There are different styles of adoration that touch different teens but they all bring them to Jesus really present in the Eucharist.
In the last 4 months I’ve helped out in 3 different cities assisting at adoration for college students (and hearing confessions part of the adoration time). Each one was run a little different. Edmonton does Adoremus which sticks to the rites and has an ethereal feeling. Hamilton and Calgary use the same basic format as they’re both run by CCO but they feel different: Hamilton felt more solemn while Calgary felt more like a great gathering of friends.
Yet all of them had a huge attendance for events with both “Catholic” and “College” in their description.
Think about that. So often we’ve spent hundreds or thousands on pizza, a cool youth room, and fun events like trips to the local amusement parks yet an event that requires minimal investment is getting teens and getting them at something that’s way deeper than pizza or an amusement park. Deep prayer events like this are also what we so often deprive teens of (if you want more on this read my blog on contemplation as a youth ministry goal).
Sherry Weddell tried to explain why: “Adoration… is, in fact, an ideal form of devotion for the nondevout… Adoration appeals to postmoderns because it is experiential, mysterious, and accessible to everyone: the nonbaptized, the non-Catholic, the unchurched, the lapsed, the badly catechized, the wounded, the skeptical, the seeking, the prodigal, and those who aren’t sure that a relationship with God is even possible.”
Even Pope Francis does adoration, he says he does an hour every evening
Once I was in adoration and this young man came up to me since I was wearing clerics and asked to talk, so we slipped over to the parish hall. He told me about some struggles he’d been going through. “Because of [my struggles] I feel like I can’t go to Mass on Sunday but I make sure I come here 2 or 3 times a week; here I feel God present.” He isn’t alone. I’ve met other young people with other struggles who hungering for adoration more than anything else spiritual.
Most of our teens are post-moderns where experience is a better judge of truth than rational arguments, where experience is personal not so much felt in a formal rite, and where authenticity goes above else. With these traits, looking at Jesus in the Eucharist and speaking with him often speaks to them more than a formal Sunday mass where they know many parishioners are there for social or semi-religious reasons not because they want to learn about Jesus and relive the passion (what mass is really about).
Beyond all this, adoration can be one of the deepest forms of prayer. So often, we have trouble teaching young people to move their prayer beyond asking God for things to a relationship and adoration naturally does this.
These young people are so moved they want to touch the Monstrance.
We may need to help teens a little more than college students. Often when I do a Friday to Sunday retreat for middle school or high school, I’ll do an hour of adoration on Saturday evening. And then I’ll usually add a brief reflection or song every 5 to 10 minutes. (If you’re using songs, Ken Yasinski says to use Praise songs then Surrender songs.)
Now it’s time for each of us to ask ourselves where adoration can become a bigger part of our youth ministry. Even as I write this, I think I can use it more at the school I’m chaplain to.
Please tell me your ideas in the comments. Why is adoration so powerful with them? Why do they like it so much? How do you do it better?
UPDATE: Someone from CCO told me that although the students in Hamilton use the CCO format for their adoration, CCO has no official presence at that University.
Um . . . I hate to be “that commenter”, but . . . isn’t because our Lord is there, face to face? It’s really hard to imagine people *not* wanting the one thing they were created for. Anyway, whatever the reason, keep at it. I’ll take post-modern arguments if that’s what persuades youth ministers. :-).
Obviously but the Lord is there in mass too. And he’s there spiritually in other prayers. All those arguments are why young people seem to be affected more by adoration than those other forms of prayer.
I debated whether to even say anything. But it’s so tempting to think it’s a particular program / method / style that’s the key. Really it’s just Jesus & the Gospel. –> Which I’m the last person to say that therefore there are no skills to learn, because there are, most definitely. But this particular example struck me because Adoration is so supernaturally powerful that it’s sorta funny it’s news to anyone that this ought to be the center of evangelization. But I’m thrilled you’re reporting the news, so keep it up!
(Seriously – not picking on you at all. Love what you’re doing.)
Thanks. The main audience I write for is youth ministers and so an obvious goal of this post is to encourage them to include adoration in their ministry.
I think the key is to bring teens to Jesus. Thus, adoration would logically be part. However, I have been a little hesitant to emphasize it in the past (I did it but I think it was less central than it should have been) and I believe others have made that mistake too.
