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Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, recently fielded questions from some of the priests in Rome, and the third question was about Perpetual Adoration. I thought his response was very inspiring:
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I only want to say: Thanks be to God that after the Council, after a period in which the sense of Eucharistic adoration was somewhat lacking, the joy of this adoration was reborn everywhere in the Church, as we saw and heard at the Synod on the Eucharist. Of course, the conciliar constitution on the liturgy enabled us to discover to the full the riches of the Eucharist in which the Lord’s testament is accomplished: He gives himself to us and we respond by giving ourselves to him.
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We have now rediscovered, however, that without adoration as an act consequent to Communion received, this center which the Lord gave to us, that is, the possibility of celebrating his sacrifice and thus of entering into a sacramental, almost corporeal, communion with him, loses its depth as well as its human richness.
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Adoration means entering the depths of our hearts in communion with the Lord, who makes himself bodily present in the Eucharist. In the monstrance, he always entrusts himself to us and asks us to be united with his Presence, with his risen Body.
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How encouraging it is to hear our Holy Father say that without adoration in addition to receiving Communion at Mass, the ability to enter into deeper communion with him loses its depth and richness!
