Finding Right Relationship

“God is the creator of life and the living substance.  God is the creator of existence; therefore everything lives under God.  The logic of this is that the individual is under obligation to let their life flow out from their center.  This center has its core the yielding to the will of God, so that the action that flows out from this center that is always accessible to the will of God will be right action, the relationship will be right relationship.  When Jesus announces that the kingdom of God is at hand, this is the announcement he is making.” (Howard Thurman, Sermons on the Parables)

Right relationship begins with prayer, so if you find it hard to pray because of your busy schedule, go to the Adoration Chapel where you will find quiet and our merciful God eager to listen.  Prayer, as Pope Benedict has explained, is an expression of our ‘personal relationship with God.’ And that relationship, the Holy Father went on the to say, ‘is what matters most.’ … Jesus is waiting.

“one cannot know the Lord without the habit of adoring, adoring in silence.”  Pope Francis

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

Hard to Understand

“The Catholic religion has a history of taking a very deep and profound spirituality, one that requires an entire lifetime to grow into, and dilute it down to a level a seven-year-old can understand.  And then we never grow it back up.  Some call this theological reductionism.  Often when it comes to religion, we still talk to fully grown, well educated adults like they’re eight years old.  We think we need to simplify deep and profound spiritual truths and then wonder why no one listens.” (Constance T. Hull - Spiritual Dirction.com)

Jesus didn’t talk down to people.  He talked to them at the level they were at; and that’s the main reason he was able to gather such a strong following.  What does this mean to you and me?  It means that if we take the time to go to the Adoration Chapel to talk and listen to our Lord, he will answer our prayers in a way each of us will understand.

IHM is always in need of additional ‘committed’ Eucharistic Adorers.  As you pray, ask the Holy Spirit if you should get involved with the Adoration Ministry; and don’t forget to pray for the intentions of other adorers that have been logged into the ‘Intention Book’ located on the counter in back of the chapel.

“If I should fall a thousand times a day, a thousand times a day I will begin again, with new awareness of my weakness, promising God, with a peaceful heart, to amend my life.”  Father Bruno Lanteri

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

Listening To Jesus

Visit the Adoration Chapel this week and sit in the quiet of His Presence.  Ask Him to help you hear His words: “I love you because I gave my life for you.  I love you because you listen to me and this practice will help you listen and understand more and more.  I love you because you cannot live without me.  I am your life.  Do you understand that, because it is so important?  I am as inseparable from you as your breathing, as the breath within your soul.  I am so near to you.  It is I who inclines you to be patient, to be gentle, to accept things …”

“Ask all of me; ask everyday as it begins what is necessary for yourself, your loved ones and for the human race in general.  Ask ceaselessly, without wearying.  It is my joy to answer!  I always answer; but my answer may not be the one for which you are hoping.  This is where you must have hope and trust so don’t be afraid to continue asking. “And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.  If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.” (Jn 14-13-14) 

Adoration time helps increase hope and trust, the very virtues Jesus tells us we must have if we expect to get a positive response to our prayer requests.  See you in the chapel.

Am I conscious of the Holy Trinity - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - in my daily life?

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

No Better Time Than Now

Take Jesus’ Words To Heart

“There is nothing that I will not do for those who approach Me in the Sacrament of My Love.  Look at Me!  Here I am vulnerable, exposed, hidden, and yet entirely delivered over to you.  The Eucharist is the invention of My love, and nothing surpasses it in all My works.  The Eucharist is more than creating itself; it is the crown of My work of redemption in this world, and the foretaste of the glory that I have prepared for those who love Me in the next.  If souls understood what treasures of love are freely given to those who approach Me in the Sacrament of My love, My churches would be filled day and night, and unable to contain the multitudes drawn to them.”   (In Sinu Jesu  p226)

Become a ‘committed’ adoration adorer and improve your relationship with God.

“Heart of Jesus, generous to all who turn to you ~ Have Mercy On Us”

 

Adoration Is An Extension Of Celebration

Adoration Is An Extension Of Celebration

In the Eucharist, the Son of God comes to meet us and desires to become one with us.  Eucharistic Adoration is simply the natural consequence of the Eucharistic celebration, which is itself the Church’s supreme act of adoration.  Receiving the Eucharist means adoring him whom we receive.  Only in this way do we become one with him, and are given, as it were, a foretaste of the beauty of the heavenly liturgy.  The act of Adoration outside Mass prolongs and intensifies all that takes place during the liturgical celebration itself.  Indeed, “only in adoration can a profound and genuine reception mature.  And it is precisely this personal encounter with the Lord that then strengthens the social mission contained in the Eucharist, which seeks to break down not only the walls that separate the Lord and ourselves, but also and especially the walls that separate us from one another.” (address to the Roman Curia, 12/22/05)

Lent is an invitation to develop a deeper relationship with Jesus
because it’s a time when we can truly grow by leaps and bounds in our faith.

