Volume > Issue > Alone At Last With My God

Alone At Last With My God

GUEST COLUMN

By Richard D. Courtney | October 2008
Richard D. Courtney, who writes from Muncie, Indiana, is author of Normandy to the Bulge: An American Infantry G.I. in Europe During World War II (Southern Illinois University Press, 1997).

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?

Enjoyed reading this?

READ MORE! REGISTER TODAY

SUBSCRIBE

You May Also Enjoy

The Inalienable Right to Be Entertained

We should consider the possibility that habitual electronic amusement has moral as well as emotional and intellectual implications.

To Make Catholics Fit Into America

Catholics can provide the best intellectual framework for the "American proposition," but subordinating the Church to a larger project is an error.

Briefly: November 2014

Last Call: Twelve Men Who Dared Answer... Walking with Mary: A Biblical Journey from Nazareth to the Cross... Living on Fire: The Life of L. Brent Bozell Jr... Mind, Matter & Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the Philosophy of Mind... Dietrich von Hildebrand and Edith Stein: Husserl's Students