Adorer Formation

WHAT DOES FORMATION OF ADORERS MEAN?

  • Adoration is the highest form of worship due to God alone
  • We are all called to adore God
  • Formation means the action of forming or the process of being formed
  • Synonyms are emergence, coming into being, genesis, and development
  • Opposite antonyms are destruction, disappearance, and dissolution
  • Formation involves leading individuals by by example, word and deed to adore God
  • Helping them to love God above all and to give divine worship due to Him alone
  • Facilitating spending time adoring, enfolded in His Eucharistic embrace
  • Developing and growing in profound love of the Blessed Sacrament
  • Progressing in contemplative prayer through holy hours
  • Leading souls to the school of silence in His Eucharistic Presence
  • We learn to adore, and develop as adorers, by adoring
  • “The goal of any Christian formation is to pass on this intimate sense of the incarnate and risen life of Christ. Only charity, agape, can pass on agape.” Abbot’s Homily, Dec 27, 2019 at Westminster Abbey – Lectio Divina
  • Becoming catechized and educated in Church doctrine on the Eucharist
  • Increasing faith in and devotion to Jesus in the most holy Eucharist
  • Praying, making visits, and holy hours before Jesus in the Tabernacle or the Blessed Sacrament exposed, and encouraging others to do so
  • Servant of God Fr. John A. Hardon SJ called adorers “apostles of the Eucharist”
  • Education is important yet keep in mind that real formation integrates into the integrity of our behaviour. Holiness is a lifelong process of integrating what we have learned; striving to know, love and serve Him and to live according to His Commandments.

Enjoy listening to Chant while reading about adorer formation

Dominican seminarians teaching Gregorian Chant:

Westminster Abbey Media Music

HOW ARE ADORERS FORMED? 

  1.  Start or increase Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament:
  • Pastors and parishes should provide opportunities for exposition of the Blessed Sacrament with time for silent adoration
  • How can we adore Jesus Real Presence unless we have access to Him?
  • Spend as much time as you can before the Blessed Sacrament and He will fill you with His strength and His power – St. Teresa of Calcutta
  • Schedule a Eucharistic adoration sign-up weekend at your parish
  • On this weekend, parishioners will be invited sign-up for a weekly holy hour
  • We will provide suggested (not mandatory) simple, basic Eucharistic catechesis & pre-evangelization bulletin inserts, homiletics, (and sample sermons upon request) to better prepare for your Adoration sign-up weekend and maximize the response.
  • We will help to let prospective adorers know the benefits of, and reasons for, making a weekly holy hour and how to make a holy hour
  • Give new adorers copy of our Adorer Welcome Info kit
  • Open or increase the adoration chapel/site
  • Keep the church open so that people can also pray holy hours before the Tabernacle

2. Parishes & Coordinators – Continue Promotion of Adoration:

  • Thank pastors, coordinators and adorers
  • Provide ongoing example, preaching, encouragement, education
  • Continue encouraging making weekly and even daily holy hours before Jesus in the Monstrance or the Tabernacle and frequenting the Sacraments
  • Make use of our parish and adoration coordinator resources and extra resources
  • Insert a Eucharistic quote in the parish bulletin on a weekly basis.
  • We will provide you with a database of hundreds of quotes.
  • Create a parish bulletin section called: “Benefits of Eucharistic Adoration”
  • Invite the schools, have the school principal schedule teachers to bring classes to the church/chapel during the day for 1/2 – 1 hour per class.

3. Provide and read literature on the Eucharist, prayer, making a holy hour etc:

4.  Spend time before the Blessed Sacrament:
  • Through this, we grow as lovers of the Blessed Sacrament
  • Make a commitment to a specific hour or time frame. There are many distractions otherwise.
  • Start and Pray holy hours
  • Consider getting a copy of and praying the “Prayer of the Church” (also known as Liturgy of the Hours, Divine Office, or the Brievary) before the Blessed Sacrament and at home
  • We learn how to adore by beginning to adore
  • How to Adore – Fr. Jerome MSE
  • Our Blessed Mother leads people to adore her Son and Lord in the Eucharist
  • God and Our Blessed Mother call and form Eucharistic adorers
  • We learn by example – seeing priests and others adoring, forms and inspires us
  • We learn by watching others adore and emulating them
  • The Father, Son and Holy Spirit form us as adorers, through Mary
  • Start forming adorers as young as possible:  Adoration for children and young people
  • Continue inviting seniors who have more time to spend in prayer
  • Evangelize – invite others to your adoration site
  • Tell people how meaningful the time spent in adoration is to you
  • Use a prayer journal to write on how Our Lord may inspire and speaks to your heart and mind.  Note blessings, favours granted, petitions, prayers, resolutions
  • Have a prayer bag with the rosary, books, prayer cards, a journal, to take to the adoration chapel, which is a spiritual engine room for the parish and your life
  • There may be a number of organizations or groups in your diocese that will boost your prayer and spiritual life i.e. Marian Movement of Priests Cenacles of Prayer, Opus Dei Recollections