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

The Treasury Of God’s Mercy Just In Time For Lent

“There is one action whose effect is boundless: it is our confident and insistent prayer.  Even the poorest of believers, when he does not have much to give, still has an unknown wealth: to draw through prayer from the infinite treasury of God’s mercy.

In the Gospel, the Lord calls us to perseverance in prayer.  Pray without ceasing.  Watch and pray.  While our world lacks hope, a powerful remedy is offered to us.  In a society that suffers from loneliness and individualism, Eucharistic Adoration helps us discover the Real Presence of Christ at our side: I am with you always, until the end of the age.  His love for us does not change.  From Him alone comes stability of our life.  The prayer of adoration allows us to welcome this love, to take this time of reflection in silence, to root ourselves in Christ and to allow our inner freedom to grow.  Furthermore, Eucharistic Adoration has the power to transform our everyday relationships by giving them the true meaning of human love.” (The Magnificat Adoration Companion)

Raise your prayer life to the next level by spending time in Eucharistic Adoration this Lent.  The chapel is always open, and Jesus waits to welcome you.  Committed Adorers are always needed.

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

Eucharistic Adoration And The Rosary

The Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments has stated that the rosary, as “a prayer inspired by the Gospel and centered on the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption, ‘should be considered a prayer of deep Christological orientation,’ and may rightly be counted among the prayers designed to ‘direct the attention of the faithful to the worship of Christ the Lord’” within the context of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament exposed.

Stop by the chapel this week and say the Rosary for your primary prayer intentions.  It won’t take you more than 30 minutes … surely you have that much time to give to Jesus!

Lent starts next week - so this is a good time to consider spending more time in the Chapel as something positive you can do during Lent.

“Adoration is an act of faith in the recognition of the truth that; ‘Both in life and in death, we belong to the Lord; that no one is their own master’” (Romans St. Paul)

(The Essence of Adoration - Louis Guardiola, C.P.M.)

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

Top Reasons To Begin Adoration

Top Three Reasons To Begin Eucharistic Adoration

- Adoration gives you the opportunity to sit in ‘silence’ and listen to God.  The language of God is ‘silence’.  If we can learn to hear God in the silence, then we can hear and see and taste and smell and touch God in everything.
- Adoration helps us rely on the Holy Spirit and live a life of obedience in prayer.  We are transformed from someone asking for a sign, to someone seeking sight through understanding.  Adoration helps to maintain a daily prayer practice the rest of the week.
- Adoration softens the Human Condition and helps us grow spiritually.  As you spend more time in Adoration God begins to communicate with you on a more profound level than that of the five senses.  God’s word moves from your ‘head’ to your ‘heart’.

Jesus delights in being with us.  Eucharistic Adoration is a beautiful way to sit in his presence and improve our relationship with him.  People willing to commit an hour a week to Adoration are always needed.  Think about it … It’s truly a ‘win-win’ that you can take with you to eternity.

“We should spend as much time thanking God for his benefits as we do asking for them.”

    St Vincent de Paul

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

Consule My Sacred Heart

Jesus Is Asking …

“You console My Eucharistic Heart by giving Me signs of your friendship; of all these, the one that most consoles Me is your presence before My Eucharistic Face.  There are many ways of expressing friendship and of responding to the love of one’s friend, but the one that is most satisfying to the heart is the simple act of companionship, of presence, of being together.  Experience has taught you this in human relationships, but you have yet to apply it to your relationship with Me as generously as I desire.  Come to Me, remain with Me.  Seek Me out in the Sacrament of My love and, by remaining with Me, adore Me with tenderness and give Me your heart’s friendship and affection.”  (Jesus’s words from In Sinu Jesu  p153)

There is a school of thought that says at our final judgement we will be judged more on the opportunities missed, than on the wrongs we did.  If Jesus should ask - How would you answer this question?  Why didn’t you take advantage of all the opportunities I gave you to console Me by spending time in My presence?

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

Join Your Suffering To The Blessed Mother's

 Join Your Suffering With That Of The Blessed Mother’s 

Eucharistic Adoration provides the opportunity to offer to our Lord all our sufferings and tribulations of the week for the reparation due all the sacrileges directed to the Holy Eucharist especially by the members of the Mystical Body so loved, so honored, and enriched with graces and gifts of the Lord.  We are able to join our reparation with that of the Blessed Mother’s at the foot of the cross for its full power and doing so we know the Lord shall accept it.

