The Advent season is a good time to reflect on our relationship with Jesus in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar. In this season of waiting, He is already there, already waiting for us to come to Him. Do we truly know He is there? Do our hearts beat in unison with His?
Our churches have become emptier than ever before. It is the rare few who stop by to pray silently with the Lord in His Real Presence in the Tabernacle. Outside of daily and Sunday Masses, many churches are locked, or the pews are empty for the remainder of the week. When we arrive at our parishes for events, we seldom stop to acknowledge Our Lord and Savior silently waiting in the Tabernacle. We may not even think of Him as we rush into social halls and classrooms. We forget after Sunday Mass that Jesus dwells body, blood, soul, and divinity within our Tabernacles every single moment of every day.
If we are honest, our belief in the Real Presence does not run deep. If we truly believed within the depths of our being that Jesus was Truly Present in our Tabernacles, then He would be the first and last thought we had every single time we stepped foot in our churches. Our hearts would burn with a desire to kneel before Him in silent love and adoration, even if we only have a moment before an event or meeting. At the end of those events, we would return to Him in thanksgiving on our way out. We would know in the depths of our soul that the Lord of the Universe resides uniquely and extraordinarily within the walls of our churches.
It can be difficult to remember in the busyness of our lives that He is in the Tabernacle waiting. We become like Martha in that we are consumed with the tasks at hand, so we refuse to fall at the Master’s feet and listen as Mary did. We are easily distracted. We have children to wrangle, events to set up, our own plans, and a million things to think about. This is precisely the problem. Our hearts are not aligned to His, so we allow those cares to take over. We forget that He is in the Tabernacle down the hall from us, longing for a loving visit whenever we are at our churches.
I learned this as a full-time parish staff member. When I worked as a Director of Faith Formation at a roughly 2000-family parish, I made a promise to the Lord and myself that I would stop to see Jesus in the Tabernacle at the beginning of my day, for a holy hour at some point during the day, daily Mass, and at the end of the day. There were days when I could only kneel before Him for a brief moment in a rush or in utter exhaustion at the end of long days. There were multiple days I forgot until the very end of the day.
There were times the minute I walked into the church, all memories of my promise faded, and the torrent of tasks overwhelmed me first thing. This was always a mistake because my day was not centered on the One I truly served and worked for. Instead, I made the day about me and my plans, rather than kneeling before the Lord to surrender everything to Him and to ask what He wanted of me in that moment. I forgot that He was waiting in the Tabernacle for me.
St. Manuel Gonzalez shares similar regrets at ignoring the Eucharistic Lord in the book, What the Heart of Jesus Does and Says in the Tabernacle:
I, too, have spent whole days and very long nights calling at my doors without letting You in.
Even my guardian angel has had to write with tears in the book of my life: “Jesus went to him, and he did not receive Him.”
Other times, we let Him in but do not dare to open wide the doors, or to let Him roam the entire house.
We let Him in through the little window of our stinginess, having a fear that He might visit our whole heart, our entire thoughts, our entire sensibility.
We can say that all of Jesus has entered our soul, but not all of our soul. We reserve corners for ourselves, rooms that we do not allow Him to enter, areas of unconquered sensuality, of unconquered caprices, of improper intentions, of unregulated affections!
We do not dare to remove the wretchedness that fills them, nor offend the eyes of the good visitor by showing them to Him.
And while He is enclosed in the Tabernacle, without getting tired and without protesting, with His ear attentive in case they come, He spends day and night waiting for His own.
The Lord waits for us to stop by, and the greatest tragedy is how often “His own” ignore Him whenever we come to our churches. The Lord is only able to pour His gifts into our hearts if we are open and attentive to Him. If we do not turn to Him when we enter our church properties, then our works will not bear rich fruit and penetrate greater depths in souls. If our hearts are not aligned to His, we will be unable to lead others to His Most Sacred Heart. If our thoughts are solely focused on our families, ministries, and tasks, then we will not be able to teach our children and parish communities how to deeply love Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament in a profoundly personal way. The more we give to Him in union with His Real Presence, the more He will give to us.
We need to consider how often we ignore the Real Presence of Jesus in the Tabernacles of our churches. How often we place our own plans and tasks above Him. How often we forget He is even there. We all do it. Advent is a good time to begin responding to His waiting. When we step foot on church property, our first thought should be to kneel down silently before Him in love, even if we only have a moment. When we leave, our hearts should desire to say good night to Him who is Love.
He is truly there waiting. Let us begin to live more fully the reality of Christ’s Real Presence in the Tabernacles of our churches.
Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash
