Perpetual Adoration is an act of religion whereby members of a given parish or religious community unite in making continuous hours of adoration before the Most Blessed Sacrament, both during the day and throughout the night twenty four hours a day a seven days a week.

THE CHURCH is a living organism, and while it grows in numbers it also deepens its devotional life. Eucharistic devotion has developed more in the last hundred years than in possibly any other period in the long history of the Church.

Early Eucharistic Practice

   During the past centuries Eucharistic worship was confined, for the most part, to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; after a while it became customary to conserve some consecrated hosts in the houses of the faithful to enable them to communicate individually when they could not assist at the celebration of the Mass, and in churches in order to have them always available to be taken to the sick as Viaticum. Later this custom of keeping the Blessed Sacrament in the church tabernacle, day and night, became obligatory. However, before the 13th century there was little attention paid to the Eucharistic presence in the tabernacle. It seems that St. Francis, perhaps more than anyone else, was responsible for bringing about a greater realization and appreciation of Jesus’ abiding presence in our tabernacles.

   It was St. Francis’ great love of the Eucharist that prompted him to clean and repair poor, broken-down, country churches. It grieved him much to see the dirty and generally run-down conditions of many of the houses of God, and therefore, though he believed even abject poverty as good enough for himself and his followers, he wanted the best for the King of kings.

   When Francis spoke of the Savior he had, above all, the Eucharist in mind. To Francis the poor Christ of the crib, and the suffering Savior on the cross was not some distant personage from the pages of a history book. He was the one and same Divine Person living and present in the Blessed Sacrament. He would exhort his listeners often with these words: ‘~We ought often to visit the churches.” And he taught his brethren to pray: “We adore Thee, 0 Lord Jesus Christ, here and in all Thy churches throughout the whole world, and we bless Thee, because by Thy holy cross Thou hast redeemed the world.” He desired his spiritual sons to be bearers of a world-wide Eucharistic mission.

   Shortly after the death of St. Francis, we have two of some of the greatest Eucharistic lovers of all times, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure. The writings of these two “Heralds of the Blessed Sacrament” along with those of Duns Scotus and Alexander of Hales, stressed the fact that the Holy Eucharist is a Sacrament that remains upon our altars rather than a Sacrifice which is offered and then disappears. The great Cathedrals of Europe were a fruitful flowering in the wake of their writings. As men became more and more aware of Jesus’ abiding presence in the Eucharist, no edifice was considered too pretentious to house their Lord and Master. The erection of these great Cathedrals and the writings of Aquinas and Bonaventure were paving the way for the institution of a great Eucharistic feast, Corpus Christi. Through a private revelation given to Saint Julianna of Mt. Carnillon, this beautiful feast was eventually established in the Universal Church. At first, public exposition took place only on the feast of Corpus Christi and during its octave, but gradually it became customary to have exposition on other days throughout the year.

A Striking Coincidence

   It is a striking coincidence that the year St. Thomas Aquinas was born (1226) was also the year of the first recorded instance of Perpetual Adoration. When King Louis VII of France won a military victory over the Albigensians (a heretical sect which rejected the Sacraments and sought to stifle Eucharistic devotion), he requested that the Blessed Sacrament be exposed for adoration, veiled, in the chapel of the Holy Cross at Avignon, as an act of thanksgiving. The crowds were so great and so continuous that the Bishop of the diocese decided to continue the exposition day and night. Approval was obtained from the Holy See to make this devotion “perpetual adoration”. It remained uninterrupted for 567 years, until 1793, during the period of the French Revolution. The adoration was resumed in 1829, and has continued until this day.

Through Desire for Reparation

   Thus, through the desire of the faithful to make reparation 700 years ago for the insults and blasphemies of irreligious men, a more extensive and more ardent adoration of Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament has resulted. The Albigensian heresy has long since been forgotten, but adoration goes on today as never before.

   The elevation of the Host immediately after the consecration was another act of reparation which was introduced at this time. Throughout the history of the Church greater persecutions continually arose against the Blessed Sacrament, but they invariably brought forth even greater devotion.

   The 16th century saw the advent of the Protestant Reformation which fomented wide-spread sacrileges against the Eucharist. At the same time the furious attacks by the Turks from the East threatened to engulf Christendom. The Church answered these new heresies and threats by initiating the Forty Hours Devotion. It was Clement VIII who gave us this devotion in the form of a continuous diocesan adoration as it is in vogue today. In 1592 he ordered that the Forty Hours Devotion be held successively and without interruption in all the churches of Rome. This devotion became universally obligatory in 1705.

