From Eucharistic Adoration to Evangelization

Alcuin Reid

• Publisher: Burns & Oates
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781441102270
• eBook ISBN: 9781441104793
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

A collection of essays and homilies from Pope Benedict, Cardinals and Bishops focusing on the relevance of Eucharistic adoration for liturgy, spirituality and mission today. Dom Alcuin Reid is a monk of the Monastère Saint-Benoît in La Garde-Freinet, France. He is an internationally renown liturgical scholar and author.

Two

A Mystagogical Catechesis of Eucharistic Adoration

Dom Mark Daniel Kirby OSB

Prior of the Monastery of Our Lady of the Cenacle, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

Ut, dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc, in invisibilium amorem rapiamur

(Missale Romanum)

Introduction

The Year of the Eucharist proclaimed by Blessed John Paul II 7 years ago and fervently endorsed by Pope Benedict XVI on the day following his election (Message, 20 April 2005), was for many a pressing invitation to discover or rediscover Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament. I know of no more fitting expression of what happens during Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament, than that magnificent line of the Preface of the Nativity: ‘Ut, dum visibiliter Deum cognoscimus, per hunc, in invisibilium amorem rapiamur’ – ‘So that, even as we know God visibly, we are, by this, ravished unto the love of what is invisible’ (Missale Romanum).

There is nothing random about my choice of this particular liturgical text in relation to the mystery of the Most Holy Eucharist. With singular theological acuity the Missal of 1962 attributes to the feast of Corpus Christi and to Votive Masses of the Most Blessed Sacrament, the very Preface sung at Christmas in thanksgiving for the Mystery of the Incarnation. Thus does the Sacred Liturgy teach us that the Most Holy Eucharist prolongs the adorable Mystery of the Incarnation, and this until the end of time. ‘Behold’, says the Lord, ‘I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world’ (Mt. 28.20).

Though hidden beneath the sacramental veil, the Sacred Humanity of Our Lord or, if you will, His ‘Eucharistic Face’, to use the expression coined by Blessed John Paul II (Ecclesia de Eucharistia, 7), becomes in Eucharistic Adoration that by which we know God visibly, and that by which we are ravished unto the love of what is invisible. The adorable Face of Christ hidden in the Sacrament of the Altar today remains, no less than in His earthly life, ‘the brightness of the Father’s glory, and the figure of His substance’ (Heb. 1.3). ‘No man has seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known’ (Jn 1.18), and continues to make Him known in the Sacrament of His Love. Thus was St Thomas Aquinas inspired to write in the last strophe of the Adoro Te Devote:

Iesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio,

oro fiat illud quod tam sitio;

ut te revelata cernens facie,

visu sim beatus tuae gloriae.

Jesus, here your Face is hid, from my sight concealed,

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.

The mystery that the Preface of the Nativity proclaims in a lyrical mode is, of course, borne out in the daily experience of the saints. I am thinking, in particular of St Gaetano Catanoso, the humble priest whom Pope Benedict XVI quoted in the homily at the very first canonization ceremony of his pontificate on 23 October 2005: ‘If we wish to adore the real Face of Jesus . . . we can find it in the divine Eucharist, where with the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, the Face of Our Lord is hidden under the white veil of the Host’.

The Sacred Liturgy itself and, I would argue, only the Sacred Liturgy and the writings of the saints and mystics inspired by it, can provide us with words and sentiments adequate to Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament, even when Adoration unfolds and is prolonged in silence. In his Apostolic Letter for the Year of the Eucharist, Mane nobiscum, Domine, Blessed John Paul II said, ‘Pastors should be committed to that mystagogical catechesis so dear to the Fathers of the Church, by which the faithful are helped to understand the meaning of the liturgy’s words and actions, to pass from its signs to the mystery they contain, and to enter into that mystery in every aspect of their lives’ (17). I propose to offer something in the way of a mystagogical catechesis of Eucharistic Adoration.

The magnificent Trinitarian Christocentrism of the Fathers that finds lyrical expression, for example, in the Gloria of the Mass, as well as in the Te Deum of the Divine Office, is the very breath of a Eucharistic Adoration carried out in union of heart and mind with the heart and mind of the Church.

The Christological movement of the Gloria shapes and inspires the Adoration of one who would adore the Most Blessed Sacrament with a sensibility that is fully and gloriously Catholic:

Lord Jesus Christ, Only Begotten Son,

Lord God, Lamb of God,

Son of the Father,

you take away the sins of the world,

have mercy on us;

you take away the sins of the world, receive our prayer;

you are seated at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us.

For you alone are the Holy One,

you alone are the Lord,

you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit,

in the glory of God the Father. Amen.¹

The Word of God and the Most Holy Eucharist

Eucharistic Adoration is not static. It is, rather, a movement of ascent to the Kingdom, initiated by the proclamation and hearing of the Word of God. In Eucharistic Adoration as in all Christian prayer, the initiative is divine not human. It begins, as we will sing in the hymn at Lauds on the feast of Corpus Christi, with ‘the heavenly Word proceeding forth, yet leaving not the Father’s side’.² God reveals Himself in uttering His Word; the descending Word, proclaimed and received in the heart of the Church, becomes the Word through whom, with whom, and in whom we ascend to the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