We also remember that our time with Jesus is a commemoration of His time of passion, death and resurrection that as it turned out is our redemption when we were bought and brought back from the clutches of Satan.  This time is truly a time of love that triumphs over darkness, and is the fulfillment of Jesus’ mission to love us to the end: “When Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart from this world to the Father; having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end” (Jn 13:1)

Return Jesus’ love by participating in Eucharistic Adoration.  Jesus waits!

Honoring The Eucharist

Honoring The Eucharist
Just watch a daily news broadcast, or read the news pushed to an electronic device, and it’s easy to recognize the ingratitude of the majority of the human race towards the Eucharistic Lord.  Every way we look we find real examples of how Christianity is being persecuted and how that persecution continues to grow.

As Eucharistic Adorers we make acts of reparation to repair the offenses made against the infinitely great Divine Majesty for those who ignore Him, those who insult Him, those who deny His Real Presence on earth and mock Him.

One of our Catholic missions is to console the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Merciful Father.  We beg forgiveness for those guilty and offer reparation as a holy ransom, imploring Gods’ Divine Mercy.

If you’re not part of the consolation movement of Our Lord Jesus and His Merciful Father for the sins committed by the ignorance of the human race, it’s not too late to join.  When God made each of us He set a ‘timer’ governing our earthly existence.  When that hour glass runs dry you have no more time, and can no longer in any way help yourself.  So don’t wait - start today.  Become a committed Adorer.

“In the silence of His presence we hear Him!”

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

Eucharistic Adoration Results In Thanksgiving

The Greatest Thanks

By its very nature Eucharistic Adoration involves Thanksgiving to the Father, through the Son, for the Son, in the Holy Spirit.  By offering our thanksgiving of love from the very depths of our heart for the most divine gift of the Holy Eucharist we begin the process of offering thanksgiving that will not only never cease, but will even increase to its perfection in heaven.

During Eucharistic Adoration we should try to reflect on how God lowered Himself to become man, suffering the many indignities of His passion and death, surrendering Himself to both love and the hate of His creatures, as He continues to do today.

Eucharistic Adoration is a time to practice lifting up our thanksgiving to the altar and throne of the heavenly Jerusalem where our hearts, minds, souls and one day our body, shall be offering the greatest thanksgiving a creature can give their Creator:  The gift of their entire self.

Don’t wait - begin your practice today.  Become a ‘committed’ adorer.

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

Adoration Helps You To Prepare

 Will You Be Prepared?

The Lord asks us today as He asked the apostles over 2000 years ago, “Could you not watch one hour with me!”  This is what adoration is, to watch one hour with the Lord.  Watchful adoration is to be ever vigilant and to be ever prepared as strengthened in prayer for our hour of trial when our enemies and persecutors will descend upon us like vultures and strike at our deepest weaknesses and most intimate fears.  The essence of adoration is to prepare ourselves for that great hour of trial, to learn to rely on God alone, knowing as Jesus did that only God would not abandon Him to His enemies, although the Father allowed Him to be persecuted for God’s sake and the salvation of the human race.

Now might be the right time to take your relationship with Jesus to the next level.  You will find that an hour of weekly Adoration gets easier and more rewarding with each passing week.  Don’t underestimate the heavenly rewards, God’s gifts and graces are endless, and you begin to enjoy them simply by spending time in His Presence.  Now Is The Right Time!

www.adorationpro.org/ihmmi

click on “Weekly Commitment”

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

 What’s Love Got To Do With It?

“God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).  Not just one who loves, but God is complete love itself.  Complete love itself includes 1) a lover, 2) a beloved, and 3) the act of love that flows between the lover and the beloved.  In God, these are 1) the Father, 2) the Son, and 3) the Holy Spirit, one God in three divine Persons, who make up complete love.  This is the doctrine of the Trinity, the tri-unity of God.  There is only one God, not three, but this one God is the three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  They are not three parts of God; all three are God totally. God can’t be divided into parts.”  (“Because God Is Real” - Peter J Kreeft p21) 

Because God cannot be divided we find the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit together in our Adoration Chapel at all times.  God gives us the opportunity to visit the chapel and pray to one or all three at the same time.  What a Divine Gift … show your thankfulness by going to the chapel to spend some time in his priceless presence.

                                           Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us now and at the hour of our death.