world until the end of time,” as the prayer puts it. In our day, Eucharistic Adoration has become an ever more popular way to be in the presence of Jesus, to adore Him: a way to be in heaven while on earth.”
(Father Raymond T. Gawronski, S.J.)
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“Our Lord Jesus Christ is as much present in our tabernacle, and our Adoration Chapel, as He is at the Vatican, or Jerusalem, at Lourdes or Fatima or any other holy place to which people travel. In fact, no place on earth is more holy than our Adoration Chapel. Every Mass, every consecration, is a miracle, greater by far than any other, really: for God to come into matter and transform it into Himself is far greater than His creating that matter in the first place.
That is why, Catholics have always shown a special reverence in their churches by genuflecting when entering the presence of the sovereign King who is really and truly there; by assuming stances of adoration, kneeling, or keeping silent in His presence, for it is in fact, God who is present, and by keeping silent we have a better chance of hearing what He has to say to us.
His presence is called “real”, for in the end, it is not we who are real, the piece of consecrated bread a mere symbol; no, our reality in this earthly form is padding away. Right now we have this human form, but what we shall be is up to God, and none of us has seen it, this side of death (1 Jn 3:2). We, who seem so real, are really mere phantoms of a day, our flesh grass that will pass away as we fall into the inscrutable mercy of God. But now He comes to us as nourishment, as the food of life. And as we change, we shall come to see the face of Him who has chosen to be among us as one who serves, and who serves by giving us His Body to eat, His Blood to drink, His presence to adore.”
(Father Raymond T. Gawronski, S.J.)
