32nd
Sunday in Ordinary Time
I
wish everyone a happy day. My name is
Fr. Victor. I’m a missionary priest of
the Blessed Sacrament. I’d like to thank
your pastor, Fr. Grile, for inviting me this weekend to talk to you about
perpetual Eucharistic Adoration.
First
of all to help celebrate this year’s 10th anniversary of perpetual
adoration here at St. Alphonsus and also to help strengthen perpetual
adoration.
Adoration
is simply appreciation for the Blessed Sacrament, is really Jesus. This appreciation is expressed by the
presence of a chapel that is open seven days a week, 24 hours a day for
permanent exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for adoration by the faithful. You are blessed here to have such a chapel. As I mentioned we are now celebration the 10th
anniversary of adoration there. Many of
you participate by spending a scheduled hour each week in the chapel. We are more than very pleased by the many
sacrifices that you make to keep your holy hours of adoration. But in order to maintain a strong and lasting
program of perpetual adoration here we could always use more adorers.
I
would be wonderful if each person in the parish would be willing to spend just
one hour, once a week with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament to that every hour is
covered with at least one person, and preferably two or more people present in
the chapel at all times, so that Jesus is never left alone, so that the chapel
can always be open. And together, as a
people of God, a community of faith you express your faith and your love in the
real presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Because our communal love for Jesus at Mass
must get together with our personal love for Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament on
order for our love to be complete.
We
come out for communal worship today, we come as a parish family to give glory
to the Father and to express our unity in Christ. Then Jesus stays with us in the Blessed
Sacrament, day and night, to call us back to Himself sometime during the week
so that we may spend some quiet time with Him in prayer in order to deepen our
unity and friendship and our personal relationships with Jesus, our Savior, who
says, “Come to me, it is really I.” In
other words, come to where He is, where He is in person. Jesus dwelling with us here on earth today in
the Blessed Sacrament.
We
all know that when you love someone you like to be with the one you love and
the more you love someone the more you want to be with that special
person. This explains the very mystery
of our Catholic faith. Why it is that
Jesus stays with us day and night in the Blessed Sacrament. It’s simply because He loves us so much and
He never wants to leave us for He says, “Behold I am with you always, for I
have loved you with an everlasting love, and constant is My affection for
you.”
Faith
tells us that the same Jesus born 2000 years ago in
This
hour that Jesus wants you to spend with him is spent anyway that you want. With your own favorite prayer book. Maybe the Holy Bible. Praying the holy rosary. Speaking to Jesus heart to heart as one does
with a friend. Or you may be so tired or
troubled or worn out you may want to just sit and relax and enjoy the sweet
peace that comes from simply being with the One who loves you the most, Jesus
in the Most Blessed Sacrament.
The
church teaches us that Jesus is all appreciative of every moment that you spend
with Him, will deepen your unity with Him and to make your soul everlastingly
more beautiful and glorious in heaven.
Would
you now please pray with me to our Blessed Lady that everyone in the parish may
want to participate to that we may continue on here at St. Alphonsus with a
strong and active program of perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. “Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed are thou amongst women and blessed is
the Fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary,
Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Each
of us has his or her own personal reasons for wanting to spend an hour each
week with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Let
me share just two that we all have in common.
The joy we give to Him and the graces He gives to us. We all know that when we love someone we
experience a joy in being with the one we love.
A mother can hardly wait to hold her newborn infant. A father’s joy is being with his
children. Grandparents delight in seeing
their grandchildren. Friends treasure in
the moments they spend together. And
sweethearts find it difficult to leave each other’s company. And the more you love someone the greater the
joy you have in being with that person.
This is the point.
Because
Jesus loves you infinitely, unlimited is the joy that you bring to His Sacred
Heart when you come to spend an hour with Him in the Blessed Sacrament. Even if you feel like you’re the worst person
in the world, the worse you feel yourself to be the more joy you bring to Jesus
where you humble yourself and go to Him in the Blessed Sacrament.
Jesus
says to us, “Do not be afraid. Come to
me all you who are weary and find life burdensome and I will refresh you.” Jesus says in the Blessed Sacrament day and
night to refresh us in mind, and heart, and spirit by lavishing on us those
graces that encourage us, strengthen us, comfort us, guide us and inspire us to
put all of our trust in His most Sacred Heart, so that the power of His love
may cast out every fear, doubt, worry and anxiety that we have. For He says, “Fear is useless, what is needed
is trust. My peace is My gift to
you. Cast all your anxiety upon the Lord
who cares for you.” Nowhere on earth are
you more loved. Nowhere on earth are you
more welcome. Nowhere on earth is your
presence more appreciated than in the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament
where He loves you with a personal love, as if you were the only one in the
whole world. With each visit you will
grow in your conviction of His infinite love for you and the more loveable you
are in His eyes the more loving you can be with one another.
Others
also share in the blessings of your holy hour of prayer because one person
coming before the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament represents all mankind. Every man, woman and child on the face of the
earth experiences new effect of God’s goodness, grace and mercy with every holy
hour of prayer that you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
An
advantage of having the chapel open all the time is that everyone can
participate, because everyone can find at least one hour a week to spend with
Jesus. And whatever hour you chose,
morning, afternoon, evening or night is most pleasing to the Lord. And we need adorers for all the hours but the
hours we need the most are the night hours between midnight and 6 a.m., because
those are the hours that it is most difficult to fine volunteers. So if you can please help us out and take one
of these difficult hours.
