Alone At Last With My God
GUEST COLUMN
When I was in the eighth grade, I went to a weekend retreat at a nearby Catholic college. The first night there we were each assigned a half-hour period for adoration in the chapel where the Blessed Sacrament was exposed.
I was given the 8:00-8:30 PM period. When I relieved the other boy and knelt down on the kneeler, there in front of me on the stand was a big card with the heading, “Alone at last with my God.”
I was struck by these simple words. I am alone with God, just He and I. And all through my life, I remembered those words as I attended the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in various churches.
This past Sunday afternoon, as I knelt in adoration at my home parish, I asked myself, “Where is everybody?” Jesus is here on the altar, but where are the other people? They were all here at Mass today when adoration began. Why not now? What is more important in their lives on a Sunday afternoon — TV, sports, shopping at the mall?
You May Also Enjoy
A Masterpiece of Precision... Baffled by Rebellion... A Breath of Fresh, Pennsylvanian Air... From Blavatsky to Buffy... Prisons: Satan's Property... and more
Given an absence of time for imagining alternatives, our humanity is defined in terms of consumption. We lack the peace needed to cultivate ourselves as unique persons.
When Thomas Hardy’s "Jude the Obscure" was published, Victorian England was hardly ready to accept that novel’s story of a love affair between cousins.