I Could Never Take My Children To Adoration – Or So I Thought!

I’m a cradle Catholic. I went to Catholic church every Sunday. I attended CCD classes every Wednesday. I even said bedtime prayers – most of the time – and, as an adult, I was proud of teaching my boys to pray before every dinner. I loved that they even quietly bow their heads and make a quick, seriptious Sign of the Cross offering thanks to our Lord for His blessings when they’re eating in public, but Eucharistic Adoration would be too much.

After all, I’m a single Mom of five very active, very competitive boys. Who knew what sort of opposition I’d face if I told them they were going to go and sit in church for an hour, and it wasn’t even a Sunday? I would face a certain rebellion, an uprising of epic propotions in my own home. As it is some days I feel like I am holding on to control with a tenuous grasp. I’m outnumbered on the adult-child scale, on the male-female scale, and on pretty much any other scale you can imagine, but the idea of attending Eucharistic Adoration kept popping up again and again, only to be quickly squashed by my knowledge of the reaction I’d get if I told the boys I thought they should go. I imagined their reactions when they found out the priest might not even be there, when they found out they might even be the only ones in the church.

Yet, therein lay the problem – or maybe it was only one of the problems. If I thought that if I attended Eucharistic Adoration I’d be sitting in church alone, perhaps I didn’t truly understand what Eucharistic Adoration really is. Eucharistic Adoration is quiet time spent in the presence of Jesus Christ. I am not sure how long it took for that to sink in, definitely months, probably years. During Eucharistic Adoration, we are sitting in the presence of Jesus Christ.

I began to think maybe I should check out this Eucharistic Adoration thing a little bit more. I was feeling drawn to it as though it was a real calling, but in the midst of the chaos of job hunting and starting a new business and five boys how could I schedule in time for Adoration. I felt I literally didn’t have an extra hour a week or month. There were times I felt I couldn’t find a spare hour even once a year, but that call to Eucharistic Adoration kept haunting me. I made some half-hearted efforts over the summer to find a local parish with Adoration, but every one had cancelled extra activities such as Adoration and Stations of the Cross and so on. I admit to feeling a bit disappointed but did little more than mentally shrug my shoulders and move on.

Then I started a new job, and my oldest began the college application process, and my youngest began kindergarten and the school year started with soccer, basketball, football, and fall baseball and Boy Scouts, and CCD and more, and the thought of Eucharistic Adoration slipped my mind until the beginning of 2015. It was something I planned to do, one day, when I had time.

The time came sooner than I’d thought and for a reason I couldn’t have foreseen. Catholics and non-Catholics alike have heard of Pope Francis’s upcoming Synod on the Family. I had certainly heard of it, and I had certainly taken an interest in it, especially in the area of divorce and the role of a good man in the church. The greatest fear of many single mothers is that their children will repeat the generational mistakes of their families. I so want to learn how to raise good, faithful, strong, and loving men that I’ve prayed for the Synod and watched for news of its outcomes in the hope of keeping my boys on the right path.

As 2015 got underway, and the hustle of beginning a new year calmed down a bit, I began to feel a gentle whisper calling me again to learn more about my faith, the faith I’d grown up in but knew so little about. I especially again felt the call to attend Adoration, but I literally couldn’t find an hour away from my boys and my responsibilities. Then I found the Eucharistic Adoration for the Synod on the Family, which asks people all over the world to, on the first Thursday of each month for nine months, attend Adoration and pray for a strengthening of families and for the upcoming Synod. The parishes near my house didn’t have Adoration, but I decided to ask my boys to pray for families anyway. We’d do our best with what we had to work with.

I explained to the boys a bit about the Synod and what a Novena is. Then I told them I’d like us to go to church on the first Thursday of every month and just sit quietly for a few minutes. I have really good kids, and they agreed to go, but there was a noticible, and understandable, lack of excitement.  I was glad we were going, but I wasn’t over the top excited about it either.

The first Thursday of the Synod’s Eucharistic Adoration was in February. I left work as soon as possible and went home to get my boys. Maybe I was looking forward to this a bit more than I’d thought. We might not be able to attend Adoration, but we’d decided to make an entire evening of it dedicating the first Thursday of each month to family activities. We’d go to church and then out to dinner (a rare treat for us), and just enjoy being together.

