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

A Litany of Repentance for the U.S. Church

It is high time the U.S. bishops together called us as a Church to a public act of repentance. I offer the following litany for such an occasion.

Our Titanic Nonjudgmentalism

Once the God-given sanctity of all innocent human life is rejected, the main psychological and ethical barriers are breached.

Black Elk: Native American & Catholic

Black Elk repeatedly spoke of how the Lakota ways were "connected" to Catholicism, and how the spiritual experiences of the Lakota prepared them for Christ.