Thank you for sharing this with us. I’ll be honest and admit that I don’t know much about adoration. I do know, however, that making the church attractive to teenagers is essential to our future as Catholics. I would like to take this a step further somehow though and bridge the gap between the young and old. The two demographics have so much to offer each other. I am praying for ideas or some help to put my basic premise into action somehow.
I’m a revert Catholic and have very recently come to appreciate the power of adoration. I grew up my whole life in the Church and never took part in something so powerful.
@disqus_3iOvfPLvFC:disqus , I strongly recommend doing it sometime. Sitting in silence with Christ is very powerful. Praying the rosary while sitting there is even MORE powerful.
God bless.
I’m also a revert. Adoration was unheard of when I was growing up. Despite all the effort toward “relevance” and being “with it,” none of the youth or adult ministers seemed to understand Whom we needed to relate to and Whom we desperately wanted, needed, to be with.
By the grace of the Holy Spirit and the work of priests like Fr. Schneider, the gap of understanding is being closed. Today’s youth (as well as those of my generation who are being blessed with a second chance) are being set on fire for Christ not by hand-clapping and sloganeering but by the profoundly life-shaping Real Presence of Christ Himself. The healing power of a few quiet minutes of Adoration cannot be overstated.
I volunteer at the youth ministry program at OLMC in central Indiana. They have a weekly Adoration night and its regularly filled to the rafters with students. Ms Fitz has it right, the attractive power is that it is true worship of the One Lord. Also, there can be no attempt to make Adoration “hip” or “relevant”. There can be nothing more “irrelevant” than an hour spent with The Thing That Looks Like Bread But Actually Isn’t. And that’s part of what makes it so mysterious.
As Thomas H. Green says is “Opening to God” (My recommended first read for anyone learning to pray): If you are looking for efficiency or action, prayer is the most irrelevant but if you’re looking for meaning and being it’s most relevant.
As a young Catholic, I can wholeheartedly agree with the powerful change that Adoration can bring in one’s life. What drew me more than anything was quite simple: the reality of the encounter and the silence. There are no screens, no cell phones, no facebook, and no technological distractions. There are no false images of life or facades. There was no place for me to run. Instead there is a space of sacred silence, wholly oriented towards the very real, tangible, physical Presence of Christ. I couldn’t identify it at first, but what I was missing was that Presence. I didn’t understand the Mass enough at that point to really enter into it as prayer. It was more a habit than anything else at first. But it was honestly through a conviction of Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist that I returned to Confession and began to more fully enter into the sacramental life of the Church and learn to recognize and receive the presence of Christ in the Mass. Because of that, I think it is most critical that Confession be offered in conjunction with Adoration. Reverent praise music and reflections are great because they can help to create that sacred space for encounter with Jesus. But it truly is the silence before Him that is most influential.
I really think this comment hits the nail on the head. Think about it…these young people are rarely in silence anywhere, and live in a culture from which most public reference to God has been scrubbed away and which is anything but contemplative…but in Adoration they have both silence and the Real Presence of Our Lord. At so many Masses today we have chatter going in, chatter right afterwards, and often, sadly, chatter in the middle. No one can really pray in this environment and no space is left for souls to hear Our Lord speak. At Adoration, finally one can hear His voice… This is why silence must be maintained at Adoration and it’s really a crime to make noise that distracts people, and if there is music, there should also be substantial silence at some point! If people would return to being silent in the churches at Mass, and celebrating with full Catholic reverence, some of what happens at Adoration now would also happen more often again at Masses…for at Mass after we receive Him in Holy Communion, He is the closest to us that He ever is in this life!!
Yes, ditto on the silence. I’ve been to adoration where the entire time some well-meaning youth minister is playing guitar throughout the entire hour, and it isn’t the same. I don’t think I truly understood that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist until I spent some time in adoration.
I would imagine young folks are attracted to Adoration and Benediction because what passes for ‘worship’ is quite frankly downright unappealing to the intellect; that is, to the soul. Going to church is too churchy, full of churchy-ness and churchy-speak. Even the improve translation the prayers are largely uninspiring since we no longer carry the syntax of a prayerful breathing pattern. Private devotion is the last bastion of transcendent beauty, the last place the multiple levels of prayer is welcome.
