Adoration
How to Make a Holy Hour
Eucharistic Adoration · 8 steps
How to spend an hour in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament: arriving, adoring, giving thanks, praying with Scripture, interceding, resting in silence, and closing, with or without Benediction.
8 steps · About 1 hour
A holy hour is an hour of prayer before Jesus truly present in the Eucharist, whether exposed in a monstrance or reserved in the tabernacle. Its name recalls Gethsemane: 'Could you not watch one hour with me?' (Matthew 26:40). Saint John Paul II wrote of the pleasure of spending time in Christ's company before the Blessed Sacrament, and many saints, priests and lay people have made a daily holy hour the anchor of their lives. There is no prescribed method: what follows is a traditional shape that keeps the hour from drifting, built on the four ends of prayer, adoration, thanksgiving, petition and reparation, with Scripture and silence.
What you need
- A church or chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved, or a scheduled time of exposition or perpetual adoration
- A Bible, or the readings of the day
- Optionally a rosary, a prayer book, or a notebook
- One hour, and the willingness to stay when it feels long
When to pray it
Any time a church is open; Thursday evening is traditional in memory of Gethsemane, and the First Friday and First Thursday of the month in many parishes. A weekly hour in a perpetual adoration chapel is a common commitment.
Steps
Step 1: Arrive and come into his presence
Enter in silence. Genuflect on one knee toward the tabernacle or the monstrance, as the Church's rite for worship of the Eucharist outside Mass directs (some kneel on both knees before the exposed Sacrament by older custom, and may). Take a place where you can see the Host or the tabernacle, kneel or sit, and make the . For a minute do nothing but become aware that the Lord who fed the crowds and rose from the dead is here, a few yards away, and that he sees you.
Step 2: Adore
Begin with adoration, the prayer that simply acknowledges who God is. Pray the if the Sacrament has just been exposed, or the of Saint Thomas Aquinas: ', whom I do adore...' Then say slowly, in your own words or in silence: 'My Lord and my God.' Let adoration take the first ten minutes; it puts everything else in order.
Step 3: Give thanks
Thank him, in particular: for the last week, for the people you love, for the Mass and this hour, for the mercies you have not noticed. Gratitude is the meaning of the word Eucharist. A psalm of thanksgiving (Psalm 103 or Psalm 116) may be read here.
Step 4: Pray with Scripture
Read a short passage slowly, ideally the Gospel of the day or a Eucharistic text: John 6, the Emmaus road (Luke 24:13-35), the Last Supper (Luke 22:14-20). Read it once for the sense and once for a word that strikes you; stay with that word and speak to the Lord about it; then listen. This is lectio divina, and before the Blessed Sacrament it becomes conversation with the One who spoke the words.
Step 5: Intercede
Bring the world to him: your family by name, the sick, the dying, the Church and the Pope, priests and vocations, those who have asked your prayers, those who have no one to pray for them, the souls in purgatory. A decade of the Rosary, or the whole Rosary, may be prayed here; many pray it before the Blessed Sacrament. Keep a short list in your notebook so that no one is forgotten.
Step 6: Make reparation and examine the day
Look honestly at the day or the week, ask forgiveness for what needs it, and offer him some small reparation for your own sins and for the indifference he receives in the Eucharist: the is a fitting prayer here (', sanctify me... Within thy wounds hide me'). If you find a serious sin, resolve to bring it to confession.
Step 7: Rest in silence
Spend the last part of the hour saying nothing. Look at him, and let him look at you, as the old farmer told the Curé of Ars. If thoughts crowd in, return gently with a single word: 'Jesus'. This silence is not empty; it is the part of the hour that most resembles heaven.
Step 8: Close, with or without Benediction
If a priest or deacon gives Benediction at the end of exposition, kneel as the is sung, bow your head as he blesses with the monstrance, and join in ('Blessed be God. Blessed be his holy Name...') before the Sacrament is reposed. Otherwise, close with or a Glory Be, a brief act of thanksgiving, and a resolution for the day. Genuflect as you leave, and take the silence with you.
Tips
- Divide the hour loosely into four quarters: adoration, Scripture, intercession, silence. The structure carries you when devotion does not.
- Dryness and distraction are normal and do not make the hour a failure; the point is to be there with him, as he is with you.
- If the chapel has exposition, do not leave the Blessed Sacrament alone: wait for the next adorer before going.
- Leave the phone in the car or silenced in a bag. The hour belongs to him.