7 Reasons to Participate in Adoration

What would you say if someone offered you an all-expenses paid trip to the most relaxing spa in the world? What would you say if you were told a celebrity you adore would be there to greet you? Most of us would happily accept that invitation. But what about the one we receive to participate in adoration? The peace it offers far exceeds the relaxation provided at the best spas. And the one who greets us is infinitely greater than our most cherished celebrities.

In 2007, Pope Benedict addressed a crowd in Saint Peter’s Square. Among other things, he said “In life today, often noisy and dispersive, it is more important than ever to recover the capacity for inner silence and recollection. Eucharistic adoration permits this not only centered on the ‘I’ but more so in the company of that ‘You’ full of love who is Jesus Christ, ‘the God who is near to us.’”

We need to find peace and to experience Christ’s love. But here are seven more reasons to go to adoration.

It Deepens Our Experience Receiving Holy Communion

In that same address to the crowd in Saint Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict also spoke about the fact that participating in adoration can enrich the way we receive Christ in the Eucharist when we receive Holy Communion during Mass. He said “Indeed, an intrinsic connection exists between celebration and adoration. In fact, Holy Mass is in itself the Church's greatest act of adoration: ‘No one eats of this flesh,’ as St Augustine writes, ‘without having first adored it.’ Adoration outside Holy Mass prolongs and intensifies what has taken place in the liturgical celebration and makes a true and profound reception of Christ possible.”

It Gives Hope to Those Who Suffer

In 2013, Pope Francis visited with ill and physically challenged children at The Seraphic Institute in Assisi. A woman there called the children’s disabilities the wounds of Jesus and said that they need to be acknowledged and heard. Pope Francis said “On the altar we adore the Flesh of Jesus; in the people we find the wounds of Jesus. Jesus hidden in the Eucharist and Jesus hidden in these wounds. They need to be heard! Maybe not so much in newspapers as news; there they take notice for one, two, three days, then something else comes up, and another thing.... The wounds should be heard by those who call themselves Christian. The Christian adores Jesus, the Christian seeks Jesus, the Christian knows how to recognize the wounds of Jesus. And today, all of us, here, need to say: ‘These wounds must be heard!’ But there is something else that gives us hope. Jesus is present in the Eucharist, here is the Flesh of Jesus; Jesus is present among you, it is the Flesh of Jesus: the wounds of Jesus are present in these people.”

It Helps Us to be Transformed by Jesus

In Seoul, Korea in 1989, St. John Paul II also spoke about adoration. He said “If we are to experience the Eucharist as the ‘source and summit of all Christian life,’ then we must celebrate it with faith, receive it with reverence, and allow it to transform our minds and hearts through the prayer of adoration. Only by deepening our Eucharistic communion with the Lord through personal prayer can we discover what he asks of us in daily life. Only by drinking deeply from the source of life-giving water ‘welling up within us’ can we grow in faith, hope and charity. The image of the Church in worship before the Blessed Sacrament reminds us of the need to enter into a dialogue with our Redeemer, to respond to his love and to love one another.”

It Greatly Pleases Jesus

The Apostle of Divine Mercy, St. Faustina, received visions of Christ speaking to her. The polish nun revealed them in her now famous diary. In her diary, she wrote that she heard Jesus saying to her “My Heart overflows with great mercy for souls, and especially for poor sinners. If only they could understand that I am the best of Fathers to them and that it is for them that the Blood and Water flowed from My Heart as from a fount overflowing with mercy. For them I dwell in the tabernacle as King of Mercy. I desire to bestow My graces upon souls, but they do not want to accept them. You, at least, come to Me as often as possible and take these graces they do not want to accept. In this way you will console My Heart.”