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PERPETUAL ADORATION WORLDWIDE MISSIONNOVA OMNIA FACIOOn the 2nd of December, 1981, Pope John Paul II began Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration (PEA), with the Blessed Sacrament exposed, in a chapel at St. Peter's Basilica. Since then he has repeatedly expressed his hope that every parish in the world will follow his example and do the same. He says that: "Every member of the Church must be vigilant in seeing that this sacrament of love shall be at the center of the life of the people of God so that through all the manifestations of worship due to it, Christ shall be given back 'love for love' and truly become the life of our souls." (Redemptor Hominis) | |
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Every Sunday, if not every day, we celebrate the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The priest speaks the words of consecration and the Holy Spirit descends upon our offering of bread and wine, changing it into the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Then, 'Let us proclaim the Mystery of Faith', because the Mystery, the Center, and the very Heart of our Catholic Faith is the Real Presence of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist. As Catholics we believe that Holy Communion is not bread, but the Body, Blood, Soul & Divinity of Jesus Christ Who said: "The Bread that I will give is My Flesh for the life of the world!" (Jn. 6:51) To emphasize this reality, the priest elevates the Sacred Host again after the sign of peace and repeats the very same words St. John the Baptist proclaimed about Jesus two thousand years ago: "Behold the Lamb of God Who takes away the sins of the world!" And once again, before receiving Holy Communion, each one of us is invited to affirm and proclaim our personal conviction, to testify, that what we receive is not bread, but the Body of Christ! Amen!
The question today is: Do we adore Him Whom we receive into our hearts in Holy Communion? The clear, specific and unmistakable way Jesus pleads with us to show our appreciation for the Sacrament of His Love is through Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration (PEA). His words to St. Margaret Mary are even more valid today: "Behold this Heart which has so loved men and which is so little loved in return. I thirst with such a terrible thirst to be loved by men in this Sacrament of My Love!"
PEA is simply a matter of putting our faith into practice. It is the concrete expression of our appreciation that the Blessed Sacrament is really Jesus Our King.
Scripture reminds us that when Pontius Pilate said to the people: 'Behold your king', they replied, 'We have no king' and Jesus was handed over, crowned with thorns and lifted up in hatred upon the Cross. Today we have the opportunity to do the exact opposite, because through perpetual adoration we proclaim Jesus King, we crown Him with glory and we lift Him up in love. Together, as a people of God and as a Eucharistic parish, we profess our faith that Jesus is our Emmanuel - God dwelling here with us in the Blessed Sacrament - and that we recognize, appreciate, welcome, love and adore Him as the center of our lives. Won't you please pray, through the intercession of Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, that every Christian and every parish throughout the world will respond to the appeal for Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration.
PEA is started through a simple process of evangelization and organization. All that is needed to begin PEA is for enough people in the parish to set aside just one hour, once a week, to spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. There are only 168 hours in the week. Most parishes have three, five or even ten times more people than there are hours in the week. If only one-third, one-fifth or one-tenth of the people in the parish are willing to make a holy hour each week, then PEA can be easily established.
St. Paul says that faith comes through hearing but asks how people will hear if we don't preach? (cf. Rom. 10) Thus we first evangelize the parish, preaching the message of Our Lord's Real Presence at all the Sunday Masses and inviting the parishioners to make a commitment to a weekly or daily holy hour. We select and prepare a suitable chapel and organize all of the commitments, all of the hours, so that every hour of the week is covered, with at least one person in the chapel at all times, so that Jesus is never left alone and the chapel can be always open - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. PEA lasts as long as Our Lord's love for us in the Blessed Sacrament, which is forever! Through PEA, a parish gives witness to the very heart of our Catholic faith. We proclaim to the world: "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive honor and glory and praise." (cf. Rev. 5:12)
Pope Paul VI reminded us that the Blessed Sacrament is the 'Living Heart' of each of our churches. He said that: "It is our very sweet duty, as Catholics, to adore in the Sacred Host, Which our eyes can see, the Incarnate Word, Whom they cannot see" (Paul VI, Credo).
The Blessed Sacrament is Jesus Himself - truly, bodily, personally - It is the continuation of His Incarnation on earth! "Behold, I am with you always..." (Mt. 28:20)
This is what St. Paul meant when he said that faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for, which is eternal salvation, and conviction about those things that we do not see, namely, the Real and Saving Presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. (cf. Heb. 11:1)
Imagine, for a moment, if Jesus were to walk through the door, sit down beside you, put His arm around you, and proceed to tell you how much He would love to spend some time with you each week, individually, one-on-one, so that He can lavish upon you all of the graces and blessings He won for you on Calvary! Who in all the world would not want to spend an hour each week with Jesus in Person?
