The Blessed Sacrament: A most mysterious belief

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Two Pentecostal young men from a small village some distance from my home in Magadan, Russia, needed a place to stay in order to find work. I invited them to lodge in the church for a few days. While here, I also invited them to pray with me before the Blessed Sacrament in the evening.

After we finished that first holy hour of prayer, one of the men had a shocked expression on his face and asked me what this was all about. I explained that we had been praying before the Lord Jesus Christ in his sacramental form — the Holy Eucharist.

The young man commented that he had been in many Christian worship services over the years but that nothing compared to the energy nor the feeling he had of the deep presence of the Lord. He said the holy hour before the Blessed Sacrament was by far the deepest and the strongest he had ever felt the Lord.

I have been praying before the Blessed Sacrament for over 20 years, making a holy hour in the morning and one in the evening. There is a deep personal intimacy with Jesus in these prayers. These hours do not always bring about deep feelings of encounter with the Lord but I nonetheless worship him and give him by best moments to begin and end my day, making God the center of my life.

I often invite people who want a deeper faith to simple spend an hour with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Catholic Churches are everywhere and many priests realize that adoration before the Blessed Sacrament is the source of the most powerful renewal of faith in our parishes. Saint John Paul II called for this and Blessed Mother Theresa encouraged it every where she spoke.

To be clear, the act of praying before the Blessed Sacrament presupposes you believe Jesus is really present in the Holy Eucharist. That said, in cases like my two Pentecostal friends, sometimes just a general faith in God can revive when one comes to meet Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. I love the story told by the late Father Benedict Groeschel of his own experience praying before the Blessed Sacrament: A young Franciscan novitiate, 17 years old, entered the dark monastery chapel in the middle of the night, deciding he should pray since he couldn’t sleep. As he knelt before the altar he felt that someone else was in the room. A little frightened, the young man turned on the light and at once his eyes focused on an older priest, his abbot, praying in ecstasy before the Blessed Sacrament. He watched his superior for a few moments and then, embarrassed, he turned off the light and left. Father Groeschel says in those few moments, “he saw the presence of Christ reflected in the face of a holy man” and he’ll never forget it as long as he lives.

I encountered a beautiful explanation by Archbishop Fulton Sheen who constantly encouraged the faithful to make a holy hour with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. He was asked what inspired him to do make a holy hour. A pope, a priest or saint? A saint, he said — a small, unrecognized saint. It was a little 11-year-old Chinese girl. He explained that when the Communists took over China, they imprisoned a priest in his own rectory near the church. After they locked him up in his own house, the priest was horrified to look out of his window and see the Communists proceed into the church, enter the sanctuary and brake into the tabernacle. In an act of hateful desecration, they took the ciborium and threw it on the floor with all of the Sacred Hosts spilling out. The priest knew there were exactly 32 Hosts in the ciborium. When the Communists left, they either did not notice or pay any attention to a small girl praying in the back of the church who saw everything unfold. That night the little girl slipped past the guard at the priest’s house and went inside the church. There she made a holy hour of prayer, an act of love to make up for the act of hatred. After her holy hour she went into the sanctuary, knelt down and received Jesus in Holy Communion with her tongue, since it was not permissible at that time for the laity to touch the Sacred Host with their hands.

The little girl continued to come back each night to make her holy hour and receive Jesus in Holy Communion. On the 32 night, after she had consumed the last and thirty-second host, she accidentally made a noise and woke the guard who was sleeping. He ran after her, caught her, and beat her to death with the butt of his rifle. The priest witnessed this act of heroic martyrdom as he watched grief-stricken from his bedroom window. When Bishop Sheen heard the story he was so inspired that he promised God he would make a holy hour of prayer before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament everyday of his life.

Father Groeshel, who served as my spiritual father for years, often said, “Today’s culture cannot deal with mystery, but all sacraments are mysteries.”

He added: “Christianity is a religion of mystery, all respectable world religions have a sense of mystery. How pathetic is a religion without mystery — it’s a discussion club.”

He said that the Greek word for sacrament is “mysterion,” which means “to close your eyes.” The element of mystery, according to Father Groeschel, is so important because it requires submission and faith. He said that even some of the world’s great scientists, including Albert Einstein, have been fascinated with the Eucharist because of the mystery that surrounds It.

To end with a favorite quote of Father Benedict: ”How can anyone be opposed to praying and kneeling before the presence of the Son of God?”

The writer is pastor of the Church of the Nativity in Magadan, Russia.