PERPETUAL EUCHARISTIC ADORATION
"Can you not watch one hour with Me?" -Matthew 26:44
"Once you understand the Eucharist, you can never leave the Church. Not because the Church won't let you, but because your HEART won't let you!"
WELCOME! The Presentation Chapel of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration of St. Therese Church continues the centuries-old practice of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament twenty-four hours per day, seven days per week (it began here in January of 1988).
WHAT IS PERPETUAL EUCHARISTIC ADORATION? Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration is the adoration of Jesus Christ, truly present in the Holy Eucharist. The Eucharist is displayed in a special holder called a "monstrance," so that people can come to pray and worship Jesus continually throughout the day and night. Archbishop Fulton Sheen said that the first Holy Hour was in the Garden of Olives when Jesus asked the apostles to pray with Him. He loves us without limit, and offers Himself to us in the Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Can we not give Jesus a few minutes of love and adoration in return?
LOCATION OF THE CHAPEL: Enter on the parking lot side of the church. Just follow the sidewalk between the church and the white iron fence until you get to the double glass doors. You will see a large picture of Jesus' Divine Mercy.
In December of 2012, the Carmelite Friars moved out of the former rectory (now called "The Parish Offices")—freeing up a lot of space for other purposes. After much discernment, the pastor at the time, Fr. Philip Sullivan, decided to move the Chapel to the former rectory and to restore the former Adoration Chapel back to a Baptistry, as originally designed by the architect. This move took place on February 2, 2015. The Baptistry was restored in 2019.
Because it was moved on the Feast of the Presentation, the chapel has been named the “The Presentation Chapel,” and is dedicated to the Loving Memory of Fr. Jerome Lantry, OCD (there is a large oil painting--by Belita William--of him in the foyer of the new chapel). The space where the chapel was previously located in the back of the church has been restored to the architect's intended purpose as a Baptistry (which is dedicated to the Loving Memory of Fr. William Fenton).
ELECTRONIC KEYS: There had been security issues with the chapel in its previous location. To prevent these problems, Adorers using the chapel between 5:00 pm and 6:00 am will need to register for their own electronic keys (for a small deposit of $20 each). All registered users need to refrain from lending their keys and from allowing unknown persons to follow them into the chapel.
LAST PERSON IN THE CHAPEL?: There is a photochromic glass in front of the monstrance. If at the time you are leaving the chapel, there is no one else in it, please TURN OFF THE LIGHT (the switch is to the left of the door as you exit) on your way out. This will cause the glass in front of the monstrance to turn dark so that Our Lord will not be exposed in an empty room. Likewise, if you are the first to re-enter, TURN THE LIGHT BACK ON, and the glass will clear.
MAKE A COMMITMENT: If you haven’t already done so, please commit to coming to the Chapel at the same hour and day each week.
PRAY FOR VOCATIONS: Ever since our chapel opened in 1988, one of its primary purposes is to pray for vocations to the consecrated life, in particular to our own Archdiocese and Carmelite Community.
GUIDELINES: Using the chapel requires following the guidelines listed below:
ADORATION CHAPEL GUIDELINES
ELECTRONIC KEY CARDS: If you have been issued an electronic key card for attending during the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., please observe the following:
· Do not lend or give the key card to anyone. You will be responsible for any misuse or damages to the chapel.
· Do not allow anyone unknown to you to follow you into the chapel. Inform anyone who attempts to follow you into the chapel that he or she must register in the parish offices in order to enter after hours.
· Do not put your name on the key card or mark it in any way. You may attach it to you rkey ring or a lanyard or put in your billfold or wallet. If in your billfold or wallet, you do not have to remove it from there. Simply hold the billfold or wallet near the key detector on the wall to the right of the door and you will hear it buzz (then just push the door open; make sure it closes firmly behind you!). You will find yourself in the foyer. The chapel itself is behind the frosted door on the left side.
SIGN IN / OUT FORM: If you are a COMMITTED ADORER, please arrive five (5) minutes early to show courtesy to the person(s) adoring before you who may need to leave on time.
· Each time you enter the chapel, you must sign in upon arrival (the Register is located in the vestibule of the chapel) and sign out when you leave. This is how we know Our Lord is being adored.
· Check the sign-in binder before you leave to be certain the next two committed adorers are in the chapel.
