We live in an age that understands not ceasing. The internet and television stay open twenty-four seven. Every college kid knows the restaurants that never close. We are rapidly becoming a society that does not value rest, sleep, or waiting for physically or virtually anything.
The cure for the exhaustion and despair that must follow living a life without rest, is silence, contemplation, God. Adoration is both the inoculation and the cure for the busy-ness our world values. However, being steeped in a society that demands constant access, constant instant response time, and constant stimulation, we who would seek God, must retrain ourselves how to engage in this intimate form of prayer and worship.
Contemplative prayer invites us to pare back on the distractions the world offers, and adoration is a short sure way to re-orient our spiritual lives back towards Christ. The how of adoration becomes the issue for many of us, because it feels awkward going into the chapel without a plan or a structure. We don’t know how to just sit in the presence of God because we are anxious about many things.
First, let us remember, God trembles with joy when we approach Him. Say hi. God knows our hearts, but we often do not. So begin by praising God. If a system helps, take out a rosary and say a “Thank you” to Christ on each bead to begin, adding what you are thankful for. Gratitude for the blessings we have, which number greater than the stars every moment of our lives, is a good beginning.
Second, begin to gaze at Christ, and really recognize Christ is there. Ask Him to heal you of all that keeps you from loving Him and your neighbor as yourself. Consider bringing a journal to write down observations, reflections, and those “you should apologize,” or “consider volunteering to…” because those little nudges are the Holy Spirit inviting you into deeper relationship with the Holy Trinity, and presenting a way forward. This is not about creating spiritual to do list, it is about just letting yourself hear (and remember) what God reveals in that sacred time.
Open the scriptures. God always speaks to us in the scriptures. Let yourself steep in reading a psalm, praying it with your whole heart. Read the daily Gospel, and ask God to show you how you can more fully witness to the world the good news of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.
Let yourself wrestle, with silence, with the scriptures, with prayer, with God. God loves you. God desires your friendship. Recognizing the ways in which we through sins, both of omission and commission, create barriers to receiving God’s love, is a wrestling and subduing of the disordered will, and it is not easy. Love requires sacrifice. Love requires service. Love requires sublimation. God does this, never more visibly clearly to us, than on the Cross, and in the form of the Eucharist.
The difficulty in our relationship with God, always remains in us.
Good friends talk about things that matter, and even argue about them because they matter. God wants to show you personally, as the dearest and greatest and first friend, what the best path forward for us is, but like the best and gentlest of lovers that He is, will propose and invite, but never impose His will. It is something we must come to, by recognizing who God is, and that comes from being willing to spend time allowing ourselves to listen, and daring to let God ever deeper into our lives.
Lastly, go back to the thank yous. Close out with praise for the hour, praise for the opportunity, and just thank yous for all that the hour has brought to your heart. The time in adoration will change as you persist, sometimes speeding by, other times, a struggle, but it will also become a source of spiritual richness, even if you do not see the fruits. Others will feel the grace, in a softness of words, a heart of greater service, a light they may not know or be able to name, but which comes from allowing God to be more visible in one’s life.
The world needs God, the world longs for God, the world is starving for God. We are sent from every mass to bring Him to others, and to bring others to Him. Adoration is not a means, it is the alpha and omega, it is not merely a hint of Heaven, it is the full presence of God before us. We should be running to the tabernacle, breaking open the roof to descend our friends before Him, and rejoicing to sit at His feet, and returning rejoicing for all the ways in which we discover as we go about our day, we have been healed.
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