I've never gone to a late night adoration of the Blessed Sacrament before tonight. It was beautiful. No bells (just the faint smell of incense from the Mass earlier tonight. I've been to benediction at an Opus Dei center near college many years ago, and it's the same thing: a quiet time spent with the Lord. At least after benediction, you get a few minutes of Eucharistic adoration. There's the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist. Even if there was no exposition, just the Lord's real presence in the Eucharist within the tabernacle. But tonight is different. It is Holy Thursday, and the context is that night between the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper and the trial of the Lord by the Sanhedrin. Tonight, these words haunted me: "Could you not stay awake with me for one hour?" On Holy Thursday, we try to spend one hour (or however long we can), awake and praying, spending time with Him, remembering His terrible agony in the garden, while His disciples slept and left Him to his loneliness and anxiety. I, too, often sleep through His agony at my sins unfolding before His eyes, which He atones for because He loves me.
I dozed off a few times tonight, and I was alternating between sleepiness and wandering thoughts. But I'm so happy I went anyway. May it be, through God's grace, that I shall spend more and more time with Him, awake and praying, through this Holy Week and in all my days.
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