How is adoration like watching Netflix with your parents? Stargazing with your daughter? How about sitting next to a friend in the hospital, silently reading a favorite book? The answer is simple. 

Adoration is about presence: His and yours. Case in point: Is it better to visit your mother, or call? Which is more satisfying for her and for you? 

What is so different about sitting with Jesus in the monstrance, exposed, during adoration, and sitting with him in your living room, or in your office, or even in the pew near the tabernacle? Since Jesus is God, and God is everywhere, all the time, and all knowing, he is with you right now as you read this, correct?  

Photo by Michael Alexander

Adoration would seem to be our way of being as close as we can to Jesus, barring taking him during communion. You know that Jesus, in the consecrated wine and hosts of unleavened bread, have changed in substance. They are no longer wine and bread, but the physical, living blood and body of Jesus Christ, soul and divinity included. 

The devotion offers a more prolonged time to spend with Jesus being physically present than we have during a Mass. We can contemplate him, pray to him, while we look at him, a consecrated host, exposed within the window of a golden, sun-like monstrance on the altar.  

The idea of adoration may seem foreign, or even intimidating to newcomers. But the practical ‘how-to’ of it doesn’t have to be more than sharing space with Jesus. Watching television, stargazing, and reading a novel don’t require deep thought, but if they are done with someone beloved present, that activity is elevated by love. If not the activity, then the choice, the act of being present with that person. The ordinary is made extraordinary by the love you bear for the person you are with.  

A group of adoration regulars revealed a variety of ways they spend their time with Jesus in adoration at St. Mary, Mother of God Church in Jackson. While all are quiet and reverent, every person’s approach is as individual as the person participating. 

Some will sit for an hour or two, losing themselves in the peace and joy radiating from God.  

Some will drop in for a few minutes, sliding in and out of the sanctuary between to-do items. 

Some prepare mentally, while others don’t.  

Some people sit and others kneel. 

Some bring spiritual readings or a Bible to read. 

Some actively pray, having a conversation with Jesus. 

Some write in a journal, knit, or work on cross stitch projects. 

Some empty their minds, leaving space for Jesus to speak, during meditation. 

There’s no one “way” to properly worship, love, and spend time with Jesus. As long as someone approaches the Lord authentically, based on who they are, they fulfill the spirit of the devotion.  

But why show up in the first place, you might ask? You would be surprised how much a little time with Jesus in the Eucharist will improve your day. People say they leave with “peace and joy,” “hope, and better equipped to handle the day,” “self-esteem, and determination to be with Jesus all the time,” “ideas on how to better serve God,” “feeling refreshed,” and “without the weight of worries.”  

The consensus seems to be that all left adoration uplifted, with peace and joy, and without the weight of anxiety. Couldn’t we all use some hope, joy, and peace these days? And the more peace we carry with ourselves, the more we bring to others. The more peace we bring to others, the more we bring into the world.  

Perhaps if each of us spend a little quiet, peaceful time with Jesus in adoration, we could help bring about peace to our troubled world. Wouldn’t that be something?