Eucharistic Adoration
The Eucharist, and its fellowship, will be all the more complete, the more we prepare ourselves for Him in silent prayer before the Eucharistic presence of the Lord, the more we truly receive Communion. Adoration such as that is always more than just talking with God in a general way …
The Eucharist means God has answered: The Eucharist is God as an answer, as an answering presence. Now the initiative no longer lies with us, in the God-man relationship, but with Him, and it now becomes really serious. That is why, in the sphere of Eucharistic adoration, prayer attains a new level; now it is two-way, and so now it really is a serious business.
Indeed, it is now not just two-way, but all-inclusive: whenever we pray in the Eucharistic presence, we are never alone. Then the whole of the Church, which celebrates the Eucharist, is praying with us. Then we are praying within the sphere of God's gracious hearing, because we are praying within the sphere of death and Resurrection, that is, where the real petition in all our petitions has been heard: the petition for the victory over death; the petition for the love that is stronger than death.
In this prayer we no longer stand before an imagined God but before the God who has truly given Himself to us; before the God who has become for us Communion and who thus frees us and draws us from the margin into communion and leads us on to Resurrection. We have to seek again this kind of prayer.
FROM SACRAMENTUM CARITATIS:
"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'" (66).
I also recommend that. in their catechetical training and especially in their preparation for First Holy Communion, children be taught the meaning and the beauty of spending time with Jesus. and helped to cultivate a sense of awe before His presence in the Eucharist (67).
Besides encouraging individual believers to make time for personal prayer before the Sacrament of the Altar, I feel obliged to urge parishes and other church groups to set aside times for collective adoration. Naturally, already existing forms of Eucharistic piety retain their full value. I am thinking, for example, of processions with the Blessed Sacrament, especially the traditional procession on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, the Forty Hours devotion, local, national and international Eucharistic Congresses, and other similar initiatives. If suitably updated and adapted to local circumstances, these forms of devotion are still worthy of being practiced today (67).
The relationship of the Eucharist to the various ecclesial vocations is seen in a particularly vivid way in 'the prophetic witness of consecrated men and women, who find in the celebration of the Eucharist and in Eucharistic adoration the strength necessary for the radical following of Christ, obedient, poor and chaste' (81).
