by Fr. Stefano M. Manelli, FI, STD

When one loves truly and loves greatly, one begins to adore. Great love and adoration are two distinct things; but, they form a whole. They become adoring love and loving adoration. Jesus in the tabernacle is adored only by those who truly love Him, and He is loved in an eminent manner by whoever adores Him .

The saints, the artists and experts of love, were faithful, ardent adorers of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Importantly, eucharistic adoration has always been considered the closest likeness we have to the eternal adoration in which will consist the whole of our Paradise. The difference lies only in the veil that hides the vision of that Divine Reality of which faith gives us unwavering certainty.

“At the feet of Jesus”

Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has been the great passion of the saints. Their adoration lasted hours and hours, sometimes whole days or nights. There “at Jesus’ feet” like Mary of Bethany (Lk. 10:39), in loving union with Him, absorbed in contemplating Him, they surrendered their hearts in a pure and fragrant offering of adoring love.

Let us listen to St. Peter Julian Eymard who would fervently exclaim: “May I serve as a footstool, O Lord, at Your Eucharistic Throne!” Listen to what Ven. Charles de Foucauld wrote before the tabernacle: “What a tremendous delight, my God! To spend over fifteen hours without having anything else to do but look at You and tell You, ‘Lord, I love You!’ Oh, what sweet delight…!”

All the saints have been ardent adorers of the Holy Eucharist, from the great Doctors of the Church like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure, to Popes like St. Pius V and St. Pius X, priests like the holy Curé of Ars and St. Peter Julian Eymard, down to humble souls like St. Rita, St. Paschal Baylon, St. Bernadette Soubirous, St. Gerard, St. Dominic Savio, St. Gemma Galgani…, all the saints were ardent adorers of the Eucharist. These chosen ones, whose love was true, kept no count of the hours of fond adoration they spent day and night before Jesus in the tabernacle.

Consider how St. Francis of Assisi spent so much time, often entire nights, before the altar, and remained there so devoutly and humbly that he deeply moved anyone who stopped to watch him. Consider how St. Benedict Benedict Joseph Labré, St.Labré, called the “poor man of the Forty Hours,” spent days in churches in which the Blessed Sacrament was solemnly exposed. For years and years this Saint was seen in Rome making pilgrimages from church to church where the Forty Hours was being held, and remaining there before Jesus, always on his knees absorbed in adoring prayer, motionless for eight hours, even when his friends, the insects, were crawling on him and stinging him all over.

Once when it was proposed to do a portrait of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, a discussion ensued about the posture in which to paint him. Eventually, the Saint was portrayed in adoration before the altar, because eucharistic adoration was the most distinctive characteristic of his sanctity.

That favored soul of the Sacred Heart, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, one Holy Thursday, spent fourteen hours without interruption prostrate in adoration. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini, on a feast of the Sacred Heart, remained in adoration twelve continuous hours, absorbed and, as it were, so magnetized to Our Lord in the Eucharist that when a Sister asked her if she had liked the arrangement of flowers and drapings adorning the altar, she answered, “I did not notice them. I only saw one Flower, Jesus, and no other.”

After visiting the cathedral in Milan, St. Francis de Sales heard someone ask him, “Your Excellency, did you see what a wealth of marble there is, and how majestic the lines are?” The holy bishop answered, “What do you want me to tell you? Jesus’ presence in the tabernacle has my spirit so absorbed, that all the artistic beauty escapes my notice.” What a lesson this reply is for us who thoughtlessly go to visit famous churches as though they were museums!

Maximum recollection

A good example of the spirit of recollection during eucharistic adoration is the striking experience which Bl. Contardo Ferrini, professor at the University of Modena, had. One day, after he entered a church to visit Our Lord, he became so absorbed in adoration, with eyes fixed on the tabernacle, that he took no notice when someone robbed him of the mantle spread over his shoulders. “Not even a bolt of lightning could distract her,” it was said of St. Mary Magdalene Mary Magdalene Postel, St.Postel, because she appeared so recollected and devout when adoring the Blessed Sacrament. On the other hand, once, during adoration, St. Catherine of Siena happened to raise her eyes toward a person passing by. Because of this distraction of an instant the Saint was so afflicted that she wept for some time, exclaiming, “I am a sinner! I am a sinner!”

How is it that we are not ashamed of our behavior in church? Even before Our Lord solemnly exposed we so easily turn about to look to the right and left, and are moved and distracted by any trifle, without feeling—and this is what is terrible—any sorrow or regret. Ah! The delicate, sensitive love of the saints! St. Teresa taught that “in the presence of Jesus in the Holy Sacrament we ought to be like the Blessed in Heaven before the Divine Essence.” That is the way the saints have behaved in church. The holy Curé of Ars used to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament with such fervor and recollection that people became convinced he saw Jesus in person with his own eyes. People said the same of St. Vincent de Paul: “He sees Jesus there within (the tabernacle).” And they said the same of St. Peter Julian Eymard, the incomparable apostle of eucharistic adoration. He found a devout imitator in Blessed Pio of Pietrelcina, who was enrolled among the Priest-adorers and for forty years kept a little image of St. Peter Julian Eymard on his desk.

