CHAPTER 1 Jay "[T]he Eucharist is the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ, flesh which suffered for our sins and which the Father, in his goodness, raised up again." St. Ignatius of Antioch (died ca. 107) Within a few minutes after Jay answered the phone, I knew I was speaking with someone who in generations past would have been thought of as a "man's man." A forty-six-year-old husband and father of two college-age children, he holds no less than three positions at the Catholic high school for which he works-history teacher, guidance counselor and track coach. In fact, the latter is a demanding assignment all its own since there are three separate squads to manage-indoors, outdoors and cross-country. All three, he notes matter-of-factly, "just crush everyone." And that's no bluster: His teams have won ten of their state's last twelve championships; the cross-country team was nationally ranked in 2001. Like the firefighters and police officers who rushed into the burning World Trade Center towers that fateful September morning, here is a man who prefers to communicate his devotion to God through actions rather than words. "Terse" would be too strong a word to describe his responses to my questions, but he certainly got right to the point on each and, once satisfied he had put it across, let it be known by his silence that he was ready for the next question. If Jay is, in the world's eyes, a throwback to the days of the "strong, silent type," well, I thought that was just one of the qualities that made his eucharistic adoration testimony so convincing and compelling. "I started going to adoration at the beginning of the year 2000, the Jubilee Year," Jay told me. "It was when the Church was urging everyone to 'Open Wide the Doors to Christ.'" Prior to that, our pastor had presented the idea of our parish starting perpetual adoration. We had adoration for years, but only one day a week, not perpetual. He was telling us what a good thing this would be for the parish, for the soul of the parish and the souls of individual people in and around the parish. I found out then that the Blessed Sacrament, when exposed, can never be left unaccompanied. There are 168 hours in a week, and we needed a person committed to each and every one of them. They needed people to step out a little and make a pretty serious commitment in order to make the whole thing work. I had never done anything like that related to church. I went to Mass on Sundays and that was that. But my wife and I were sitting there and she said, "This would be a good thing for us to do." I said, "Yeah-it might be worth a shot." So we signed up for Wednesday mornings at five and started setting the alarm for four. We went off our first time and, right off the bat, I just got the sense that this was something that I had been missing out on. I'm not so sure before we started going that I really understood what "Real Presence" meant and what the Eucharist really was. Or who it really is, I guess I should say. Has eucharistic adoration made any kind of noticeable difference in your life? The whole thing has gotten me much more involved in my faith and my parish. It's made me look at a lot of things differently. All the pieces of my faith just kind of came together, and I see how important it is to do more than just meet my minimum obligation. For example, right after we started with perpetual adoration, the guy who runs education for the parish started teaching a class on the Eucharist. So we jumped into that, too. We started studying this book The Lamb's Supper by Scott Hahn, which just gave me more to feed on. I started to say, "Wow-this stuff is real. It goes very deep." You know, you pick up a piece here, a piece there, and pretty soon everything starts to come into very clear focus. What do you know now that you didn't know prior to January of 2000? One thing is, I've come to see our pastor in a different light. I used to look at him as too good to be true, all wrapped up in what wasn't real. But now that I have a better handle on things, I see that what he's wrapped up in is reality. I have to credit him with bringing eucharistic adoration to us, because that's what has brought the faith alive for me. When you're at Mass, a lot of times what happens is almost like you become a spectator. You find yourself thinking, "Gee, I hope it's a good sermon. Hopefully he'll throw us something we can chew on today." Now I realize that's not what you're there for. The Word and the preaching are important, but the main thing you're there for, the central point of the Mass, is Jesus Christ, in the flesh. The Eucharist. As you start seeing that, and how God really works, you see so many graces start coming into your life. Your life changes. It can't help but change. And one of the most obvious changes is more involvement with your parish. More involvement and more appreciation. Our parish has very long Masses. They all go at least an hour. I used to spend a lot of time looking at my watch. I never seem to do that anymore. Another thing I have to point out is that it's more than just getting more out of church. I also find that I love my work more than ever. This is my twenty-fourth year at this school. You take the bad with the good, but there's not a day I don't look forward to going out the door. I really mean that. And I think, again, it all comes back to adoration. I used to like my work before, but now I just have a whole different feel on it. I just understand better how I'm supposed to be with people. I understand how to be patient with the students and not be in a crabby mood and be a jerk about some of the things they do. Because then all I'm doing is being selfish. And if something is bothering me, I'm not treating them the way Jesus would treat them-or the way he treats me, for that matter. And those are really the things I ask for. I ask for help to be a better follower of Christ, like the Blessed Mother and the saints. Did praying in silence before the elevated Host come naturally to you, or did it seem a little odd at first? We share our hour with another couple. The first time we walked into the adoration chapel, I kind of watched a little bit. I wasn't exactly sure what to do. The chapel was very quiet. Not quiet like a library, but peaceful on a much deeper level. I knew it was a unique place and unlike any place I'd been before. I just started saying my prayers; it seemed like the right thing to do. Little by little I have kind of developed some strategies, different things I do to stay focused. But that first time I went in, I remember picking up one of the books they have in there. An Hour With Jesus, I think it was called. Little meditations. I remember reading the first one I opened to. It said something like, "What would happen if the president came in? Or a movie star or a sports hero? The place would be packed. And yet here you are with the Lord, and there's just you and a couple of other people to greet him"-something to that effect. I remember reading that and thinking, "That's interesting." So little by little you get into these things. You sit, you maybe do a little reading. I've got a bunch of books I'm reading now that I never would have even picked up before. I've got one on the Blessed Mother, one on the Eucharist, one on the life of Christ. Has your spiritual life in general developed along with your devotion to Christ in the Eucharist? Oh, yeah. It's kind of branched out from adoration. I'll give you an example. Last spring, we were encouraged to do the total consecration to Mary according to the writings of St. Louis de Montfort. Near the end of his book, there's a suggestion to pledge to do something special, as part of your consecration, for God. Something maybe a little sacrificial, or at least a little out of your way. I thought about it and I asked myself, "What can I do? There's got to be something meaningful that I can do." Finally I decided to go before the Blessed Sacrament every day. And that's in addition to my weekly hour of adoration, not to replace it. Every day, I stop in for a least a few minutes. It doesn't have to be the adoration chapel at the parish; it could be the chapel at school or any Catholic church. The Eucharist doesn't have to be exposed; it's OK if it's reserved in the tabernacle. The bottom line is that I'm spending time near the Blessed Sacrament every single day. And how is that going? So far, so good. It's been two months and I haven't missed a day yet. That doesn't make me St. Francis, but it's a commitment, a connection. What do you do in those visits? Pretty much the same thing that I do in my hour of adoration; it's just condensed. In the daily visits, as in weekly adoration, I try to always start by saying the short prayer St. Francis used to have the brothers say whenever they walked into a church or chapel: "We adore you,...
