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Why Adoration? To Behold the Beauty of the Lord
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I am Catholic because of adoration.
Years ago, as a devout Protestant teenager, I memorized Psalm 27. In verse 4, it says:
One thing have I asked of the LORD,
that will I seek after;
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to behold the beauty of the LORD,
and to inquire in his temple.
In early January of 2020, weeks before the Covid pandemic shut the whole world down, my years of relentless searching led me to the adoration chapel at Christ the King. I had been reading the Catechism of the Catholic Church and watching YouTube videos about Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. But I was still processing what it all meant and what God wanted me to do. I had never been to adoration before and didn’t even really know what it was. I knew it had something to do with the Eucharist. I imagined maybe it would be laid out like I had seen it on the altar at the four Masses I had attended at that point. Maybe there would be a side table along one wall set with a chalice and a ciborium full of little hosts, like a simple dinner waiting for an unknown guest. And somehow that would help me pray. Or something like that.
I walked shyly and curiously through the door of the chapel and into the very last thing I had ever expected to find. The Real Presence of Christ. It was as if God had lifted just a corner of the veil between heaven and earth, and so much glory had spilled into the room that the air itself was vibrating. I was breathing his holiness. It was so heavy that I couldn’t lift my head. I couldn’t think of words to pray. I had chased him my whole life. And I had found him. I slid into the pew and sobbed.
After a long time, I started to feel peace, so I dared to lift my head. Christ’s presence was still so strong that I almost expected I would see him standing there in human form. Instead I saw a monstrance holding a circle of bread. And in that moment, I knew. It was all true. This bread really was God. And if the Catholic Church was right about that, then I was ready to believe everything else, even the things I didn’t know about yet.
I’ve gone to adoration as often as I could after that, so often in fact, that Deacon Doug asked if I wanted to be a committed adorer before I had even fully become Catholic. So far, Jesus has never absolutely flattened me with his presence again like he did that first day. But I’m not really looking to be flattened. I’m just looking for him. I know where he is now, so he doesn’t need to shout to get my attention. It’s enough that I can live the words of the Psalm I’ve carried with me since my youth. The one thing I seek is to dwell in the house of the LORD and to gaze on his beauty all the days of my life.