For
those who want to make this sacrifice and take one of these hours in the middle
of the night, first God will bless you 10-times as much for doing so because
God cannot be outdone in generosity.
Whenever we are generous with Him, He is 10-times more generous with us.
Second,
it was in the middle of the night that Jesus asked for His first holy hour of
prayer when in the garden He began to sweat blood at the realization of the
gift that was just given to us on Holy Thursday night, the complete gift of
Himself in the Eucharist, appreciated by so few and rejected by so many. Then Jesus saw before Him in the garden every
holy hour of prayer that would be made by those who loved Him so much, making
the sacrifice to keep him company even in the middle of the night. This made up for the grief and agony that He
felt for He knew that His love would be returned for He was about to make for
us the greatest sacrifice of all. He
said, “Greater love than this no man has, than to lay down his life for his
friends.”
Third,
sacrifice is the language of love.
Through Christ’s perfect sacrifice on the cross we have the Holy
Sacrifice of the Mass. Good Friday
follows Holy Thursday because Good Friday is the price that Jesus paid to institute
the Eucharist on Holy Thursday night. He
gave us His body on the cross for love of you and today He may give you His
body in Holy Communion. When we receive
Communion what we receive is not bread, but the very Body, Blood, Soul and
Divinity of our Savior who shed His very last drop of blood on the cross that
today He may fill you with the fullness of His divine life and love in this
holy sacrament.
There
is no sacrifice that compares with the sacrifice that Jesus continually makes
for love of you in the Holy Eucharist, but every sacrifice you make for love of
him by willing to spend one hour with Him in the middle of the night consoles
and comforts His heat. For those who do
not know Him or love Him and His countless graces for the whole world, who turn
to him and said, “If I be lifted up I will draw all men to Myself.”
Through the power of the Eucharist Christ will draw all mankind to
Himself. Your sacrifice releases it
power upon the whole world. Sacred
scripture tells us, “That it is the faith of man that releases the power of
God.” Jesus turned around and said, “Who
touched me?” because He felt power coming from Him.
Those
who want to make the sacrifice and go to Jesus in the middle of the night,
touch His heart and release His power, His grace and His healing love upon all
humanity. This is why Pope John Paul II
appealed to the Catholic laity when he said, “The Church and the world have a
great need for Eucharistic Adoration.”
Let us be generous with our time in going to meet Him. May our adoration never cease because this is
what will bring about a flowering of God’s kingdom on earth and lasting peace
to the world.
My
dear brothers and sisters in Christ in order to strengthen perpetual adoration
here invitations and pencils have been provided in the pews, located at the
ends of the pews, one at end of each pew.
Would those sitting by the invitations please make sure that everyone
else in the pew that wants and invitation and pencil gets one. We invite all of you who are not signed up
for an hour of adoration to do so at this time.
This will include those who are new in the parish, those who may have
been signed up for a scheduled hour each week in the past but had to drop out
for some reason and are able to do so again, and those who for any reason have
not yet signed up but feel ready to now.
Those who are already signed up and are spending a scheduled hour each
week in adoration need not sign up again, this appeal is only for new adorers. We ask you to fill out the invitations now. All we need on the invitation are your name
and telephone number and somebody will call you up to find out the day and hour
that you want. If you think you know
right now the time of day that you’d like to spend your hour you may want to
check off morning, evening or night on question #2 of the invitation. Again, please keep in mind that we need
people for all the hours, whichever hour you chose is most pleasing to the
Lord. If you do not know right now the
time of day that you’d like to spend your hour then you can just leave question
#2 blank because somebody will be calling you anyway to find out the time that
you want. We want to ease your mind by
saying you can change your day and hour any time that you want and that if
there is any particular week that there is a conflict in the schedule and you
are unable to make your holy hour please do not worry about it because we have
a substitute system. This is not to put
a burden on you, rather it’s to take all the burdens off you.
The
third question on the invitation is to appeal to help by participating in the
organizational structure of perpetual adoration. The success of any endeavor in the church
today depends on lay responsibility. For
perpetual adoration to be successful we need coordinators. A coordinator coordinates a block of hours
and the job involves making some phone calls, so if you think that you might
like to be a coordinator please check off item #3 on your invitation.
After
you are finished filling out your invitation please hold on to them until after
Holy Communion. After Communion the
ushers will come around at the second collection time and collect the filled
out invitations. At that time also be sure
to pass the pencils and any blank invitations back to their original positions
in the pews that will make it much easier for the ushers to prepare the pews
for the next Mass. So please do not put
them in the regular collection, but wait for the second collection after Holy
Communion, which is only for the filled out invitations.
I
want to thank you for your wonderful response this morning and to leave you
with one happy thought. We all hope one
day to see God the Father face-to-face.
I promise you He will welcome you with open arms, embrace you, and spend
all eternity thanking you and loving you in heaven for you loving Him so much
on earth by first of all keeping His commandments and by being willing to spend
an hour each week with him in the Blessed Sacrament so we can continue on here
in St. Alphonsus Parish with a strong and lasting program of perpetual
Eucharistic Adoration.
God
bless you.