But the reality is that Jesus is already here in Person. He disguises Himself under the appearance of bread because He wants us to recognize Him with the eyes of faith, to love Him for Himself, and to appreciate all that He has done for our salvation.
Blessed Teresa of Calcutta said that: "When you look at the Crucifix, you understand how much Jesus loved you. When you look at the Sacred Host, you understand how much Jesus loves you NOW!" St. Paul explains that: For our sake He made Himself poor though He was rich so that we might become rich by His poverty." (2 Cor. 8:9) Good Friday follows Holy Thursday because His Passion and Death were the price that Jesus lovingly and willingly paid to give us the complete Gift of Himself in the Holy Eucharist! He gave up His Body on the Cross for love of us so that He may give His Body to us in Holy Communion and become our Divine Companion and Best Friend in the Most Blessed Sacrament!
This is why the Church teaches that: "Our essential commitment in life, is to grow spiritually in the climate of the Holy Eucharist." (Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei)
At Holy Mass we are brought together by the Holy Spirit, united as a parish family in communal worship, to offer thanks and praise to the Father, through His Son, in the Holy Sacrifice that commemorates and makes present the death and resurrection of Christ Our Savior.
Then, when Mass is over and we have all gone home, Jesus stays with us day and night in the Blessed Sacrament. He invites each of us to come back to Himself, sometime during the week, for a quiet holy hour of prayer so that we can deepen our friendship, our union, our intimacy and our personal relationship with Him, for "when we contemplate him present in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar, Christ draws near to us and becomes more intimate to us than we are to ourselves." (Pope JPII, Corpus Christi Letter, 1996)
The Pope insists that "our communal worship must go together with our personal devotion so that our love for God will be complete." (John Paul II, Dublin, 1979) Communal is Holy Mass. Personal is Holy Hour.
It's really quite simple. All of us know that when you love someone, you experience joy just being with the one you love. And the more you love someone, the greater joy you feel when you are with this special person. And this is the point: Because Jesus loves you infinitely, unlimited is the joy that you bring to His Sacred Heart each time you visit Him for a holy hour of prayer. "Jesus waits for you in this Sacrament of Love, where He repeats His timeless appeal... 'Could you not watch just one hour with Me?' (Mt. 26:40)" (Pope JPII, Redemptor Hominis)
And Jesus wants all of us to know that this hour that He is asking is not hard, because He is absolutely the easiest Person in the world to be with and to please. You may want to bring your own favorite prayer book, or read the Holy Bible, or pray the Holy Rosary, or simply speak to Jesus heart to Heart as best friends do. Or you may be so tired, troubled and worn out that you want to do nothing but just sit and relax; enjoying the sweet peace that comes from being in the Presence of the very same Jesus of the Gospels, Who says: "Come to Me all who are weary and find life burdensome and I will refresh you." (Matt. 11:28)
Even if you think that you can't pray very well, because you are easily distracted and get restless, Jesus wants you to know that He understands this, it is natural. What He wants you to understand is the supernatural: that He is so much in love with you that the mere fact that you choose to be with Him for a quiet hour each week pleases Him immeasurably. He loves us so much! Why would we not want to fulfill this simple request He asks of us, especially when we consider all that He gives to us in return?
Each moment that you spend in His Eucharistic Presence deepens your union with Christ and makes your soul everlastingly more beautiful and glorious in heaven. Just as you can't go out on a clear day without being warmed by the rays of the sun, neither can you come into the Divine Presence of Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament without being touched by the rays of grace and mercy that flow forth from His Eucharistic Heart. Pope Paul VI says, in Mysterium Fidei, that "there is nothing more consoling on earth, nothing more efficacious for advancing along the road to holiness!"
