God As A Presence

When I think back to my experience of learning about religion as a boy, I seem to remember it as little more than being told about things that God did many years ago. God, to me, was real, but He was in the past. I wasn't taught how to know Him as a presence.

My family and I did go to Mass most Sundays, and I knew the Consecration of the bread and wine (announced by the ringing of the bells) was the important moment, but it still seemed ultimately to be about remembering what God did long ago.

It was all very old. Historical, yes, and therefore real, even true. But still, very much a thing of the past. And as a young boy I thought perhaps I didn't differ all that much from my Jewish friends. They drew the line at Jesus. We just happened to draw the line a few years later.

Even in high school and college I was unable to answer the questions of my Jewish friends, because Jesus was (as He is to the Jews even now) only "back there" in history. I couldn't witness to Christ, because I had little sense of "witnessing" anything, only of being taught to remember facts about a time when He was a real presence.

Looking back, I see that what I needed was for someone to point to Christ's presence here and now and say, "Behold! There He is!" But until that time would come, my experience of Christianity would remain a kind of new-age Judaism, which permitted Jesus as the Messiah, but which still lacked any sense of an encounter with Him.

Everything would change, however, when in those years following graduation from college I was introduced to Eucharistic Adoration. Previous generations will remember it as "Benediction," the name given to the blessing with the monstrance at the end. Call it what you will, the experience introduced me to Christ as a Real Presence.

Why wasn't I introduced to Adoration in my youth? Well, it would be impossible to speak for everyone individually, but I suspect the devotion died a casualty of confusion, if not outright war. It was the 1970s and 80s, and our Catholic liturgical identity was in flux. In those years following the Second Vatican Council there was much enthusiasm about engaging the faithful in the prayers and gestures of the Mass. Adoration, which offers less physical movement, came to be seen by some as stagnant.

This is also the time when the tabernacles were removed from the sanctuaries of our churches. It was thought by some (many of whom enjoyed some power in the Church) that previously consecrated Communion Hosts - preserved in the tabernacles for the sick and the homebound and demanding reverence during the celebration of the Eucharist - served only to detract from the self-expressive dynamism of the community.

The Blessed Sacrament would still be exposed in the monstrance on occasion, but only seldom, and only for the elderly. The thought of its engaging young people would have been absurd to those who argued that the youth wanted only activism.

The Church would, however, recover Eucharistic Adoration in the late 1990's, largely because of Pope John Paul II's personal mysticism and practice of contemplation. Slowly, it would come to be believed that young people could indeed benefit from Eucharistic Adoration.

Looking back at the beginnings of my conversion, I see that it happened in conjunction with my being introduced to Eucharistic Adoration. Everything flowed from that. It led me, of course, to a deeper appreciation of the Mass and a love for the tabernacle, as well as for the Woman who made the Eucharist possible by her "Yes." In short, Eucharistic Adoration led me to experience God as a presence, a person to be encountered, and a history not only to be recalled, but lived. And because it is Christ in the Eucharist who makes this presence possible, it enables me truly to be a witness of something that is happening now. +