Let Us Adore Him

by Fr. Jay Kythe Imagine entering into a beautiful church, adorned with splendid art, mosaics, statues, and excellent woodwork. The architecture leads you to focus on the altar and the sacred beauty surrounding the ornate tabernacle. There are six glowing candles on the altar along with the monstrance, the resting place of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. You genuflect and kneel, in awe of the beauty of the surroundings. What would you say is the most beautiful thing in this Church? Once your eyes settle on it, you behold the answer. The spotless white host is more beautiful than the surrounding gold and jewels of the monstrance. All the beauty of the church pales in comparison to the simplicity of the God who is veiled by the host. And it is as it should be. You have left the complicated and noisy world outside and entered into something other-worldly. All the adornment of the church is our feeble attempt to mirror the beauty of the heavenly kingdom where God is present. We are mere children drawing pictures of something we can only imagine. We are children who simply want to honor God. So we take noble materials from the earth and place them in ways to honor Him. It pleases us, and God is pleased because His children are pleased. Exalting Him exalts us in the process. In return He gives a share in His life. This is a God who confounds the noise of the world with His “still small whisper” (I Kings 19:11). We expect immense majesty and instead encounter a spotless white host. And we desire to play beautiful music to our Lord, but sometimes silence is the only appropriate hymn. The complexity of your life is “out there.” This Blessed Sacrament, beautiful in its simplicity, calls you to be “right here.” So you close your eyes to the beauty of the church in order to be here with Him. For He is present before you, enveloped in silence by the privation of noise He commands. “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). This may be the hardest thing to do for active people, to command yourself to be still and silent in His presence. Yet it is a worthy task, for He cannot whisper to a noisy soul and expect to be heard. Why is this so difficult? Why should kneeling before an unthreatening white host make us so nervous? Because we might just encounter the God of the universe . . . and our fallen humanity with it. In each of us there is the good, the bad, and the ugly. We are afraid to face our brokenness. The weight of our humanity is so large that it could crush us. And this Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is a mirror, inviting us to go where we do not wish to go. But He came to us, first as man and then under the appearance of mere food. He will not let you be crushed, for He will accompany you to the depths of your soul. He will shed His light in those dark places and set you free. For He came to “proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed” (Luke 4:18). He desires to do so for you, to wrench you away from the distractions of the world by way of the simplicity of a spotless white host, and take you on a journey into yourself, in order to set you free. Stay with Him there, in the silence. Adore Him. Enter into Him, for He enters into you. Rest in the silence. Listen to Him in the silence. Behold the beauty of the silence. Then open your eyes and see the beauty of the world through His. The whole world will look different, for you will see Him everywhere, once you have seen Him in the spotless white host.