Eucharistic Adoration Quotes

The Purpose of the Eucharist lies not in the change of the bread and wine, but in the partaking of Christ, who has become our food, our life, the manifestation of the Church as the body of Christ. This is why the gifts themselves never became in the Orthodox East an object of special reverence, contemplation, and adoration, and likewise an object of special theological 'problematics': how, when, in what manner their change is accomplished.

My Dear Lord, please help me. Place me in the Center of Your Perfect Will. Adoro te devote, latens Deitas. Bread of Life by bread concealed, speaking heart to heart. Tibi se cor meum totum subjicit. Let Your presence draw me in here my senses fail. Visus cactus, gustus in te falliti. This is truth enough for me. Peto quod petivit latro paenitens. Seeing You upon the Cross, flesh and blood, I find. Plagas, sicut Thomas, non intueor. I see not but name You still God and Prince of Life. O memoriale mortis Domini. How I thirst to meet Your gaze gloriously revealed. After life's obscurity, let me wake to see. Beauty shining from Your Face for eternity. Amen.

In the eleventh century, a French archdeacon challenged the Church’s faith that the Blessed Sacrament was in fact the Body and Blood of Christ. Pope Gregory VII (reigned 1073–85) responded with a definitive statement of what the Church had always believed. After the controversy was resolved, Eucharistic adoration began to flourish. The Church soon instituted processions of the Blessed Sacrament, prescribed rules for Eucharistic adoration, and encouraged the faithful to visit Our Lord reserved in the churches. The martyr St. Thomas à Becket (1118–70), for example, once wrote to a friend that he often prayed for him in the church before “the Majesty of the Body of Christ.” In 1226, after King Louis VII of France (1120–80) won a victory over the Albigensian heretics who had taken up arms against him, he asked the Bishop of Avignon to have the Blessed Sacrament exposed for adoration in the Chapel of the Holy Cross. The faithful who came to adore were so numerous that the bishop allowed the adoration to continue indefinitely, day and night. This decision was later ratified by the pope, and adoration at Avignon continued uninterrupted until 1792, when the French Revolution halted the devotion. It was resumed, however, in 1829. Also in the thirteenth century, Pope Urban the IV (reigned 1261–64) instituted the Feast of Corpus Christi (the Body of Christ), commissioning St. Thomas Aquinas to write hymns for the feast. The lyrics for these compositions reflect a profound awareness of Christ’s abiding Presence with us in the Blessed Sacrament and of the reverence, adoration, and gratitude we owe Him for that surpassing Gift. In

One who desires to seek My Eucharist Face, one who desires to draw near to My open Heart, is never far from the tabernacle. I transport his spirit there where I am. I welcome his desire to abide in My presence. I give him the grace of My presence in the most secret part of his soul. There he will find Me, and there he will be able to adore Me.

If this most holy Sacrament were celebrated in only one place and consecrated by only one priest in the whole world, with what great desire, do you think, would men be attracted to that place, to that priest of God, in order to witness the celebration of the divine Mysteries! But now there are many priests and Mass is offered in many places, that God's grace and love for men may appear the more clearly as the Sacred Communion is spread more widely through the world.

The lay faithful came together in their own societies focusing on perpetual adoration. One of the earliest was founded in Paris for women in 1641. Men’s nocturnal adoration societies, such as the Pious Union of the Adorers of the Most Blessed Sacrament (founded in 1810), eventually spread throughout Europe and into North and South America. Such associations received enthusiastic support and encouragement, especially through the teaching of St. Peter Julian Eymard (1811–1868). Pope St. John Paul II has called him “the Apostle of the Eucharist.” The

To take in our hands the whole world as if it were an apple!” said a Russian poet. It is our Eucharist. It is the movement that Adam failed to perform, and that in Christ has become the very life of man: a movement of adoration and praise in which all joy and suffering, all beauty and all frustration, all hunger and all satisfaction are referred to their ultimate End and become finally meaningful. Yes, to be sure, it is a sacrifice: but sacrifice is the most natural act of man, the very essence of his life. Man is a sacrificial being, because he finds his life in love, and love is sacrificial: it puts the value, the very meaning of life in the other and gives life to the other, and in this giving, in this sacrifice, finds the meaning and joy of life.