The Word by whom the Father redeems us, heals us, and raises us even to Himself, becomes in us, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Word by whom we praise, bless, adore, and glorify the Father; the Word by whom we give Him thanks for His great glory and implore His mercy upon the world; the Word through whom we make reparation for the evil wrought by sin. Catherine de Bar, in religion, Mother Mectilde du Saint-Sacrement, foundress of the Benedictines of Perpetual Adoration in 1653, puts it compellingly: ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ alone can adore God perfectly in spirit and in truth, and we cannot do it apart from our union with Him’.³

Eucharistic Adoration is enkindled then, not only when the Sacred Host is withdrawn from the tabernacle and exposed to our gaze, but even before that, when the Word of God is proclaimed, repeated, prayed, and treasured in the heart. The seeds planted in the corporate lectio divina of the Sacred Liturgy – Holy Mass and the Divine Office – and in the solitary lectio divina that the Sacred Liturgy shapes and inspires come to fruition in silent Adoration before the Most Blessed Sacrament.⁴ Eucharistic Adoration presupposes a long familiarity with the Word of God received and sung in the liturgical assembly, repeated and prayed in lectio divina, pondered and held in the heart.

This is why the Church recommends the reading of the Word of God as a source of Christian prayer, and at the same time exhorts all to discover the deep meaning of Sacred Scripture through prayer ‘so that a dialogue takes place between God and man. For, ‘we speak to Him when we pray; we listen to Him when we read the divine oracles’.⁵

The Divine Office and Eucharistic Adoration

The intuitions of numerous saintly founders and foundresses, among them Mother Mectilde du Saint–Sacrement, St Peter Julian Eymard, founder of the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, and Mother Marie-Adele Garnier, foundress of the Adorers of the Sacred Heart, of Tyburn, O.S.B. (1838–1924), bore fruit in the conjunction of the choral celebration of the Divine Office with Perpetual Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament. St Peter Julian Eymard, among others, insisted on the choral Office as the primary and highest corporate expression of Eucharistic Adoration.⁶ The saint’s particular grace was, in fact, the unified focus of his entire being, spirit, soul and body on the Divine Person of Jesus Christ really, truly, and substantially present in the Blessed Sacrament. Understanding the choral Office in this light, he presented it as the solemn and collective glorification of Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, the prayer of the redeemed to the Lamb, the prayer of the Mystical Body addressed to Christ the Head, the prayer of the bride addressed to Christ her Spouse. This being said, St Peter Julian Eymard in no way distanced himself from the Trinitarian character of all liturgical prayer. Rather, he applied to the choral Office in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament exposed what St Augustine wrote concerning the Psalms in general:

When we speak with God in prayer we do not separate the Son from Him, and when the Body of the Son prays it does not separate its Head from itself: it is the one Saviour of His Body, Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who prays for us and in us and is Himself the object of our prayers. He prays for us as our priest, He prays in us as our head, He is the object of our prayers as our God.⁷

Experienced on a daily basis, the Divine Office, personal lectio divina, and Eucharistic Adoration become an effective school of the prayer without ceasing to which Jesus calls His disciples.⁸ The quality of the prayer of Eucharistic Adoration is moreover, in some way, proportionate to the quality of our exposure to and reception of the Word of God. One of the great adoring souls of the nineteenth century, Blessed Théodelinde Dubouché, foundress of the Congregation of the Adoration Réparatrice at Paris in 1848 illustrates this in writing:

By a singular grace, for me who have not much of a memory, all the texts of the Gospel, and much from the Sacred Scriptures, came into my thought with no effort; and this nourishment was so abundant that even when I was not carried away by love, I was holding very real conversations with Our Lord . . . I have often understood, or rather sensed, that God is altogether there in the Scriptures, but that the full intelligence of them will be the occupation of eternity.⁹

Two Gospel Paradigms of Eucharistic Adoration

St Luke’s Gospel offers two paradigms of Christian worship that can be brought to bear upon Eucharistic Adoration. The first is his account of the feeding of the 5,000. ‘[Jesus took the Apostles] and withdrew apart to a city called Bethsaida. When the crowds learned it, they followed Him; and He welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God, and cured those who had need of healing’ (Lk. 9.10–11).

If the crowds follow Jesus and seek Him out, it is because the Holy Spirit is already at work, assembling a body of believers, fashioning a community – a Church – hungry for the Word of God. ‘No one can come to me, says Jesus, unless the Father who sent me draws him . . . It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God’. Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Introduction
• One: Adoration and the New Evangelization
• Two: A Mystagogical Catechesis of Eucharistic Adoration
• Three: Loving Jesus in the Eucharist with Mary: The Foundation of Religious Life
• Four: Eucharistic Adoration as a Way of Life: A Pastoral Perspective
• Five: Homily for the Solemn Mass of St Aloysius Gonzaga
• Six: Celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi
• Seven: Adoration and the Sacred Liturgy
• Eight: Eucharistic Adoration and Sacred Scripture
• Nine: The Eucharist, Adoration and Healing
• Ten: Homily: Eucharistic Adoration, Self-Offering and Martyrdom
• Eleven: Adoration in the Formation and Life of Priests
• Twelve: Addressing Objections to Adoration
• Thirteen: Adoration as the Foundation of Social Justice
• Fourteen: From Adoration to Serving the Poor
• Fifteen: Adoration as the Heart of Diocesan Life
• Sixteen: Spiritual Fruits of Adoration in Parishes
• Seventeen: Homily for the Solemn Mass of Corpus Christi
• Copyright