Blogs
Featured Image
 Shutterstock.com

September 21, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – In response to the turmoil in the Catholic Church, my local parish introduced Holy Hours of Reparation every Friday, from 6 to 7 pm. The first one was this past Friday, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. As I knelt there looking at Our Lord in the monstrance, I felt a tremendous peace, knowing in faith that He is forever the Head of the Church, forever the faithful Bridegroom, forever the Ruler and Judge of all. He holds the Church in His holy and venerable hands, like a host ready to be offered, and every one of us can be present to Him if we wish, as He is always present to us.

I asked Him why He is allowing the Church to be crushed under the weight of so many sins, so much infidelity, so much betrayal and filth. His presence, His silence of strength and order, His indestructible love, were an answer better than any words, and I knew that He was urging me to greater faith, greater trust, more earnest prayer. Although it was good to pray (later in the hour) the Litany of the Most Sacred Heart and a number of prayers and chants, the best part of the hour, for me, was the silent adoration. “I look at Him, and He looks at me.” Where the Lord is, there is the promise of victory over all the forces of evil.

At this time in history, with news crashing in upon us from every side—mostly bad news, and some of it frankly scandalous in the extreme, as it reveals the callous complicity with, approbation of, and dedication to evil on the part of many in the hierarchy of the Church, who were supposed to be our guides to holiness and our models of it—nothing, absolutely nothing, could be better than for each of us to firmly commit to making a Holy Hour each week. Fair weather or foul, super-busy or at loose ends, it doesn’t matter; this is what we should be doing, for our Church, for our clergy, for ourselves and, dare I say it, for our sanity.

Some people who are not already accustomed to going to Eucharistic Adoration may be wondering: What do I do during Adoration? Should I bring prayer books with me, or spiritual reading, or my Rosary beads?

Of course you may bring those things and use them as you wish. But the best thing to do is to be still before the Lord, paying Him the homage of your attention, speaking to His Heart and letting Him touch your heart. I love this quotation from Fr. Willie Doyle, S.J., a saintly Catholic priest who was killed on the battlefield in World War I while performing his duties as a chaplain. He writes:

Try basking in the sun of God’s love, that is, quietly kneeling before the tabernacle, as you would sit enjoying the warm sunshine, not trying to do anything, except love Him; but realising that, during all the time you are at His feet, more especially when dry and cold, grace is dropping down upon your soul and you are growing fast in holiness.

I think the best of all prayers is to just to kneel quietly and let Jesus pour Himself into your soul.

In one of my favorite books, In Sinu Jesu: When Heart Speaks to Heart—The Journal of a Priest at Prayer, the Lord Himself says something similar:

It is enough for Me that you should seek Me out and remain quiet in My presence and content to be with Me. I have no need of your thoughts, no need of your words. It is enough for Me that you should offer Me an adoring heart full of love and grateful for My abiding presence in the Most Holy Sacrament. … For you, there is nothing more beneficial. You need to spend time close to My Eucharistic Heart. In My presence I communicate to your soul all that I want you to have, and all that I want you to know. You may not be aware of this as it is happening, but later you will experience the fruit and the efficacy of this time spent in My presence. … This is what I want of you: time “wasted,” spent in My presence. Time given to Me for My sake.

This is what Our Lord is waiting for: a sign from us, an unmistakable sign, that we love Him for His own sake, and above all things on earth. When enough of us are taking real steps to love Him in exactly this way—with our whole mind, our whole heart, our whole soul, and our whole strength—we may then count on a new flood of graces inundating the Church

Note: Follow LifeSite's new Catholic twitter account to stay up to date on all Church-related news. Click here: @LSNCatholic

Featured Image

Peter Kwasniewski, Thomistic theologian, liturgical scholar, and choral composer, is a graduate of Thomas Aquinas College in California (B.A. Liberal Arts) and The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC (M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy). He taught at the International Theological Institute in Austria and the Franciscan University of Steubenville’s Austria Program, then helped establish Wyoming Catholic College in 2006. There he taught theology, philosophy, music, and art history and directed the choirs until leaving in 2018 to devote himself full-time to writing and lecturing.

Today he contributes regularly to many websites and publications, including New Liturgical Movement, OnePeterFive, LifeSiteNews, Rorate Caeli, The Remnant, and Catholic Family News, and has published thirteen books, including four on traditional Catholicism: Resurgent in the Midst of Crisis (Angelico, 2014, also available in Czech, Polish, German, Portuguese, Spanish, and Belarusian), Noble Beauty, Transcendent Holiness (Angelico, 2017), Tradition and Sanity (Angelico, 2018), and Reclaiming Our Roman Catholic Birthright: The Genius and Timeliness of the Traditional Latin Mass (Angelico, 2020). His work has been translated into at least eighteen languages.

Kwasniewski is a scholar of The Aquinas Institute in Green Bay, which is publishing the Opera Omnia of the Angelic Doctor, a Fellow of the Albertus Magnus Center for Scholastic Studies, and a Senior Fellow of the St. Paul Center. He has published over a thousand articles on Thomistic thought, sacramental and liturgical theology, the history and aesthetics of music, and the social doctrine of the Church.

For news, information, article links, sacred music, and the home of Os Justi Press, visit his personal website, www.peterkwasniewski.com.