As I mentioned in my last post, I am visiting my best friend and had the opportunity to spend several hours in prayer with her during her usual weekly 2-4 am Adoration slot. She’s the one who introduced me to Adoration in the first place and it had become a very precious part of my prayer life by the time I moved to a new state and new parish with no real Adoration to speak of. Anytime I come to visit that coincides with Adoration, I am able to join her and it was particularly precious this visit as it has been more than six months since I had such an opportunity for Adoration, much less one with her.
I have not slept well these last months and was particularly tired last night due to little sleep the night before. So I slept through both the cell phone alarms I set and had to be woken by my friend asking if I was sure I wanted to go. One might think that going to pray for two hours on such little sleep in the quiet of a private chapel would be difficult. There was a time when I could not pray for five minutes together without serious boredom and attention loss. I frankly was a bit concerned that, despite previous experiences in Adoration, I might be tempted to join the apostles in their example of ‘midnight prayer’.
Silly me. Time had passed for me, but not for God. My location had changed, but His remained the same. He was there waiting for me. I had so much to pray for, petition and thanksgiving, so much I wanted to meditate on… so I got right to it. After praying the dedication of the hours, I paused to switch out my Magnificat’s in their little cover as the month was changing that night and I wanted to go ahead and do Morning Prayer before I hit the more intense, specific prayer. There is usually an editorial, some articles and prayers before the daily stuff starts and I began with those once morning prayer was over. As my previous post suggests, I got seriously sidetracked there with all kinds of intense illumination going on.
As I mentioned to my friend, as a Protestant I dutifully showed up for services with my Bible and a notepad, studiously listening for the ‘points’ in the sermon to make notes. As a Catholic, I show up with so much to pray and meditate on in Adoration that it never occurs to me to bring paper… and repeatedly I’ve found myself learning so much, so inspired by repeated somethings that click as I meditate, that I’m scrabbling for pen and paper… holding my hand up to heaven saying ‘WAIT! Hold that thought! You’re going too fast! I have to write this down so I won’t forget it!’
This was true this time as well. In fact, something unusual happened last night. Normally, our Adorations are a blessed, pregnant silence. Ours being the type of friendship where no words are necessary and hours of silent prayer spent together in our Lord’s Presence with rarely a spoken word are an easy and familiar thing. This time, it was happening to us both, though reading and meditating on different things but being given some really interesting illumination that spoke to the same or similar topics. We kept interrupting each other to share as they struck us… sometimes one writing furiously, trying to capture the latest insight while the other was enthusing over something as well… both in close, intense communion with the Holy Spirit… but with each other at the same time… as the insights given complemented and shone light upon the others.
At last, we both leaned back in our chairs, silently absorbing the wonder of the moment. After some moments had passed, my friend asked what time it was… I reached for my cell phone to check the time, thinking it could only have been about 20 minutes and why was she, of all people, so time conscious all of a sudden… (stupid anne)… Imagine my astonishment to find that it was 3:48 in the morning, a mere 12 minutes remained in our two hours and I was nowhere near ‘done’. Yet again I found myself packing up my Adoration materials and reaching for my shoes feeling both profound joy and somewhat bemused disappointment as I realized that not even TWO hours is enough dedicated time for prayer…
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