In the sixteenth century, new challenges to Eucharistic faith were presented by the various Protestant movements. In response, the Council of Trent solemnly affirmed the age-old teaching of the Church that the Eucharist is truly the Body and Blood of Christ. The Council also declared in 1551 that Our Lord is to be adored in the Blessed Sacrament, honored with festive celebrations, carried solemnly in processions, and publicly exposed for the people’s adoration. The declarations of Trent prepared the way for a new era of Eucharistic devotion. Pope Clement VIII (reigned 1592–1605) issued a document establishing the practice of the forty hours devotion at Rome, a custom that had been popular in the city of Milan. From Rome, the devotion slowly spread throughout the Church. In

When you come to adoration, put aside every anxiety and care of yours, and allow the Holy Spirit gently to unite you to the prayer that rises from My Eucharistic Heart to the Father. Every need of yours is contained in the prayer I offer to My Father. Be at peace. You may want to pray for this thing or for that, and such prayer is good and is pleasing to My Father, but there is another way, a higher way, and that is to yield to the prayer of My Sacred Heart present in the Most Holy Eucharist and in the glory of heaven. I send the Holy Spirit upon you and upon all My priests that they may enter into this priestly intercession of Mine, without forsaking that other form of intercession, which is, as I said, also pleasing to My Father when it is childlike and full of confidence in His loving providence.

Enjoyment requires discernment. It can be a gift to wrap up in a blanket and lose myself in a TV show but we can also amuse ourselves to death. My pleasure in wine or tea or exercise is good in itself but it can become disordered. As we learn to practice enjoyment we need to learn the craft of discernment: How to enjoy rightly, to have, to read pleasure well. There is a symbiotic relationship, cross-training, if you will, between the pleasures we find in gathered worship and those in my tea cup, or in a warm blanket, or the smell of bread baking. Lewis reminds us that one must walk before one can run. We will not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable but we shall not have found Him so. These tiny moments of beauty in our day train us in the habits of adoration and discernment, and the pleasure and sensuousness of our gathered worship teach us to look for and receive these small moments in our days, together they train us in the art of noticing and reveling in our God’s goodness and artistry. A few weeks ago I was walking to work, standing on the corner of tire and auto parts store, waiting to cross the street when I suddenly heard church bells begin to ring, loud and long. I froze, riveted. They were beautiful. A moment of transcendence right in the middle of the grimy street, glory next to the discount tire and auto parts. Liturgical worship has been referred to sometimes derisively as smells and bells because of the sensuous ways Christians have historically worshipped: Smells, the sweet and pungent smell of incense, and bells, like the one I heard in neighborhood which rang out from a catholic church. At my church we ring bells during the practice of our eucharist. The acolyte, the person often a child, assisting the priest, rings chimes when our pastor prepares the communion meal. There is nothing magic about these chimes, nothing superstitious, they’re just bells. We ring them in the eucharist liturgy as a way of saying, “pay attention.” They’re an alarm to rouse the congregation to jostle us to attention, telling us to take note, sit up, and lean forward, and notice Christ in our midst. We need this kind of embodied beauty, smells and bells, in our gathered worship, and we need it in our ordinary day to remind us to take notice of Christ right where we are. Dostoevsky wrote that “beauty will save the world.” This might strike us as mere hyperbole but as our culture increasingly rejects the idea and language of truth, the churches role as the harbinger of beauty is a powerful witness to the God of all beauty. Czeslaw Milosz wrote in his poem, “One more day,” “Though the good is weak, beauty is very strong.” And when people cease to believe there is good and evil, only beauty will call to them and save them so that they still know how to say, “this is true and that is false.” Being curators of beauty, pleasure, and delight is therefore and intrinsic part of our mission, a mission that recognizes the reality that truth is beautiful. These moments of loveliness, good tea, bare trees, and soft shadows, or church bells, in my dimness, they jolt me to attention and remind me that Christ is in our midst. His song of truth, sung by His people all over the world, echos down my ordinary street, spilling even into my living room.

We know that we were created as celebrants of the sacrament of life, of its transformation into life in God, communion with God. We know that real life is “eucharist,” a movement of love and adoration toward God, the movement in which alone the meaning and the value of all that exists can be revealed and fulfilled. We know that we have lost this eucharistic life, and finally we know that in Christ, the new Adam, the perfect man, this eucharistic life was restored to man. For He Himself was the perfect Eucharist; He offered Himself in total obedience, love and thanksgiving to God. God was His very life. And He gave this perfect and eucharistic life to us. In Him God became our life.