· If the adorers after your hour do not show up and you choose to be the substitute for the next hour, sign your name on the sign-in sheet and write “substitute” after your name. If you do need to leave before the next adorer arrives, please turn OFF the lights. This will cause the protective glass in front of the Monstrance to darken so that Our Lord is not left exposed in an empty room.
ADORATION ETIQUETTE
· Reverence the Blessed Sacrament upon entering. You are standing on Holy Ground!
· Please respect the presence of our Lord by turning off your cell phone and refraining from conversing with others.
· If you have children, keep them occupied with books or some quiet activity. Should your child get anxious, please take him/her out so as not to disturb the other adorers.
· CHILDREN MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT TO THE RESTROOMS AND ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WANDER, IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE “SAFEGUARD THE CHILDREN” POLICY.
· Please do not bring any food or beverages into the Chapel.
· Please remember to take off your hats; dress appropriately; don’t chew gum; and observe the same etiquette as if you were at Mass or in a courtroom.
· Please do not move any of the furniture.
· Please do not touch the altar and do not place anything on it.
· THE GLASS WINDOW PROTECTING OUR LORD SHOULD NOT BE TOUCHED!!!
· Spiritual reading material provided for adorers must remain on the bookshelf. Do not leave any reading material that has not been approved by the Carmelite Fathers or the Religious Education Staff.
· Please observe silence in the Adoration Chapel. Rosaries, Chaplets, or any other devotional prayers or songs should be prayed in silence.
· There is to be NO SLEEPING in the Adoration Chapel! Please make sure you are well-rested if you are committed to adore late at night.
GETTING A SUBSTITUTE : You are the Guardian of the Eucharist during your hour. It is your responsibility to find someone to cover your hour when you cannot be there. If for any reason you are unable to attend your committed hour, please try your best to find a replacement. If you are a committed adorer who comes between the hours of 5:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m., the substitute you schedule to cover your time slot must be another committed adorer with his or her own key. Please get to know those assigned before and after your committed hour and exchange contact information. They may be able to cover your hour.
EMERGENCY CONTACT: The Chapel has security cameras (outside the door, in the foyer, and in the chapel itself). If you feel a need to call the police, the phone number for the Alhambra Police Department is (626) 570-5168.
COMMITTED ADORERS: Although you are welcomed to pray there any time, we would appreciate if you would sign up to come to adore our Lord at for the early morning hours between Midnight and 5:00 a.m. (at that same hour each week). Call the office at (626) 282-2744 to do so.
ADORATION QUOTES
Our Lord (to Sr. Margaret Mary Alacoque during an apparition on the octave of the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament on June 16, 1675): “Behold this Heart which has so loved men that it has spared nothing, even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love. In return, I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this Sacrament of love. What is most painful to Me," added the Savior, in a tone that went to the Sister's heart, "is that they are hearts consecrated to Me”.
St. Pope John Paul II: "I hope that perpetual adoration, with permanent exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, will continue into the future." (International Eucharistic Congress in Seville, Spain, June, 1993)
St. Pope John Paul II: "Public and private devotion to the Holy Eucharist outside Mass is highly recommended: for the presence of Christ, who is adored by the faithful in the Sacrament, derives from the sacrifice and is directed towards sacramental and spiritual communion." (Inaestimabile Donum, #20, 1980)
St. Pope John Paul II: "The Church and the world have great need of Eucharistic adoration. Jesus waits for us in this Sacrament of Love. Let us be generous with our time in going to meet Him in adoration and contemplation full of faith. And let us be ready to make reparation for the great faults and crimes of the world. May our adoration never cease" (Dominicae Cenae: Letter to Priests, Holy Thursday, 1980).
St. Pope John Paul II: "Closeness to the Eucharistic Christ in silence and contemplation does not distance us from our contemporaries but, on the contrary, makes us open to human joy and distress, broadening our hearts on a global scale. Through adoration the Christian mysteriously contributes to the radical transformation of the world and to the sowing of the gospel. Anyone who prays to the Eucharistic Savior draws the whole world with him and raises it to God." (Letter to the Bishop of Liege, Reported in L'Osserv. Romano, 1996)
Jose Guadalupe Trevino: “Did you ever consider well, dear Christian soul, that, when the Sacred Host is publicly exposed, Jesus is not on His Eucharistic throne to receive the adorations of the angels and to enjoy the company of the blessed? These He finds in heaven. But He is on His Eucharistic throne to receive your adorations, to listen to your confidences, and to console and alleviate your sorrows and trials.”
