II. Whatever Happened to Perpetual Adoration?

My understanding was very limited when I was a child. Now that I am an adult, my understanding has grown and expanded with the teachings of the Church and the Second Vatican Council. As my understanding of Eucharist and the presence of Christ has grown and matured, so has my understanding of adoration. I continue to pray in chapel in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, because I am drawn to it, just as I have always been. However, structured times and programs of prayer in chapel in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament are no longer my primary expression or understanding of adoration. As I have lived this prayer, as I have prayed in quiet adoration, I have grown into an entirely new understanding and vision. Adoration is no longer something I do, or a program to be maintained. Adoration has become an integral part of my life and of who I am. I find I am becoming what I am called: a Benedictine Sister of Perpetual Adoration. Today there is no place, no time, that I am not in the presence of our Eucharistic God. All the world has become for me a house of prayer. Every tree, every rock, every bush and flower and blade of grass burn with the presence and glory of God. Every breath I breathe is filled with the presence of God. There is no time, no place, that I cannot adore the living God.

Now when I go to pray in chapel, it is for me a return to the center, to the ground zero, from which all flows, all radiates. It is there that I focus my attention with full intention. There I worship in Spirit and in truth, as I focus and strengthen my inner gaze, placing myself in the full intensity of the beam of God's gaze. I pray in chapel to receive anew the vision of God and of reality, to receive again the gift of that calling which is a drawing into the very heart and life of God, the dance of adoration, of praise and thanksgiving. Adoration has become my life. It is a way of living, a way of seeing, a way of being, and a way of doing. I will continue to pray in chapel, as my inner gaze and my outer gaze increasingly become one, until, seeing only God, I am able to hold the stillness of that gaze in the heart of the movement which is daily life.