About-Eucharistic-Adoration-in-Chicago

About Us

St. John Paul II Eucharistic Adoration Association of the Archdiocese of Chicago.

We are an association comprised of all volunteers who dedicate themselves to promoting Eucharistic Adoration throughout our Chicago Archdiocese. Cardinal George has entrusted us with a great mission in asking us to be a resource center for pastors and parishes with the Chicago Archdiocese who desire to establish a strong and viable Eucharistic Adoration program centered on the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament for public prayer and adoration.

Vision Statement

“I hope that ... perpetual adoration, with permanent exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, will continue into the future. Specifically, I hope that the fruit of this Congress results in the establishment of perpetual Eucharistic Adoration in all parishes and Christian communities throughout the world.”
Pope John Paul II
45th International Eucharistic Congress
Seville, Spain: June 1993

Mission

Inspired by the mandate and personal encouragement of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, the mission of the Pope John Paul II Eucharistic Adoration Association of the Archdiocese of Chicago is to assist each parish within the Archdiocese of Chicago to establish and maintain a viable Eucharistic adoration program under the spiritual guidance of our Local Ordinary and his designated representatives. Though our primary mission is to the parishes within our own Archdiocese, we will collaborate with and seek to offer whatever assistance we can to any legitimate persons or organizations involved in the spread of Eucharistic Adoration, provided this does not impede our primary responsibility to the parishes within our own Archdiocese.

Goals

Our goal for establishing chapels of Eucharistic Adoration within the Archdiocese of Chicago is three-fold:

1. Sanctification of persons, families and parish communities through growth in deeper prayer before our Eucharistic Lord.
2. Support of our bishops, priests and seminarians through prayer before the Blessed Sacrament and praying for an increase of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life in general.
3. Forming parish adoration program participants to be disciples for service and evangelization.

Each of these goals will now be explained more thoroughly.

Goal One: Sanctification of Persons, Families and Parishes

Parish Eucharistic Adoration leads the faithful to grow in greater holiness by providing one an opportunity to spend a minimum of an hour per week in prayer before the central mystery of our faith, Christ’s Presence in the Eucharist. Over a period of time such growth begins to exert a positive effect on the network of relationships he or she is a part of beginning with one’s religious or biological family unit causing it to grow in holiness as well. As the holiness (God-centered quality of life) of the family units which comprise the parish community grow so will the sanctity of the whole parish. This in turn will make the parish a true evangelizing community attracting to itself those who do not yet know Christ or who in the past have not been fully involved in the practice of their faith.

It is the goal of the Pope John Paul II Eucharistic Adoration Association to help individual parishes within the Archdiocese of Chicago to develop an adoration program that will foster such growth in Christian holiness through growth in genuine prayer before the presence of our Eucharistic Lord.

Goal Two: Prayer for Priests and for Increase of Vocations

Recognizing the ever-increasing demands faced by our parish priests in view of the vocational crises which exists in the Church today, it is our goal to help mobilize adorers within our chapels of adoration to make praying for bishops, priests and seminarians in the Archdiocese and for an increase of vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life in general a priority. The program officially sanctioned for this by the Pope John Paul II Eucharistic Adoration Association and approved by the Archdiocese of Chicago is the Harvest Vocation Prayer Ministry headquartered at the central Archdiocesan Eucharistic Adoration shrine of the Conventual Franciscan Friars of Marytown and developed by our former Spiritual Director, Fr. John P. Grigus, O.F.M. Conv.

Goal Three: Forming Disciples for Service and Evangelization, Casting Eucharistic Adoration in a more contemporary Evangelical Context

Christ went up the mountain and summoned those whom he wanted and they came to him. He appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) that they might be with him and he might send them forth to preach and to have authority to drive out demons...” (NAB-Mark 3:13-15)

Mark 3: 13-15 describes a two-fold process through which Jesus formed his disciples, a period of being with him followed by a period of being sent by him. The first stage of discipleship, the “being with Jesus,” was absolutely required for the accomplishment of the second stage, the “being sent out” by Jesus to evangelize and break the bondage of evil in the world. This dual call reflects the fullness of the call to Christian discipleship. It is a call which Christ extends to his disciples today no less than he did to his original Twelve.

The call “to be with” Jesus in order “to be sent by” Jesus is today fulfilled most fully through the Eucharist for it is in the Eucharist that we find Jesus most fully and substantially present to us, uniting us with Himself and each other, as he did so with his original followers (cf. CC #1374 and #1324).

And because this Eucharistic presence of Christ which begins at the moment of the consecration “endures as long as the Eucharistic species subsists” (CC #1377), the first level of formation, the “being with Jesus”, does not stop with the Liturgical Celebration of the Mass but continues “beyond the time-table of Masses... in all our encounters with the Blessed Sacrament” (Dominicae Cenae, 3). And so it is especially manifested in the form of prayer called Eucharistic Adoration in which individuals spend a prolonged time before the eucharistic presence of Christ.

In promoting the establishment of Eucharistic Adoration within our parishes, it is the goal of the Pope John Paul II Eucharistic Adoration Association to enhance the Church’s call to service and evangelization by fostering through prayer before the Eucharist the inner conversion of persons needed to sustain that call.

“The marvelous spiritual effects of spending time with the Lord, present in the Most Blessed Sacrament, will deepen the life of sanctity in the Archdiocese, make us more sensitive to both personal and social sins, and give us fervor for the new evangelization.”
Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., Archbishop of Chicago