Blessed Dina Belanger: “I am making my retreat with the Eucharistic Heart. I am on fire, burning with the desire to love God and to bring others to love him. 'Our Lady of the Eucharistic Heart, I beg you to give Jesus to soul’”
St. Gertrude: “I understand that, each time we contemplate with desire and devotion the Host in which is hidden Christ's Eucharistic Body, we increase our merits in heaven and secure special joys to be ours later in the beatific vision of God.”
St. Anselm: “I adore and venerate you as much as ever I can, though my love is so cold, my devotion so poor. Thank you for the good gift of this your holy Body and Blood, which I desire to receive.”
St. Justin Martyr (2nd Century): "This food we call the Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake except one who believes that the things we teach are true, and has received the washing for forgiveness of sins and for rebirth, and who lives as Christ handed down to us. For we do not receive these things as common bread or common drink; but as Jesus Christ our Savior being incarnate by God's Word took flesh and blood for our salvation, so also we have been taught that the food consecrated by the Word of prayer which comes from him, from which our flesh and blood are nourished by transformation, is the flesh and blood of that incarnate Jesus."
St. Augustine: "God in his omnipotence could not give more... in His wisdom He knew not how to give more... in His riches He had not more to give, than the Eucharist."
Pope Benedict XV: "In the Eucharist, this divine Heart governs us and loves us by living and abiding with us, so that we may live and abide in Him, because in this Sacrament... He offers and gives Himself to us as victim, companion, viaticum, and the pledge of future glory."
St. Pope John Paul II: “In the Eucharist, Christ is truly present and alive, working through His Spirit; yet, as Saint Thomas said so well, ‘what you neither see nor grasp, faith confirms for you, leaving nature far behind; a sign it is that now appears, hiding in mystery realities sublime’. He is echoed by the philosopher Pascal: ‘Just as Jesus Christ went unrecognized among men, so does His truth appear without external difference among common modes of thought. So too does the Eucharist remain among common bread’.” (Encyclical: "Faith and Reason")
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen's "This is the Mass": "By a beautiful paradox of Divine love, God makes His Cross the very means of our salvation and our life. We have slain Him; we have nailed Him there and crucified Him; but the Love in His eternal heart could not be extinguished. He willed to give us the very life we slew; to give us the very Food we destroyed; to nourish us with the very Bread we buried, and the very Blood we poured forth. He made our very crime into a happy fault; He turned a Crucifixion into a Redemption; a Consecration into a Communion; a death into Life Everlasting."
From "Worthy Is the Lamb": "Through Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration, Jesus longs to open up the floodgates of His merciful love on a troubled world. He longs to heal a broken humanity. Otherwise, He continues to weep in spirit and say: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you slay the prophets and stone those who are sent to you!’ How often have I wanted to gather your children together as a mother bird collects her young under her wings, and you refused me! Your temple will be abandoned I say to you, you shall not see me until the time comes when you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord'" (Luke 13:34-36). Fr. Michael Muller, CSSR: "That same Jesus is with us in our churches today who, at His birth was laid on straw and adored by the Magi, who was sought by the Blessed Virgin and found in the Temple, who changed water into wine, who restored sight to the blind, made deaf to hear and the dumb to speak, who died on the Cross, and then rose. Beloved Christian, you esteem Simeon happy in having been permitted to take the Infant Jesus in his arms; and were you to receive a grace like him, no doubt you would exclaim: 'Now dost Thou dismiss Thy servant in peace: because my eyes have seen Thy salvation.' "
From Nesta de Robeck's "The Life of St. Francis of Assisi": One day a rather worldly friend asked St. Francis of Assisi, "What do you do during those long hours before the Blessed Sacrament?" "My son, in return I ask you what does the poor man do at the rich man's door, the sick man in the presence of his physician, the thirsty man at a cool stream? What they do, I do before the Eucharistic God. I pray. I adore. I love."
St. Pope John XIII: The thought of the presence of God and the spirit of worship will, in all my actions, have as their immediate object Jesus, God and man, really present in the most holy Eucharist. The spirit of sacrifice, of humiliation, of scorn for self in the eyes of men, will be illuminated, supported and strengthened by the constant thought of Jesus, humiliated and despised in the Blessed Sacrament.
