Walking by the Lord's house

I often ask children to imagine walking by the house of the Holy Family in Nazareth. Children who love the Lord might remember that Jesus lives there, and make a gesture of reverence, or say a short prayer. But if we walked by the Lord’s house, and he was out on the porch, and we could look directly at him, we would stop, and talk to him, and know that he was hearing us, and talking to us. So it is with adoring Christ in the Eucharist, visible to us in the monstrance. We see him, and we know that he sees us. We speak to him, and we know that he hears us. When we adore Christ in the Eucharist, exposed in the monstrance, the Lord engages all of our senses, through the ministry of the Church, to awaken us to the power of encountering him—love made visible.

Pope St. John Paul II wrote that through adoration of the Eucharist, “we can say not only that each of us receives Christ, but also that Christ receives each of us. He enters into friendship with us: ‘You are my friends.’”

In friendship, in the dialogue of Eucharistic adoration, God transforms us, so that, in love, we can make gifts of our ourselves to the world, just as Christ has made a gift of himself in the Eucharist.

Bishop James Conley, Holy Thursday Letter, 2017

via A Year with the Eucharist, Paul Jerome Keller

It isn't only children who need these sorts of prompts. I love the mental image of seeing Jesus on his porch and stopping for a chat.