December 14, 2007

Letters to the Editor

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Spending time in perpetual adoration chapels will make us more Christ-like

Within the city of Indianapolis and the surrounding area, we have several churches with perpetual adoration chapels.

No matter where a person lives, there is one within a few miles of his or her residence. Why then, with thousands of Catholics living within this area, is it so hard to have at least one person in these chapels every hour of the day and night?

Do we, as Catholics, no longer believe that we receive many blessings and graces for spending prayerful time before the Most Blessed Sacrament, the very Body and Blood of Our Lord and Savior?

Pope John Paul II said, “The worship given to the Trinity of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit … must fill our churches also outside the timetable of Masses. … This worship must be prominent in all our encounters with the Blessed Sacrament. … Adoration of Christ in this sacrament of love must also find expression in various forms of eucharistic devotion: personal prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, hours of adoration, periods of exposition—short, prolonged and annual [40 hours]—eucharistic Benediction, eucharistic processions, Eucharistic Congresses. … Let us be generous with our time in going to meet him in adoration and in contemplation that is full of faith and ready to make reparation for the great faults and crimes of the world. May our adoration never cease.”

In his article to the people of the archdiocese a few weeks ago in The Criterion, Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein spoke on the same subject. He urged his priests to encourage their parishioners to take advantage of these opportunities to go to these chapels.

If the priests fully recognized the benefits to the parish if many of the congregation spent at least one hour in the adoration chapel, I don’t think they would need to be urged by the archbishop.

One hour spent weekly in the chapel by the parishioners, I believe, would make them more generous with their time, talent and possessions, and make them more Christ-like.

- Winferd E. (Bud) Moody, Indianapolis

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