That February evening, I came home gathered the boys up and out we went. We chose a church in a neighboring town because there are more restaurants there and because I had attended Mass there before and love the simplicity of the church and the layout, which is slightly different from other Catholic churches I’ve attended. We didn’t get there until after 6:30. The doors were locked and we walked around trying each one disappointedly. It was freezing that night and we all just wanted to get back in the warm car, but something kept moving us to try another set of doors.

Finally, we found one that led us in through the rectory to the part of the church near the altar. We were a bit surprised when the door opened, but probably not as surprised as the man sitting in the office behind the glass was to see my boys and me. We asked if we could sit in the quiet church for a bit (and of course use the bathroom because my five year old still has to check out every bathroom everywhere!).

We crept into the silent church. My boys raised their eyebrows and looked around. Jesus hung on a Cross a bit off to the side of the altar. Behind the altar He sat arms extended welcoming visitors, ready to embrace all who came to Him. Noah, my 11 year old, wrapped his arms around me, and I knew even he, who doesn’t like change, liked this church.

We decided to spread out so we wouldn’t be tempted to chat or giggle or do any of the other stuff our family tends to do, so the boys and I all chose different seats on separate sides of the aisle, some in front, others toward the rear. We were alone in the church. The younger ones had their children’s Bible. I had brought mine. I am not sure whether the older boys had brought a Bible or Rosary beads or anything at all.

I had hoped to get the guys to stay for 10-15 minutes before I figured a brotherly fight would break out or they’d be goofy or someone would do something to get in trouble or drive me crazy so I was just about to say we should leave when I realized something more was going on, that Eucharistic Adoration was beginning now! I watched in wonder as my boys glanced over at me unsure of what was happening. How could I tell them? How could I send them a message? How could I keep them quiet? How could I escape now without making a scene?

My 11 year old had been walking through the Stations of the Cross but now slid into the pew with me. He didn’t say anything but just cuddled close. I looked back in the church. My 13 year old was sitting with my five year old where they had joined seats moments before to read the kids’ Bible together. My 16 and 17 year old were still sitting in their own pews looking interestedly toward the altar. Every once in awhile our eyes would catch and I’d smile at them.

We sat for quite a while, until I couldn’t sit any more, not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t want to push my luck by keeping the boys there too long. I was afraid they’d be tired and bored and ready to go, and, experience has shown me, that’s when trouble hits. For goodness sake, they hadn’t even eaten dinner yet!

I gave them the motion that told them to wind up and head out, and we quietly stood and left Adoration, filing out of the front doors of the church which were now open to allow adorers in. I was sorry to leave and wondered what the protocol was in such a situation, but I was more worried about the disturbance we’d create if one of the boys started acting like, well, like a boy!

I needn’t have worried. Once outside the church, they were full of excited questions and talked fast about how confused they were and how afraid they were in someone’s wedding or something, but more than anything, they were filled with a sense of surprise by how quickly the time had passed. They really thought they had only been in the church for a few minutes, not the almost 40 we had actually been sitting quietly for, and they spoke of enjoying the peace of just sitting, and they looked forward to going again.

The first Thursday in March, we went to dinner first and then to Adoration, which meant we showed up a few minutes late, and again I hoped we weren’t being terribly rude and breaking protocol or disturbing others as we crept into the last few pews in the back of the church. Our family, both my boys and me, have a lot to learn about our faith and a lot we need to work on to strengthen both our faith and our understanding of our faith, and Adoration is on the top of our list of what we’d like to work on.

It is amazing to me how the Holy Spirit works. All the time He was telling me to go to Adoration, and I was telling Him I didn’t have time. I was wondering how I could take time away from the boys or work or anything, but that’s not what He was saying. He was saying the boys needed Adoration too. In the midst of their stressful lives, in the midst of  academic state testing and college applications, baseball tryouts and prom dates, driver’s permits and middle school friendships, and even kindergarten pressures, the boys needed this time of silence, this time of peace, this time of reconnecting on a personal level.

And Eucharistic Adoration gave them that. I had mistakenly thought they weren’t ready. I had mistakenly thought they wouldn’t get it. I had mistakenly thought they wouldn’t be able to sit quietly without moving. I had mistakenly made it about them and me and what I thought, when it should have been about them and their Savior. I should have trusted God and taken them to Adoration when I had first heard the call.

If you are considering bringing your child to Adoration, please check my website in the coming weeks. I will be posting suggestions on how we make it work for my boys ages 5 to 17. I sincerely hope you join me in bringing your family to Adoration and join so many others in prayer for the Synod being held this October.

God Bless…