Well when I was a youth back in the seventies the religious education even by secular lay men and women left a lot to be desired. The CCC was not yet out there was no WYD with JPII who was not pope yet and of course no Internet blog sites. The Youth of today have many advantages but we Generation X did NOT. BTW I had to learn the basics of the Faith from my Mother’s old Catechism and Missal.
Why aren’t Churches which offer only bog-standard Adoration or Benediction – without any hypnotic music or any other emotion-raising props – heaving with young people too, if it’s a work of the spirit? Isn’t it more to do with emotions and/or cult of personality? One has to question whether it’s Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament which is actually attracting them.
It’s a genuine question as the correlation between anything which appeals to sentiment and/or strong ‘charismatic’ personalities, seems just too co-incidental. Surely the Spirit does not require the right human factors, just like a witch’s spell?
As another example, why could you only experience the so-called ‘Toronto Blessing’ in the early days if someone had A) told you about it and B) told you how it manifested itself? Once that happened, people who were suggestible, experienced it all over the place. Doesn’t that ring alarm bells about authenticity when it relies completely on human transmission for it’s manifestation? In short, if you hadn’t heard of the Toronto Blessing, you wouldn’t have experienced it.
Just seems too fake or, at best, just a ‘Christian’ form of Shamanism, hysteria, or like a Seance.
I’m even beginning to conclude it’s a form of spiritual abuse, messing with the insecurities and neuroses of the vulnerable, especially the young.
I think much of the “praise and worship” music is harmful to the spiritual life of young people. yes it’s easy for them to be a part of because it’s music and they like guitars. but at the same time the music often stirs up more an emotional response than anything else. the guitarist often tries to create moments of intensity during the songs and it becomes an emotional roller coaster to partake in, at least for me. I have experienced this countless times at my parish and my school. Granted much of what the songs say is true, but many of them are more about us than about our Lord, which is not good. Worship of Christ is not about musical intensity. it is about the offering of the whole self to God through Christ’s Sacrifice. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that while many people in Life Teen parishes/events come to know Christ, many of them stay for a while then leave, because their faith is an emotional conviction and not grounded in knowledge or true relationship with God. I think the p&w music has created a culture of emotionalism in the Church, especially since nearly all the songs are written by Pentecostal Protestants, who like the Toronto Blessing incident are full of emotional confusion about Christ and especially the Holy Spirit, thinking He is an emotional high they get. I believe that the sheer beauty and glory and rites of the Church speak for themselves and don’t need the guitar. That is why they were created, to make Christ present. After all, it is Christ who speaks and is present. we need to teach young people a lifestyle devotional piety that they can learn to seek Christ in that way. What we need is not emotional songs but holy preaching to stir up an ardent and unconquerable love of Christ and His one true Church and if we give that to young people, they are powerful weapons in the hands of Christ, our Lady and the Church
For both of you, often adoration is without this. For instance at the Adoremus event, the only hymns are the traditional Latin exposition and benediction hymns – then during about 75 minutes of adoration, the only sound is a person reading a Bible verse or a short quote from a Pope or saint a total of about 5 times.
Adoration (at least good adoration, in my experience) is quiet. Everyone, but especially teens, needs quiet time alone with God. Youth group type activities (and even Mass sometimes) can be focused on others around us – am I holding hands in a weird way, do I sound stupid, do I look devout enough? Adoration can begin with this too – trying to look like we’re having perfect prayer but it often doesn’t end that way – spending an hour in Our Lord’s presence draws us away from noticing the person next to us and towards noticing Him. I think we often don’t admit it but we crave silence with the Lord. Adoration is as much rest for the soul as a nap is rest for the body.
Thanks for this reflection
The Catholic Diocese of Wichita has been experiencing the same thing. You’re exactly right – look at the largest and most successful conferences and speaking events; however effective the programs and talks are, the game completely changes when the Eucharist enters the space for Adoration. Take a look at some of our programs here: https://facebook.com/wichitaadore.com
Thanks for your post, Father.
Great article! I run a Perpetual Adoration Chapel and want o reach out to area Youth groups and RCIA groups to join Adoration. Do you know of or have a flyer or letter or pamphlet that encourages Eucharistic Adoration? Hate reinventing the wheel if I don’t have to.