We were created as celebrants of the sacrament of life, of its transformation into life in God, communion with God … [R]eal life is “eucharist,” a movement of love and adoration toward God, the movement in which alone the meaning and value of all that exists can be revealed and fulfilled … [I]n Christ, the new Adam, the perfect man, this eucharistic life was restored to man. For He Himself was the perfect Eucharist.

The Eucharist awakens in us the voice of God, which has been silenced by the busyness of this world.

My child, I wish to confide to you the secrets of My Heart burning with love for men in this Sacrament. How forgetful men are becoming of their Creator! Ambition, sensual pleasures, vain and worldly amusements, seem to estrange so many hearts from Me, even among those who were once devoted to Me in this sweet Sacrament of My Love, where I continually swell, and where they spent so many happy hours in the past secure from worldly seductions.

My Lord and my God, “hidden” in the Eucharist, I want to use the faith you’ve given me, the grace with which you’ve blessed me, and the love with which you’ve filled my own “little heart,” to “tear away the veil” and to realize, to truly believe, that with your help, I, too, can become the person — can become the saint — you’re calling me to be.

Private Prayers for the Priest Before Celebrating the Eucharist Purify our consciences, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that we may worthily hear and receive thy Holy Word, magnify thy Holy Name, and offer unto thee the spotless sacrifice of thy Son, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. or Cleanse our consciences, we beseech thee, O God, by thy visitation, that thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ, when he cometh, may find in us a dwelling place made ready for himself; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end. Amen. or Be present, be present, O Jesus, our great High Priest, as you were present with your disciples, and be known to us in the breaking of bread; who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, now and for ever. Amen. After Celebrating the Eucharist Blessed, praised, worshipped, hallowed and adored be Jesus Christ on his throne of glory in heaven, in the most holy Sacrament of the altar, and in the hearts of his faithful people (and may the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace). Amen. or By the power of the Holy Spirit may I be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice to you all the days of my life, O Lord. Amen. or O Lord Jesus Christ, who in a wonderful Sacrament hast left unto us a memorial of thy passion: Grant us, we beseech thee, so to venerate the sacred mysteries of thy Body and Blood, that we may ever perceive within ourselves the fruit of thy redemption; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. Prayers for use at the Offertory Offering of the Bread Blessed are you. Lord God of all creation; through your of the Bread goodness we have this bread to offer, which earth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the Bread of Heaven.       Response:   Blessed be God forever. Preparation of the Cup By the Mystery of this water and wine may we come to of the Cup share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity. Offering of the Cup Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation; through your goodness we have this wine to offer, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It will become for us the Cup of Salvation.       Response:   Blessed be God forever. Of the Alms: Receive, O Lord, these gifts presented by your people for the work of your Church. At the Lavabo: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. or Lord, wash away my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. or I will wash my hands among the innocent, Lord, and walk around your altar, that I may tell of your wondrous deeds.

The Eucharist is a mystery of faith; to dismiss Eucharistic adoration is to weaken the faith.

This is the Jesus we worship and adore in each celebration of the Eucharist: the one who offered himself in a unique sacrifice which is made available for us now in an unbloody, sacramental manner, under the forms of bread and wine which we receive here so as to live with Christ forever.

Because Christ, who is made present in the liturgical action, remains present in the Eucharist under the form of bread, He is adored in the Blessed Sacrament even outside of Mass. Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is one form of such adoration, as are visits to the Blessed Sacrament.

Christ’s presence in the bread and wine consecrated by the priest so that the sacrifice can be offered by all the baptized to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is a real presence which includes every dimension of who Jesus is, body and blood, human soul and divine person. The consecrated Eucharistic species are the Lord and therefore command our adoration. We do not adore ourselves, nor the ordained priest, nor the bible, even though these are vehicles for Christ’s spiritual presence; we do adore the Eucharist, this blessed sacrifice made really present sacramentally.

