Eucharistic Adoration

June 15, 2025

As I mentioned last week, I was going to give a few different ideas or tips – if you will – about how to spend our time in Eucharistic Adoration.

First, we remind ourselves that when we are spending time in adoration, we are face to face with Christ present in the Eucharist. As the Blessed Sacrament is in the monstrance on the altar, we find ourselves enveloped by the actual physical presence of God, who said “this IS MY BODY”. Adoration can be an extremely fruitful time for us spiritually and also a relaxing time for us physically as we take a step away from the normal chaos and business of our day to immerse ourselves in the silence and the loving presence of our Savior.

The first thing to remember is that I do need to spend some time in personal prayer during adoration, that is a must. It does not have to be the whole hour though. There will be times when we can easily get lost in prayer and have the hour slip by without our noticing it, but generally it is good to have at least some prayers that we can easily say and will help us delve more deeply into our relationship with Christ. Some good prayers that are easy for us to say during adoration include: the rosary, the chaplet of Divine Mercy, the stations of the cross, various litanies or novenas.

Sometimes after we say a few prayers it can be helpful for us to just set for a moment and bring all the cares and concerns we have to the front of our minds and give them to the Lord. It could be something going on in our own soul or life, a situation with family or at work or school. It may be questions we have about direction or issues that we are struggling with or are having a hard time dealing with or might even have some fear of. We can bring all these things to the forefront of our minds for a moment and then just give them all to Christ, saying simply “Lord, I don’t know how to deal with this or where to go with this, I place it all in Your hands and lay it all at the foot of Your cross”. It is amazing how much peace and relief comes from our bringing all our burdens to our good Lord knowing that He will help us, because He said, “Come to Me all you who labor and are weary, and I will give you rest”. The sweetest and most fulfilling peace we will ever find on this earth is when I bring my mind, heart and soul to our loving Savior and simply open them up to Him.

The next thing we can do during adoration is spiritual reading. Doing some spiritual reading during adoration can be particularly beneficial as our souls become more open to the message of God during our reading due to the fact we are in His physical presence at the time. Spiritual reading can be taken from a number of things, for instance the Bible. It is always good to read the scriptures so we can read a chapter or two, which only takes a few minutes, and spend some time going over and examining and meditating on what we read and what God is saying through that. It gives a whole different view of the scriptures when we read them in that way. If we are curious about what certain phrases might mean or context, we can easily get ahold of a Catholic Bible commentary – many saints have written them over the years as well. Othe forms of spiritual reading can be from the catechism or form papal documents or theology or philosophy. If we want to better understand our faith and what our Church teaches, it helps to spend some time getting an understanding of the whats and whys. And still another form that I recommend often is to read about the saints. Either Lives of the Saints or the story of a particular saint. That is beneficial in many ways as it can give us ideas or tips on how to live a better life but also it is interesting to read and know the lives of our brothers and sisters who have lived on this earth, who struggled with their own flaws and yet overcame the world and gained eternal life. That can help build us up and give us hope that we too can triumph.

It is good to bring children to adoration. While they might occasionally disturb the silence by a cry or a question, we have to take into account that by bringing them, we are getting them used to spending that time in prayer and being in God’s presence and that is something that will definitely be beneficial to them in life. Teaching them at a young age that they can spend time with God in a very real way. For them it is helpful to have children’s religious books and to bring some paper and crayons or something so that they can draw or color religious pictures. Jesus will work in particular in their souls during this time as He Himself said “let the little children come unto Me”.

At the end of the day, spending time in Eucharistic adoration and growing in Eucharistic devotion will be extremely helpful for our own souls and lives, but also for our entire parish, community, country and world.

God love you, Fr. Anthony