Even after death

It is noteworthy that the Lord seems to have singularly favored certain saints by enabling them to perform, after death, an act of adoration to the Blessed Sacrament. Thus, when St. Catherine of Bologna, St.Catherine of Bologna was laid out before the Blessed Sacrament altar a few days after her death, her body rose up to a position of prayerful adoration. During the funeral Mass of St. Paschal Baylon, his eyes opened twice, i.e. at the elevation of the Host and at the elevation of the Chalice, to express his adoration of the Eucharist. When Bl. Matthew Girgenti, Bl.Matthew Girgenti’s body was in the church for his funeral Mass, his hands joined in adoration toward the Eucharist. At Ravello, Bl. Bonaventure of PotenzaBonaventure of Potenza’s body, while being carried past the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, made a devout head-bow to Jesus in the tabernacle.

It is really true that “Love is stronger than death” (CANT. 8:6), and that “He that eats this Bread shall live forever” (JOHN 6:59). The Eucharist is Jesus our Love. The Eucharist is Jesus our Life. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a heavenly love which enlivens us and makes us one with Jesus, the Victim, “always living to make intercession for us” (HEB. 7:25). We should be mindful that one who adores, makes himself one with Jesus in the Host as Jesus intercedes with the Father for the salvation of the brethren. This is the highest charity toward all men: to obtain for them the kingdom of heaven. And only in Paradise will we see how many souls have been delivered from the gates of Hell by eucharistic adoration done in reparation by holy persons known and unknown. We must not forget that at Fatima the Angel personally taught the three shepherd children the beautiful eucharistic prayer of reparation, which we also ought to learn: “O most holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore You profoundly, and I offer You the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference with which He is offended. And through the infinite merits of His most Sacred Heart and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg of You the conversion of poor sinners.” Eucharistic adoration is an ecstasy of love and it is the most powerful salvific practice in the apostolate of saving souls.

For this reason St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, the great apostle of Mary, in each of his foundations, before providing even the cells of the friars, wanted the chapel to be constructed first in order to introduce at once perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament (exposed). Once, when he was taking a visitor on a tour of his “City of the Immaculate” in Poland and they had entered the large “Chapel of Adoration,” he said to his guest with a gesture toward the Blessed Sacrament, “Our whole life depends on this.”
“The better part”

The stigmatized friar of the Gargano, Blessed Pio of Pietrelcina, to whom crowds flocked from every quarter, after his long daily hours in the confessional, used to spend almost all the remaining day and night before the tabernacle in adoration, keeping company with Our Lady as he recited hundreds of Rosaries.

Once the Bishop of Manfredonia, Msgr. Cesarano, chose Blessed Pio’s friary to make an eight-day retreat. Each night the bishop got up at various times to go to the chapel, and each night despite the different hours, he always found Blessed Pio in adoration. The great apostle of the Gargano was working throughout the world unseen—and sometimes seen, as in instances of bilocation—while he remained there prostrate before Jesus, with his Rosary in his hands. He used to tell his spiritual children, “When you want to find me, come near the tabernacle.”

Ven. James Alberione, Fr. JamesAlberione, another great apostle of our time, expressly placed as the foundation for his entire dynamic work, The Apostolate of the Press (Societá Apostolata Stampa), adoration of the Holy Eucharist. Thus, his Congregation of Pious Disciples of the Divine Master, were given the single, specific vocation of adoring Our Lord solemnly exposed in the Holy Eucharist night and day.

Eucharistic adoration is truly that “best part” of which Jesus spoke when chiding Martha for busying herself with “many things” that were secondary, overlooking the “one thing necessary” chosen by Mary: humble and affectionate adoration (LK. 10:41-42).

What should be the love and zeal, then, that we ought to have for eucharistic adoration? If it is by Jesus that “all things subsist” (COL. 1:17), then, to go to Him, to stay with Him, to unite ourselves with Him means to find, to gain, to possess that by which we and the whole universe exist. “Jesus alone is All; anything else is nothing,” said St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

To renounce, then, what is nothing for the sake of what is All, to consume our every resource and ourselves for the sake of Him who is All, rather than for what is nothing—is this not indeed our true wealth and highest wisdom?
This was the way St. Peter Julian Eymard argued when he said, “A good hour of adoration before the most Blessed Sacrament brings about greater good for all than visiting all the marble churches, than venerating all the tombs (of the saints).” This was also evidently the thinking of Blessed Pio of Pietrelcina when he wrote, “A thousand years of enjoying human glory is not worth even an hour spent sweetly communing with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.”

What good reason we have for envying the angels, as the saints have done, because angels ceaselessly remain stationed around the tabernacles! ■

(This is an excerpt taken from the book: "Jesus Our Eucharistic Love" by Fr. Stefano M. Manelli, published by the Academy of the Immaculate)