Adoremus in Aeternum Sanctissimum Sacramentum

If we have been baptized into the Catholic faith as infants and have spent our Sundays attending Mass, perhaps we have missed what many converts are so ecstatic about. We are prone to a certain “house-blindness,” going through the motions of the Faith without bothering to scratch the surface. But for those who are brave enough to venture farther than surface-skimming, an entirely new chapter of their lives begins to unfold when the true reality before us is realized: The same Jesus we read about in the Bible, hear about in the readings of Mass, and watch movies about (if they are trendy enough) is the very same Jesus we receive and adore in the Most Blessed Sacrament. Body,

As Abraham had promised Isaac, God Himself truly provided the Lamb, His own Son, offered as a willing sacrifice, raised from the dead, and present daily on the altar at every Holy Mass. The

Another insight from this passage is an example of appropriate posture before the living God. Many times in Sacred Scripture when people encounter an angel, their immediate instinct is to throw themselves on the ground, prostrating before the angelic messenger. But the angels usually counter with a correction of some sort, clarifying that they are not God, merely messengers of the Most High. Now if this is the reaction of human beings in the presence of an angel, how much more reverent should we be in the presence of Almighty God! Bowing and kneeling, which are standard postures at various points in the Mass, are also appropriate at times in our Eucharistic adoration. We can see in a number of biblical passages that this expression of reverence for God, which symbolizes submission to His will, has been practiced by God’s people since ancient times, even in the Old Testament era: “O come, let us worship and bow down, / let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker! / For He is our God” (Ps 95:6–7). “I bow down toward Thy holy temple / and give thanks to Thy name for Thy steadfast love and thy faithfulness” (Ps 138:2). “For thus says the LORD, . . . To Me every knee shall bow” (Is 45:18, 23; see also Rom 14:11; Phil 2:10–11). Lessons

In the days of the early Christians, the Blessed Sacrament was preserved after Mass in order to bring Holy Communion to the sick or to those in prison for their faith. We hear stories, such as that of St. Tarcisius, of Christians risking their lives to carry the Blessed Sacrament to others. Records also show that in the late fourth century, in some dioceses, converts to the faith were invited to adore the Blessed Sacrament exposed for eight days after their baptism. Early

Finally, let’s take a look at the mystery of the Nativity—specifically, the response of the Magi when they finally have the consolation of looking upon the Lord whom they had so ardently sought: “And going into the house they saw the Child with Mary His mother, and they fell down and worshiped Him” (Mt 2:11). In sum, Mary becomes a living tabernacle. Jesus’ hidden presence has great power. As soon as God is made visible, He is adored. A

God commanded that the stones engraved with the Ten Commandments, a jar of manna, and the rod of Aaron (who was the first priest of the old covenant) be placed within the ark. Each of these reminders of God’s covenant, placed within the ark, were themselves foreshadowing Christ. He was the fulfillment of the Law (see Mt 5:17; Rom 10:4), the Bread from Heaven (Jn 6:32–35), and the eternal High Priest (Heb 7:23–26).

We know that real life is "eucharist," a movement of love and adoration toward God, the movement in which alone the meaning and the value of all that exists can be revealed and fulfilled.

St. Faustina often experienced this reality, not only during the liturgy, but also during times of adoration. In her prayer, “At the Feet of Christ in the Eucharist,” she writes: Oh King of Glory, though You hide Your beauty, yet the eye of my soul rends the veil. I see the angelic choirs giving You honor without cease and all the heavenly powers praising You without cease, and without cease they are saying, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” Diary, 80

We do not "adore bread" (adoratio panis, d/oroAarpeta), because, according to Catholic teaching, the substance of bread is no longer present in the Holy Eucharist and we give no separate adoration to its acci dents. The object of our adoration is the totum sacra-mentale. 1

Successful evangelists are persons of the Eucharist. They are immersed in the rhythms of the Mass; they practice Eucharistic adoration; they draw the evangelized to a participation in the Body and Blood of Jesus.

Do we Catholics adore bread when we pay adoration to the Blessed Sacrament? No; we do not adore bread, for no bread is there, but the most sacred Body and Blood of Christ, and wherever Christ is, adoration is due Him by man and angels. St. Augustine says: "No one partakes of the Body until he has first adored and we not only do not sin when we adore It, but would sin if we did not adore It." The Council of Trent excommunicates those who assert that it is not allowable to adore Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, in the Blessed Sacrament. How unjust are those unbelievers who sneer at this adoration, when it has never entered into the mind of any Catholic to adore the external appearance of this Sacrament, but the Savior hidden under the appearances; and how grievously do those indifferent Catholics sin who show Christ so little veneration in this Sacrament, and seldom adore Him if at all!

