God?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church offers a more detailed description:
This perfect life with the Most Holy Trinity — this communion of life and love with the Trinity, with the Virgin Mary, the angels and all the blessed — is called “heaven.” Heaven is the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness.
To live in heaven is “to be with Christ.” (CCC 1024–1025)
Why bring that up here, at the beginning of a book on adoration? Because it can be easy, especially in the early stages of this form of devotion, to think of it as just kneeling before a tabernacle or monstrance. Just staring at the receptacle holding Our Lord in the Eucharist. Just watching the minutes slowly pass.
St. Faustina says, “Not so.” Yes, she knelt. Yes, no doubt, she stared. Yes, time passed but … too quickly.
The young nun was living “in heaven,” in that Polish convent. In that chapel or on her sick bed when she made a “spiritual adoration.” It was there that she adored Our Lord. It was there that she found, for a too-brief time each day, the Most Holy Trinity, Our Lady, the angels, and the saints.
What she describes in her diary is, literally, heaven on earth.
It’s what God offers you. What He offers to share with you.
Probably not visions and voices, but graces and blessings. Sometimes wordless nudges or startling insights. Certainly joy. And peace. A bit of heaven on earth for you. You and God, together.
And it could be that when the time comes for you to leave earth, to enter heaven, it will be a gentle transition. It will be a familiar “place” — or rather, state of being — because you’ve visited it before, time and again. Or more accurately, God brought it when He visited with you, time and again.
How do you get closer to that ideal in your own acts of adoration? The same way you move forward in ordinary tasks or in virtue. No miracles. Just practice, perseverance, patience, and prayer.
And just as there are others who have gone before you, who can help you with life in general — parents, teachers, mentors, and so on — those who have become more proficient at adoration want the same for you.
St. Faustina wants the same for you. That’s what this book is about. Yes, it includes her extraordinary experiences, but also her advice and example. Just how central was adoration to her life as a religious? It was her life. Period.
Young Helena Kowalska was given the religious name Sister Maria Faustina. But years later, God may have tipped His hand just a bit when He called her to add “of the Most Blessed Sacrament.”
She was His. And He was hers. Eternally.
You’ve been on my mind as I wrote this book. As I made my own visits of adoration before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. As I researched, learned about — and marveled at — St. Faustina’s growing closer and closer to Jesus. At her becoming more and more like Him.
During my visits, the beauty, power, and grace of adoration became clearer to me. With that, a deeper realization that God is truly there, in the Eucharist.
And as I wrote this book, as I spent time in adoration, you, your loved ones, and the souls of your dearly departed have been in my prayers.
Please pray for me and mine.
St. Faustina, pray for all of us. St. Faustina, pray with each of us. Amen.
— Susan
Foreword
May You, Like Faustina, Find a Friend and Constant Companion in Jesus
Susan Tassone — longtime friend of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception — has a well-deserved reputation as the “Purgatory Lady.” Few other Catholics working in the vineyard of the Lord today have spent as much time championing the cause of the holy souls. That’s why I’m honored and delighted to write the foreword to her latest book.
Here are the many different elements of St. Faustina’s adoration of Our Lord, both before the Eucharist in the chapel and privately in her room. That deep life-changing and soul-changing devotion was at the heart of her spirituality, personal life, and mission. They were acts partly for her own sake; partly for the sake of the world, so badly in need of Divine Mercy; and partly in response to the longing of Jesus’ Sacred Heart for us to return His love.
Susan does a fabulous job of making this important aspect of the life of St. Faustina alive for us today. In fact, be sure to read her chapter on silent adoration. I find this one to be particularly practical. So many times people ask me, “Father, I don’t know what to say in adoration.” Well, sometimes the answer is simply say nothing. Let God do the talking!
Here’s a book that can help you to pray with or without words. It’s one to be used before Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and with Him at home.
I pray that you, like St. Faustina, draw tremendous spiritual benefits from your time in adoration. And, as Susan recommends, that you include prayers for the holy souls in purgatory as you visit with our Crucified Lord, the willing Victim. May you, like St. Faustina, find a friend and constant companion in Him, as you make adoration a normal — and central — part of your own life.
May God bless you, may Mary Immaculate always intercede for you, and may St. Faustina pray for you.
— Father Chris M. Alar, M.I.C.
Director, Association of Marian Helpers
National Shrine of The Divine Mercy
Stockbridge, Massachusetts
Introduction
Praying Fervently, Gazing Radiantly
Look to him, and be radiant.
— Psalm 34:5
Once, the [Divine Mercy] image was being exhibited over the altar during the Corpus Christi procession…. When the priest exposed the Blessed Sacrament, and the choir began to sing, the rays from the image pierced the Sacred Host and spread out all over the world. Then I heard these words: These rays of mercy will pass through you, just as they have passed through this Host, and they will go out through all the world. At these words, profound joy invaded my soul. (441)
Adoration has been a central Catholic devotion for centuries, beloved by saints, popes, and countless devout men, women, and children.
Among them was St. Faustina — who added “of the Blessed Sacrament” to her religious name:
One hour spent at the foot of the altar in the greatest dryness of spirit is dearer to me than a hundred years of worldly pleasure. (254)
Striving to be in constant union with Jesus, she visited the Blessed Sacrament throughout her day as much and often as possible, sometimes if only to quickly genuflect
