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?
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Kneeling had always meant self-abnegation. To kneel in church was to blend in utterly, to be one more duck in a pond of ducks. Now I felt as if I were showing off.
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