And, far from being only a personal act, each holy hour that you make brings all mankind closer to God. Pope John Paul II writes: "Closeness to Christ in silence and contemplation does not distance us from our contemporaries but, on the contrary, makes us attentive and open to human joy and distress and broadens our heart on a global scale. It unites us with our brothers and sisters in humanity and particularly with children, who are the Lord's dearly beloved. Through adoration, the Christian mysteriously contributes to the radical transformation of the world and to the sowing of the Gospel. Anyone who prays to the Savior draws the whole world with him and raises it to God. Those who stand before the Lord are therefore fulfilling an eminent service. They are presenting to Christ all those who do not know him or are far from him: they keep watch in his presence on their behalf. (Pope JPII to Bp. of Liege, Corpus Christi 1996)
A philosopher at Boston College explains: "Adoration will heal our Church and thus our nation and thus our world. Adoration touches everyone and everything..." [because it touches the Creator, Who touches everything and everyone] "When we adore, we plug into infinite dynamism and power. Adoration is more powerful for construction than nuclear bombs are for destruction." (Peter Kreeft, Angel & Ants)
WHAT POWER! Every man, woman and child on the face of the earth is touched with a new effect of God's Mercy each time you put your faith into practice and visit Jesus for a holy hour of prayer! PEA is the fulfillment of St. Faustina's vision where "I saw the Lord Jesus in our chapel exposed in the monstrance... anyone who wanted to come was allowed in... the crowd was so enormous that the eye could not take it all in... I saw how the two rays, as painted on the image, issued from the Host and spread over the whole world." (from the diary of St. Faustina of the Most Blessed Sacrament) The Church and the entire world have a great need of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, for this is what will bring about God's Kingdom on earth and everlasting peace to mankind.
A chapel that is always open makes it possible for all of us to come to Jesus since each of us can easily find at least one hour sometime during the week to be with Him. People are needed for all of the hours, and whatever hour that you choose; morning, noon, evening or night; is most pleasing to God. But the hours for which you are needed the most are the night hours, between midnight and 6 a.m. for the Lord realizes that these are difficult hours to be with Him. If you can help out by making a sacrifice and taking one of these difficult hours, it would be greatly appreciated by us, but most especially by God Who will never allow Himself to be outdone in generosity. Whenever we are generous with Him He is ten times more generous with us.
Practically speaking, an hour in the middle of the night does not conflict with anything else in an otherwise busy schedule so one will always be free to make it. But the best reason of all is that sacrifice is the language of love. Standing up for Jesus today, in the Blessed Sacrament, where He is so unloved and so unwanted, is the same as standing up for Jesus when He was alone and abandoned on the Cross.
On the Cross, Jesus took our place. When we come to the Blessed Sacrament in the middle of the night, we take the place of the one in the world who is in most need of God's mercy. Our sacrifice brings down the Precious Blood of the Lamb upon that soul, an efficacious grace drawing the soul to heaven instead of hell, for Jesus says: "It is not part of the Father's plan that a single soul should be lost." (Jn. 6:39)
PEA eminently fulfills our Blessed Mother's request at Fatima for reparation and thus Pope John Paul II pleads: "Let us be generous with our time going to meet Him, ready to make reparation for the great crimes of the world. May our adoration never cease." (Pope JPII, Dominicae Cenae)
Finally, the Bible tells us that it was in the middle of the night when Jesus asked for His very first holy hour of prayer. Those who respond to His appeal, by coming to Him in the middle of the night, will be like the first streaks of dawn in the sky that foretell the rising of the morning star (cf. 2 Pet. 1:19), and usher in a New Day - the coming in power of Our Lord Jesus Christ!
When we proclaim Jesus King, by giving Him the love and glory due His Name through Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, then He will claim His Kingdom. This is the vision of hope radiating from the Apocalypse, where the angels cry out: "Worthy is the Lamb Who was slain to receive honor and glory and praise"... (Rev. 5:12) inspiring God's people, that's you, to go in prayer day and night (cf. Rev. 7:15) before the Lamb on the throne... Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
And it says that from the Lamb there flows a river, bright as crystal, of grace and mercy that heals all the nations. (cf. Rev. 22:1-3) For, through the power of perpetual adoration, Jesus will establish His Kingdom of Peace and His Reign of Love, and by the greatest miracle of His Divine Mercy, He will perfect everything and everyone in the transforming fire of His Love, according to His promise: Behold, I make all things new! (Rev. 21:5)
Dearest brothers and sisters in Christ, one day each of us will see God the Father face to Face. On that day I can promise you that He will embrace you and spend all eternity thanking you and loving you in heaven because of your efforts to thank and love His Beloved Son here on earth through Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration.
In Jesus, Mary & Joseph,
Deacon Barth E. Bracy
Moderator
O Sacrament Most Holy, O Sacrament Divine,
through Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration,
all praise and all thanksgiving be every moment Thine,
by every heart in every parish throughout the world!
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The author is a husband, father and permanent Deacon who has been promoting Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration (PEA) since 1993. He has preached and established chapels of PEA in Burma, Colombia, Hong Kong, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States. In 1999 he began working in the Philippines as he believes that from there PEA will effectively spread throughout Southeast Asia. In 2001 he co-founded, together with the Rev. Msgr. Josefino S. Ramirez, HP, the League of Eucharistic Guardians. He can be reached through email with questions about PEA. |
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