If we could see just a fraction of the graces available before the Blessed Sacrament, we would flock to the nearest chapel each and every day. When I visited churches to deliver a speech, I could often sense when that church has Adoration. I can sense it because there's a feeling of peace and unusually high Mass attendance.

The Blessed Sacrament draws people. It imbues the church with an aura of holiness. It also draws vocations. A young man wants to feel the Holy Spirit -- and if he doesn't, if he hears only dry theological exhortation, he is not going to aim for a life that is priestly.

Period. It is time to bring back the Holy Spirit!

And the best way to do that is through exercising the gifts Christ gave us, reading Scripture, reciting the Rosary, and Adoration. Adoration gives the parish an active charism. It is a dynamic. It becomes the very heart a vibrant parish. It imbues a radiance. When are we going to realize this -- and save our Church, in these crisis times? We need Adoration everywhere.

Expose the Host and save your parish. In one diocese where they greatly limited adoration they ended up with the Schiavo debacle.

Adoration keeps evil away and and invites God's luminosity, which dispels darkness.

St. Margaret Mary saw the Host in this fashion. Often, while praying before the Blessed Sacrament, it came alive to her. It served as a window -- a port hole -- into the heavenly dimension. It drew her like a magnet.

"I could have spent whole days and nights there, without eating or drinking, and without knowing what I was doing, except that I was being consumed in His presence like a burning taper, in order to return Him love for love," said this saint.

It was there that St. Margaret Mary found a sense of safety.

And on the eve of Communion she found herself "rapt in so profound a silence" -- simply by meditating on the greatness of the action she was about to take -- that she could talk only with great effort.

After receiving Communion she felt such great peace that she wished neither to eat, drink, or speak. One day, while praying before the Blessed Sacrament, St. Margaret suddenly felt a strange sensation. It was as if she was being penetrated with the Divine Presence -- to such a degree hat she lost thought of herself and where she was. She had abandoned herself totally to the Holy Spirit, Who lifted her by the power of purity and love. It was then that she felt herself reposing in His grace and received the "inexplicable secrets of His Sacred Heart," which she later saw "as a resplendent sun, the burning rays of which fell vertically upon my heart."

Meanwhile, in 1934, St. Faustina of Poland had a dream during which she saw Jesus exposed in a monstrance under a big sky. Out of the Host came the same two rays that she saw coming from His Heart in the Divine Mercy image. This happened on other occasions as well: Sister Faustina seeing actual rays of light coming from the Blessed Sacrament.

They saw what we feel: real grace. It is like "crystals reflecting the sun's rays," wrote St. Margaret Mary. The same descriptions are granted us by those who have glimpsed Heaven!

If our priests spent time in Adoration, and if we spent time each week in Adoration praying for them, en masse, there would be no crisis. No one can regularly sin if he or she is truly worshipping in front of that monstrance on a regular basis.   

Indeed, after enough prayer the Blessed Sacrament -- whether in a monstrance or elevated during Mass -- seems to transform into a white luminosity.

No wonder so many saints spent hours before the altar -- in some cases, as with St. Francis of Assisi, entire nights or days. One Holy Thursday, prostrate and without interruption, St. Margaret spent 14 hours in such repose.

We remember St. Padre Pio saying that a few minutes before the Blessed Sacrament are worth more than years of any worldly endeavor.

No vocations program, no advertising campaign, no slick attempt to lure future priests will work nearly as well as simply instituting Adoration in parishes across an entire diocese.

2/6/06