encounter sound

Recalling the “Podcast on Tap” conversation with my wife, I remembered a comment I made about Adoration that required no clarification amongst friends (the guys within the conversation know me well enough to understand what I meant) but maybe not for the casual listener.  I decided that I might go ahead and give an explanation of how I feel about it before the hatemail starts rolling in.  If you’re not a Catholic, or if you are and aren’t familiar with the experience of Eucharistic Adoration, click the link up there and read a little bit about it.  Or, if you really just don’t care, skip down to the post I wrote about rocking the blood out of my finger in Boston.  It’s true.

Let me start by saying this: “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Adoration.”  The issue I take isn’t with the tradition itself.  I find Adoration chapels to be way peaceful, and can’t imagine a better companion for prayer.  The problem I keep running into with many Catholics is that somehow it’s superceded Mass in terms of what our worship experiences are about.

I recently attended a prayer service where the worship leader innocently but ignorantly stated something very false.  He was commenting that folks that go to church shouldn’t go with the intention of “getting anything out of it”, rather that they should only be concerned with “giving worship” to God.  While this sounds very holy and selfless, it totally undermines the manner in which Jesus gave himself to us in the Eucharist for worship.  Christ gave us the Sacrament as a way to recieive Himself as we give ourselves.  Can you see where an emphasis on Adoration as the primary worship experience could confuse this?  If we only BEHOLD Jesus, without CONSUMING Him, we’re missing out on a large part of the full source and summit of our worship as Catholics.

These last few weeks, the gospels have been centered around our Eucharistic community.  The “Bread of Life Discourse” is our largest Scriptural defense for the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and was finished up in the reading this week.  What had the people “murmuring” wasn’t that Jesus was demanding Adoration, in fact they’d probably become pretty used to looking at him, praying with him, and adoring him.  What really set the believers apart was that they accepted his invitation to take it one step further.

Adoration is a particularly interesting and beautiful devotion, and I strongly encourage anyone who’s unfamiliar to experience it.  It’s a special way to experience closeness to Christ, and if it works for Mother Teresa, I can’t argue.  However, as Catholics we can never let any private devotion, be it the rosary, Divine Mercy, Adoration, novenas, or whatever else brings you close to Christ on a personal level trump our communal worship experience of recieving Christ in the Eucharist together as one.

So there it is, my schpiel on Adoration.  Take it for what it is: an opinion, but not an uneducated, unfaithful, or undeveloped one.  Be blessed.