The 17th and 18th centuries saw the rise of Jansenism and the bloody French Revolution, both of which demanded “adorers” before the Blessed Sacrament in a spirit of reparation and expiation. So incensed were devout Catholics over the insults leveled against Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament that processions of reparation and hours of adoration became more and more wide-spread. In 1667, at the church of the Hotel-Dieu in Lyons, thirteen thousand Catholics agreed to spend an hour in adoration. The enthusiasm of the people spread to other cities. During this same period religious communities, who had as their special aim adoration of and the rendering of reparation to our Eucharistic Lord cruelly outraged by the hatred of men, were formed for the first time.

It wasn’t until the 19th century, however, that Perpetual Adoration, Nocturnal Adoration, and the many related Eucharistic works of devotion really came into their own.

Up to the 19th century all adoration, with the exception of that in convents, was carried on during the day. It was in 1810 that the first confraternity for the purpose of nocturnal adoration was founded in Rome, and shortly after was raised to the dignity of an Archconfraternity by Pope Leo XII. In 1848, the Nocturnal Adoration Society was founded in France by a Jewish convert, Herman Cohen, who later became a noted Carmelite priest. It was during this same century that many more religious communities and societies were founded with Perpetual Adoration as an essential part of their religious observance. The best known of all these are the Fathers of the Blessed Sacrament; their Order was founded by Blessed Peter Julian Eymard in 1856.

The Scene Was Set

With the growth of a more ardent love of the Blessed Sacrament through hours of adoration in chapels and churches throughout the world, there also came a greater desire to receive the precious Body and Blood more frequently. The scene was set for our 20th century pronouncements on frequent communion and the mitigation of the Eucharistic fast. It was St. Pius X, the Pope of the Eucharist, who took the first step in the 20th century to make this “safest and surest way to heaven” accessible for all the faithful when he encouraged daily communion for all and early communion for little children. The late Pope Pius XII in mitigating the Eucharistic fast in 1957 made the reception of the Bread of Life much more easy for the faithful, especially for those who are in ill health and who would not otherwise be able to receive frequently. Meanwhile, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has been keeping pace with this ever increasing reception of Holy Communion.

Something Dynamic, Ever-growing

It is easy to gather from this short history of the development of Perpetual Adoration that Eucharistic devotion is not something that is static or completely developed. It is something dynamic, ever growing and deepening its roots in the minds and hearts of Catholics. As was pointed out in one part of the article, each new attack against the Holy Eucharist by evil and perverted men brought forth from faithful and devout Catholics even greater Eucharistic devotion. The devotional practice of Perpetual Adoration seems to be playing a similar role in our day and age.

It was granted to our age to see Perpetual Adoration developing to full maturity. In it lies to a great extent the modern Catholic’s answer to materialism and Communism. It is this materialism which the late Pope Pius XII condemned roundly by declaring that it was leading the world “headlong to its own destruction . . . “ It manifests itself, as the Holy Father pointed out, “in the love of money . . . in the cult of the body...in the excessive search for comforts, and the flight from all hardships of life.” Perpetual Adoration counteracts materialism by offering the Eternal Reality in the tabernacle for the passing fascinations of the T.V. screen, a penitential kneeler for the soft easy chair or the soft, warm bed in the middle of winter; the modest attire and head covering of an adorer for the often brazen and immodest dress of our modern styles; the fervor and self-sacrifice that comes from living in close proximity of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, to the coldness, and indifference, and selfishness so prevalent among our modern populace.
Perpetual Adoration is opposed to Communism in that it is the very antithesis of everything that Communism stands for. When evil men attempt to erase the very name of God from men’s minds they are certainly also going to vent their fury and hatred against the Eucharistic God in our midst.

Perpetual Adoration is the answer to Communism inasmuch as it corresponds perfectly with Our Lady’s requests given at Fatima in 1917, which if fulfilled, will bring about the conversion of Russia and the end of Communism.

Everyone really knows, although some are unwilling to admit it, that we are living in a crucial period of the Church, and that the world is on the brink of annihilation. In this connection, let us quote the words of Manuel Cardinal Cerejeira, the Cardinal Patriarch of Lisbon, Portugal. He has said that, “In this apocalyptic hour we Christians hold the destiny of the world in our hands. It all depends on how we correspond to the Fatima appeals for prayer and penance.”

Here is an answer to the present world crisis. The United States is the greatest, as well as one of the last bastions of freedom-loving and God-fearing men. We have the freedom to worship. The question is, will we make use of this freedom to worship and raise up the army of adorers needed to do battle against the anti-God forces of materialism and Communism? ■