With Eyes Wide Open
Encountering the Lord in Adoration
Which of the following people actually
encountered Jesus when they came to their church and sat before the
Blessed Sacrament in adoration?
The young boy who stopped in on his way
home from school just to say, “Hi,” to Jesus. The man who slipped into
the back of the church and repented over an over again for the way he
had sinned against the Lord. The teenager who said the Our Father, the
Hail Mary, and the Glory Be three times. The woman who said four
rosaries, one for each of the twenty mysteries. The married couples who
spent a full hour gazing at Jesus together. The priest who did nothing
but ask Jesus for guidance and wisdom as he tried to lead his parish.
If you answered all of the above, then
you’re right. Any time that we go out of our way to visit Jesus, we
will be blessed. Of course, not all of these kinds of visits are the
same, and they don’t all yield the same results. After all, we’re
talking about a relationship here, and in any relationship there are
degrees of intimacy.
If we simply sit before the Lord for an
hour, we will be blessed. We will feel good about what we have done,
and we will leave our time with him strengthened. Yet this approach to
adoration has its limits. By preparing ourselves to meet the Lord and
by having some knowledge of how they Holy Spirit words, we can increase
our chances of receiving more from the Lord and of being changed more
into his likeness. So let’s look at a few ways we can approach
adoration to see how the Spirit works in each of them.
Fix Your Eyes on Jesus. Look to Jesus
the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that
was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has
taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)
The idea of fixing our eyes on Jesus is
so simple that even a young child can understand it. As you kneel or
sit before the Lord, call to mind your favorite images of Jesus. Some
like to see him with his Blessed Mother, perhaps in their home at
Nazareth or at the wedding feast of Cana. Others enjoy seeing Jesus at
the Transfiguration, radiant with God’s glory as he talks with Moses and
Elijah. Still others prefer to see him feeding the five thousand or
healing the hemorrhaging woman. Many people hold two images of Jesus
dear to their hearts: the crucified Christ and the risen Lord seated at
the right hand of his Father in glory.
When we begin to fix our eyes on one of
these images and focus our attention on Jesus in the Sacrament, a couple
of things begin to happen. First, the distractions of normal life, with
all of its responsibilities, problems, and demands, fad3e away.. Second,
we begin to feel as if we have entered into heaven. We feel as if we
too are “seated” with Jesus “in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6).
We get a taste of what it will be like when there will be no more
suffering or pain, when we will be reunited with all of our loved ones,
and when every hope and dream of ours will finally be fulfilled.
Listening for His Voice. I pray that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a
spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him. (Ephesians
1:17)
As we fix our eyes on Jesus in this way,
something marvelous begins to happen. The Holy Spirit begins to open
our minds and fill us with spiritual wisdom and understanding
(Colossians 1:9). We begin to grasp more above Jesus: what he did for
us, how much he loves us, how merciful he is, and how much he rejoices
with us and suffers with us.
Words from Scripture that previously had
little or no meaning begin to come alive. They enlighten our minds and
urge us to be holy. They convince us that we have God’s strength to
help us and to make us more fruitful for Jesus.
Then comes the best part. Whatever we
learn and understand moves us to love Jesus more. When we grasp who he
is and what he has done for us, our only response is to say, “Jesus, I
love you.” We fall in love with him all over again, and his love in
turn calms our fears, heals our wounds, and energizes us with hope and
confidence. Some who find this intimacy have even felt Jesus putting
his arms around them and holding them close to his heart.
Overcoming the World. Little children,
you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is
greater than the one who is in the world. (1John 4:4)
Another work of the Holy Spirit that frequently occurs as we adore Jesus
in the Blessed Sacrament is directed toward the obstacles that block our
way to God. St. Paul calls these obstacles “strongholds” that are raised
up “against the knowledge of God” (2Corinthians 10:4-5).
As we kneel before the Lord, we begin to
hear the Holy Spirit gently tell us that perfection cannot be united with
imperfection. He tells us that in Christ we have been made holy , and
that we should now live as the holy man or woman he has made us to be.
Suddenly, we find God’s mercy and power working in us, helping us to take
these strongholds captive and demolish them one by one, over time. We
find God’s grace working in us, convincing us that we can overcome
everything that separates us from him.
As we are moved to repentance and
confession, something inside of us ~yes, it is the Holy Spirit~ infuses us
with a divine conviction and power. We leave our time of adoration
convinced that we can stop sinning, and we find a new a greater ability to
say “no to the temptations that assail us in the course of our day.
Building the Kingdom of
God.
I pray that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him,
as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of
God. (Colossians 1:10)
Like every parent, our heavenly Father has
the perfect happiness of every human being in the forefront of his mind.
Today, as happy as he is that we have come and spent time in Jesus’
presence, he also gives us a taste of his sadness. If we look at Jesus
long enough and closely enough, we can see him weeping over all the pain
and suffering in the world. We can see him mourning over all the sin. We
can see him weeping over those who reject him or who have never heard of
him.
The pain that we see in the broken heart
of Jesus moves us to take up his call. Adoration before Jesus moves us to
say: “Here am I; send me” (Isaiah 6:8). It convinces us that our life
with Jesus is about personal holiness and about being his light to
everyone we meet.
The Holy Spirit wants to use our time of
adoration to open our eyes to the needs of the poor, to the despair of the
uneducated, to the loneliness of the unevangelized, and to the suffering
and fears of the ill, the forgotten, and the homeless. The Spirit want us
to loves Jesus so much that we feel compelled to serve him.
With Opened Eyes. To those who have never
sat before the Lord in this way, Eucharistic adoration can seem like a
waste of time. And yet to those who have tasted the goodness of the Lord,
adoration has the power to move us closer to Jesus.
Think about Jesus’ encounter with the
Samaritan woman described in John 4. At the very beginning of their
conversation, Jesus told her, “I you knew the gift of God, and who is that
is saying to you, “Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he
would given you living water” (John 4:10). In a similar manner,
Eucharistic adoration is not about our giving Jesus a drink by giving up
our time to be with him as much as it is about our coming to Jesus and
asking Him for a drink. It’s about presenting our needs to the Lord and
asking him to fill us up with heavenly grace and heavenly power and
heavenly wisdom. It’s about receiving all that we need to live in him and
for him in this world.
The more we fix our eyes on Jesus, the
more we will appreciate how much he goes out of his way to reach us. When
we come and meet him in adoration, he shows us ~ just as he showed the
Samaritan woman ~ that he wants to be our Lord, our Savior, and our
friend. As our eyes are opened, we will take his advice and ask him for a
drink of his living water. And we will never be the same again.
Reprinted with permission of The Word Among Us, 9639 Dr. Perry Road, #
126 Ijamsvilla, MD 21754.
(June 2006)
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