Want a really crazy experience? Try Adoration.

Last Friday night I did something that would shock my average peer. I prayed Evening Prayer and went to Mass. Then, since it was a first Friday, there was Eucharistic Adoration and I stayed for half an hour until Benediction (in Latin).

Wait, it gets crazier. I next went to a convent for dinner with three religious sisters and ten (or so) other young women as part of a yearlong series of evenings, each called "Night at the Convent" and focusing on some aspect of religious life. After dinner, we crowded into their little chapel and exposed the Blessed Sacrament, singing (in Latin). Adoramus Te, Domine...

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Wait, it gets even crazier. One sister read two passages aloud and offered a brief reflection on resting on the heart of Jesus. Each of us had a tealight (a little "lamp") and during the next half hour of adoration each girl went up at will and placed our candles before our Lord exposed in the humble chapel monstrance. We prayed and sang hymns directly to this Eucharistic King. (Jesus, Jesus, let me tell you how I feel; You have given me your Spirit, I love You so...) All of these are actions so unimaginable to someone without faith in the Real Presence that we must seem mentally defective! O, unfathomable credence in One who is invisible!

Wait! The most countercultural part happened next. We filed out of the chapel and came back to the living room of the convent, softly smiling and joking about seating arrangements as we seated ourselves in an irregular circle. We voluntarily shared our experiences as much or as little as we wanted. (There are some intimacies which are secret, but other graces become richer when shared.) And the entire room shared a culturally-impossible desire for self-gift to this invisible God.

One girl told us that, whenever she prayed, she asked Mary to change something about her and make her more worthy to receive Him. Another girl said that at first she thought one of the hymns (made purely out of chanting Christ's name) was strange; then she imagined Jesus singing her own name to her, over and over, and it suddenly seemed fine. It might even be a direct imitation of Mary. A third girl mused on how wedding-like each Eucharist is: the altar, the priest, the aisle, the union...! Others immediately chimed in with similar thoughts about how wonderful the Eucharist is and how spousal it is, even to someone who doesn't know what their vocation is yet.

The evening concluded at 10:00pm with a last hymn. As I drove home I passed some college students headed to the bars and I thought: want a really crazy experience? Really relaxing, filling, human, divine? Try Adoration.