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I remember my first experience with Eucharistic Adoration very clearly.  I was on a retreat.  It was my first time going on retreat.  I had never even heard of Eucharistic Adoration before.  It was the first retreat that my youth minister ever led as a youth minister, and I was a little high school freshmen, not really sure of what I was getting myself into by attending this retreat.  It was a huge leap of faith for me to go, but I really did want to attend that weekend.

I don't know if the team just failed at giving a clear explanation of what Adoration was all about, or if I just wasn't paying attention, but I thought that it was the strangest experience.  I had no real idea about what was going on.  I didn't understand it, or the reactions that everyone else was having, or the reactions that I was having, but I did understand that what was going on was huge.

So I was a little bit afraid.  I think that was an appropriate reaction, too.  I wasn't afraid in the sense that I believed I was in danger.  And I wouldn't necessarily say that I was in "awe," either.  I just knew that what I was looking at wasn't just a piece of bread in a monstrance.  I knew that Jesus was present, and that His presence meant power.  And power is always scary.

Adoration is still a bit of a scary thing for me.  I am surrounded by people in my life who tend to have very powerful experiences with Adoration, and, well, I am just not one of those people.  But I still have good experiences.

To me, Adoration is a lot like holding a sleeping new born baby.  A baby too small to really do anything on its own.  It can't sit.  It can't talk.  It just sits in my arms, soft, gentle, and asleep.  As I hold that baby, I don't necessarily have to do any action to experience love.  It is through the quiet and the calm that I receive my peace.  It's not because of the words that the baby says, because it says no words.  It is not through its actions or its motivations for those actions.  All that has to happen is that the baby sleeps, and I get the amazing privilege of being with it and holding it during its slumber.  Babies are true miracles.

This is my experience of Adoration.  When I first heard what St. John Vianney said about Adoration:  "I look at him and he looks at me," I was astonished at his description, for his experience was the same as mine.  I'm sure that I experience amazing works from Christ during my time in Adoration, things that aren't obvious in my life.  But I know without a doubt that I look at Jesus, and that He looks at me, and that itself is good.  That, itself, is enough.  Is there anything better than to be truly, purely, perfectly, and gloriously seen by the one you love?  By the one who loves you back?  There is nothing greater.