5.  Increase and Grow in Personal Prayer:

6. Education and Catechesis – study and learn more about Catholic teachings regarding the Eucharist and adoration

Watch videos – links you may want to include on your parish website or show in parish for pre-evangelization, catechesis and chapel renewal:

7. Imbibe inspiring tips from St. Peter Julian Eymard, in The Eymard Library, Volume I, The Real Presence:

LET US LOVE THE BLESSED SACRAMENT

  • “Our Lord wants to instill in us a passionate love for Himself.” “Certainly, our Lord loves us passionately in the Eucharist; He loves us blindly without a thought for Himself, devoting Himself entirely for our good. We should love Him as He loves us.” pg. 180
  • “Love the Eucharist passionately. Love our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament with all the ardour with which people love one another in the world, but for supernatual motives.” pg. 181
  • “To ensure success in this, begin by placing your mind under the influence of this passion. Foster within you the spirit of faith. Convince yourself invincibly of the truth of the Eucharist and of the reality of the love which our Lord shows you therein.” p. 182
  • “Value highly the love and the Presence of Our Lord; contemplate them in an ecstasy of delight. You will thus add to your love a fuel that will feed its flame and ensure its constancy.”
  • “Fix your mind on our Lord in the most Blessed Sacrament and ponder on His love. Let this thought take hold of you; let it enrapture you.”…
  • “The heart leaps towards the Blessed Sacrament… the heart would burst its walls of flesh, if it could, to unite itself more intimately to our Lord.”
  • “Look at the saints. Their love transports them, makes them suffer, sets them on fire; it is a fire that consumes them…”
  • “Is there anyone in the world that you love? … transfer this love to our Lord… what we do for a creature is what we must do for God; with the difference, however, that we must love the Good God beyond all measures… more and more.”
  • “We cannot consider the Blessed Sacrament attentively without concluding ‘I must love Him, and come to visit Him. I must not leave Him alone; He loves me too much!'”
  • “But with the Eucharist, we must give ourselves; we must abide and live in our Lord! The Eucharist is the noblest aspiration of our heart.”
  • “If you love the Eucharist passionately, you will habitually have our sacramental Lord in mind; you will find your happiness at His feet; and you will be constantly seeking His good pleasure. Come, let us all be taken up with our Lord… Let us forget ourselves and give ourselves to this good Saviour? Let us sacrifice ourselves a bit!” p. 186

THE EUCHARIST OUR WAY

  • “Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament is the unchanging way to holiness. He is the means as well as the model…. In the Blessed Sacrament Jesus is the model of every virtue…”
  • “There is nothing so beautiful as Jesus in the Eucharist. But only the pious souls who have the habit of receiving Communion and of meditating are able to understand it… Few people think of His virtues, of the life or of the state of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. We treat Him like a statue; we live under the impression He is there merely to forgive our sins and listen to our prayers. This is a wrong viewpoint. Our Lord lives and acts in the Eucharist. Look at Him, study Him, and imitate Him. .. Men may show you the way of acquiring virtues, but no one other than our Lord can give them to you and see to the education of your soul. .. as we grow to know His voice better, and our hearts become more detached and more in sympathy with Him, our Lord reveals Himself in a clearer light and with an intimacy know only to those who love Him.” p. 192
  • “All our virtues must come from the Eucharist. For instance, if you wish to practise humility; see how Jesus practises it in the Blessed Sacrament. Start with this…”
  • “Self-abasement is a characteristic of Eucharistic holiness”.

Some older classic on the Eucharist in e-book format:

Note: please remember that use of digital devices in church can be a distraction to others and emits EMF which others may be sensitive to, especially children: