What I finally noticed on a Friday

I came to adore His presence, and found myself staring at His love.

I have experienced Adoration in a lot of different ways over the years.

I have adored in a church with hundreds of people, worshiping with loud praise and worship music. People were singing, praying out loud, raising their hands, sitting on the floor, dancing in the aisles, kneeling on the hard floor near the altar, having hands placed on them in prayer, and prostrating themselves before Jesus.

I have also been in a church with more than a thousand people where nobody made a sound. Incense filled the air, candles surrounded the altar, and three archbishops and a hundred or so priests and deacons were there with the rest of us, all quietly focused on Jesus.

Most of my experiences have probably been somewhere between those two extremes. Sometimes I have stopped for five or ten minutes. Other times I have stayed for hours. I have prayed the Rosary, sat in silence, talked to Him, or simply looked toward the altar without saying much of anything. Sometimes that has been in a large church with Jesus exposed in the monstrance on the main altar. Other times it has been in a tiny side chapel with Him reserved in the tabernacle.

I have been there with a dozen people scattered through a chapel, each praying in their own way. And I have been completely alone. There have been times when that solitude really felt like just Jesus and me, and there have been other times when I was physically alone but the chapel somehow felt full. I cannot really explain it beyond saying that I felt surrounded by the Communion of Saints, as though heaven was a little closer than I could see.

Not every Adoration has been peaceful either.

I remember one night around three in the morning when I was alone in the chapel and hurting over something I could not understand. I could not sit still, so I paced back and forth in front of Jesus with tears in my eyes. I talked to Him out loud, not with polished prayers or anything I had memorized, but like He was sitting there listening to me.

Eventually the question I had been carrying came out louder.

Why?

I wanted to know why. I wanted Him to explain what was happening and why I was hurting. More tears burst from my eyes until eventually I dropped to my knees in the middle of the room.

Even in that moment, when I was upset and confused, there was something natural about kneeling. It was still Jesus in front of me. I could question Him. I could cry to Him. I could even raise my voice to Him. But He was still my Lord, and my knees seemed to remember that even while the rest of me was hurting.

There on the floor, I felt something I still have trouble describing. It was like His arms wrapped around me. Warmth came over me, almost like a hug, and the pain began to loosen. I did not receive an explanation for everything I had been asking Him about.

I received His love.

And somehow, that was enough.

I have had many different experiences with Jesus in Adoration. Some have been emotional, some quiet, some filled with prayer, and some where hardly anything seemed to happen at all. But it was not until this past First Friday that I noticed something I apparently do almost every time.

I look away.

I had entered the church as I normally do. Jesus was exposed in the monstrance on the altar. I walked down the center aisle, and when I came to the pew to adore, I knelt first on one knee, then lowered myself onto both knees and bowed my head deeply to my Lord. That is usually where my Adoration begins, with gratitude.

Thank You for letting me be here. Thank You for allowing me to spend this time near You. Thank You for loving me.

After a while, I got into the pew and knelt again. There on my knees came more gratitude and prayers that I know by heart. Eventually I sat down and simply looked toward the altar, knowing exactly Who I was looking at.

Jesus. Body and Blood, soul and divinity.

Whether the monstrance is bronze or gold, whether the Host is brightly lit or partly hidden in shadow, I have never looked at it and thought I was staring at just bread. It is Jesus, and I have never doubted Who is there before me.

But after sitting there for a while that First Friday, I realized my eyes were no longer on the monstrance. They had moved upward, and I was staring at the crucifix above the altar.

I looked back toward the Host for a while, but eventually my eyes returned to the Cross. That was when I began wondering how often I did this. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this was not unusual at all.

I think I do it almost every time.

For all the different ways I have experienced Adoration, loud and quiet, crowded and alone, peaceful and painful, somewhere along the way my eyes seem to find the crucifix.

At first, it bothered me a little. Why am I looking at an image of Jesus when Jesus Himself is right there in front of me?

Why do my eyes keep moving toward the Cross?

Then it came to me, and I think I am beginning to understand.

When I look at Jesus in the Eucharist, I know He is present and He loves me. When I look at Jesus on the Cross, I can see what that love looked like.

I see His arms stretched out. I see the nails, the crown of thorns, and His wounded side. I see what He willingly endured, and I remember why.

“But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)

While we were still sinners.

That matters because I am still a sinner. I go to Confession. I confess my sins, receive absolution, and try to do better. I really do try. Then I lose patience again. Pride gets in the way. My thoughts wander. I fail to love someone the way I should. I lose my focus on Jesus and let something else take too much of my attention.

Maybe that is part of why I keep looking toward the crucifix. I am not looking at it because I believe Jesus is angry with me. I am looking at it because I need to remember how much He loves me.

The crucifix makes that love visible.

Jesus knew exactly who He was dying for. He knew every weakness, every failure, every confession, every promise I would make to do better, and every time I would need His mercy again. He knew all of it, and He went to the Cross anyway.

For love.

Then my eyes move back down toward the altar, and there He is.

The same Jesus, alive and present.

I think that is what I had never noticed before. My eyes move from the Eucharist to the crucifix, but I am not really moving away from Him. I am looking at the same Jesus and the same love from two different places.

There is no single way every moment of Adoration has to look. Sometimes you may kneel quietly, pray the Rosary, read Scripture, write in a journal, or simply sit and stare. Sometimes you may have nothing to say. And maybe once in a while you will find yourself pacing around a chapel at three in the morning, crying and asking Jesus why.

However you come before Him, He is always there.

When I look at the arms of Jesus stretched across the Cross, I also think about what outstretched arms mean when someone loves you. They open before an embrace. His arms on the Cross are wounded and held there by nails, but they are still open. They show me the sacrifice, but they also show me the love that made Him willing to give Himself for me.

That brings me back to the chapel at three in the morning. That night, I felt those arms around me, warming me with His love.

The Jesus in the Eucharist is the same Jesus who gave Himself on the Cross. He knew my sins, my failures, and how many times I would need to come back, and His arms have never closed.

I think the next time my eyes move upward during Adoration, I will understand it differently. I am not looking away from Jesus. I am looking at His sacrifice, His open arms, and the love of the same Jesus who is alive before me on the altar.

At three in the morning, I asked Him why. He never gave me the explanation I thought I needed.

He just gave me His love.

Years later, sitting quietly before Him on a First Friday, I finally realized my eyes may have been finding that same answer all along.