Traditionally, Wednesdays are devoted to St. Joseph, Thursdays to the Eucharist and the priesthood, Fridays to penance and the Cross, and Saturdays to our Lady,

The minute we become parents we have

an automatic apostolate —and the most important apostolate you could ever be entrusted with!

We can never show enough reverence, nor ever worship the Eucharist with adequately heartfelt veneration. That is why throughout the ages it has been the custom in the Church to receive the Holy Eucharist kneeling. We should receive the Holy Eucharist prostrate and not standing. Are we the equals of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Is it not He who will come upon the clouds of heaven to be our Judge? When we see Our Lord Jesus Christ, shall we not do as did the Apostles on Thabor when they prostrated themselves on the ground in terror and wonder at the greatness and splendor of Our Lord Jesus Christ? Let us keep in our hearts and souls that spirit of worship, that spirit of profound reverence for Him who created us, for Him who redeemed us, for Him who died on the Cross for our sins.

We had to ascend to heaven in Christ to see and to understand the creation in its real being as glorification of God, as that response to divine love in which alone creation becomes what God wants it to be: thanksgiving, eucharist, adoration. It is here—in the heavenly dimension of the Church, with “thousands of Archangels and myriads of Angels, with the Cherubim and Seraphim … who soar aloft, borne on their pinions …”—that we can finally “express ourself,” and this expression is: Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord of Sabaoth. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord. This is the ultimate purpose of all that exists, the end, the goal and the fulfillment, because this is the beginning, the principle of Creation.

To pray before the Blessed Sacrament exposed on the altar is to cast a glance of faith upon Jesus Christ, true God and true man, truly present in the Bread of the Eucharist.

We adore You, Lord Jesus Christ, in all Your churches throughout the world, and we bless You, for through Your holy cross You have redeemed the world.” ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Being with the One who, out of infinite love, waits for us in the Blessed Sacrament, we will grow in peace amid the sufferings and trials of this life. We will find rest in the knowledge of His love for us, which is beyond our wildest hopes and dreams. When we truly know that we are loved, we can endure much and accomplish many things for the Kingdom.

if the tomb in which He lay for some time is so venerated, how holy, just, and worthy must be the person who touches [Him] with his hands, receives [Him] in his heart and mouth, and offers [Him] to others to be received. [This is] He who is now not about to die, but who is eternally victorious and glorified, upon whom the angels desire to gaze

Our lives are transformed through frequent contact with the Lord present in the Blessed Sacrament. It is impossible to spend extended periods of time with Christ, adoring him, thanking him and uniting our wills to his, and not have him change our lives. One of the most encouraging developments in the prayer life of the archdiocese in recent years is the growth of Eucharistic Adoration in the parishes.

Objections to Eucharistic adoration come from a misreading of history and from erroneous sacramental theology. Because adoration of the Lord in the Eucharist arose in an era when people did not receive Holy Communion every Sunday, the practice of adoration is sometimes dismissed as an aberration, a substitute for receiving Communion. This is not a Catholic reading of history. The development of devotion to the Lord in his Eucharistic presence is not a “falling away” from some imagined pristine purity; it is evidence of a greater appreciation of who the Eucharist is... Likewise, adoration of the Lord in the Sacred Host is not in competition with the liturgical action of the Sacrifice of the Mass. To speak disdainfully, as some occasionally have, of “objectifying” Christ in the Host is to speak heretically.

It seems strange to me that we should lift high the book of Gospels, which remains only a book, but be embarrassed to elevate the consecrated host, which is the Body of the Lord. It is a good thing to find a prominent and visible place in the church for the blessed oils and consecrated chrism which are used in the sacraments, but they remain oil and chrism; how strange it is that we should be fighting over whether or not people should be able to spot without too much inconvenience the place where the Eucharist is reserved. The Eucharist is a mystery of faith; to dismiss Eucharistic adoration is to weaken the faith.

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 the 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.