Our People

Eucharistic Adoration - God is near us

Adore 2005 Eucharistic Conference

By Most Rev. Julian Porteous
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
23 January 2005

A Non Interventionist God 

The other day a person told me of hearing a man on the radio say that he was a committed Christian all his life and took part in his church. His son became seriously ill and he prayed for his son to be healed. His son died. The father said that following the death of his son he no longer believed in the use of praying for God to intervene. He now believes in a non-interventionist God.  

In the discussions in the media following the tsunami, many people were asking: why does God allow such things? I was being interviewed by a reporter and she said that she believed that God does not intervene in the world.  

Is it true? God does not intervene. God is a non-interventionist God. 

God does act in History 

All our Christian faith and the testimony of the Scriptures and the Tradition of the Church says the opposite. At the time of Christmas I said to those who were questioning me about this – we celebrate at Christmas the fact that God has become man. God has entered our history. He has intervened decisively for the sake of our salvation.  

The whole testimony of the Scriptures is that God takes an active engagement with human beings. After the Fall of Adam and Eve, God made a promise that He would act to save humanity. God called Abraham to be the father of a “great nation” that would be the “people of God”. The Old Testament repeatedly records the interventions of God particularly through his chosen prophets and leaders.  

The definitive intervention came in the sending of his own Son, Jesus Christ. The Letter to the Hebrews (which we are currently reading in our weekday Masses) puts it very clearly: 

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a son whom he appointed heir of all things.  

Hebrews 1,1

Two Promises 

Nor did the intervention of God cease when the Lord ascended to heaven. He made two key promises to his disciples: 

I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you forever.

John 14, 16

And remember I am with you always to the end of the age

Matthew 28, 20

Two promises!

The abiding Spirit 

The first is the promise of the sending of the Holy Spirit which was fulfilled on Pentecost. The Apostles experienced in a tangible way the descent of the Holy Spirit upon them. They experienced the fire and the power of the Spirit and they were radically transformed. That gift of the Spirit was then meant to be available to all who believed in Christ. The Acts of the Apostles and the New Testament letter bear eloquent witness to the fact. 

The Real Presence 

The second promise of the Lord to his disciples was that he would be with them, “always”. He desires to be deeply, intimately involved with every one of those who love him and wish to follow him. At the Last Supper the Lord said,

I am the vine you are the branches

John 15, 4

He said, 

Abide in me as I abide in you

John 15, 4

This chapter of St John’s Gospel is one of the most wonderful for us. The Lord speaks so tenderly of how he wishes to be profoundly united with us. He wants us to live with his life, to be enriched with his love.  

St. Paul knew this so well. His life now was completely one with Christ and it filled him with such joy. “For me to live is Christ”, he said.   

St John’s Gospel adds further words of Christ, 

You did not choose me but I chose you

John 15, 16

We often think that we have chosen Jesus. We are the ones who have faith. But it is the other way around. God has chosen us – “God has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world”, St Paul says (Ephesians 1, 4) 

And why has he chosen us – to bear rich and lasting fruit. Our lives are meant to be fruitful. The Lord says, 

And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.

John 15,16

God is with us. And there is no greater sign of this than the Eucharist. Every Mass in which we proclaim the central mystery of our faith – Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again – becomes the occasion that the Lord comes into our midst. The bread becomes the Body of Christ, the wine becomes the Blood of Christ.  

Christ is truly present – “body and blood, soul and divinity”. He fulfills his promise. He is with us.

Some profound Implications 

What does this mean for us? This is much more than a simple statement of what we believe. It has profound implications for our lives. 

Let me give you a simple illustration. Imagine is someone very important came to visit you – say your favorite sports person. You knew they were coming, and knew when they arrived. But you were in your room listening to your music on your ipod, or on your walkman, or playing a computer game. You were quite happy that they were visiting, but you had other things to do. It would have been very strange. You would have missed a great opportunity.  

When someone comes to meet us, we would normally prepare ourselves and go out to meet them. We would want to stay with them as long as we could.  

Jesus said in the Book of Revelations,

Listen, I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you.

Revelations 3, 20

Some artists depicting this scene show the door without any handle. The handle is on the inside. It is up to us completely. The Lord will not force himself on us. 

So it is with the wonderful gift of the Eucharist. The Lord is present at every Mass. When we approach communion let us have our hearts open, like doors. We want to receive the Lord and be with him deeply in the precious moments we have after Communion. 

In every Catholic Church the Lord resides in the Tabernacle. When we enter a church we genuflect in reverence for the Lord’s presence. When we go to our seats we kneel and pray, not sit and look around. When we pass a church we can call in, even just for a few moments.  

And we have special moments of more intense adoration when the Blessed Sacrament is exposed in a monstrance. The Pope urges us to discover deeper prayer and closer communion with the Lord present in the Blessed Sacrament and in the document on the Year of the Eucharist says, 

Let us take the time to kneel before Jesus present in the Eucharist, in order to make reparation by our faith and love for the acts of carelessness and neglect, and even the insults which our Saviour must endure in many parts of the world. Let us deepen through adoration our personal and communal contemplation, drawing upon aids to prayer inspired by the word of God and the experience of so many mystics, old and new.

Mane Nobiscum Domine, n.18

Let us take heed of his words. This is a special time of grace for all of us to discover that Christ is so close, so present, so desiring to enter more deeply into our lives.