To adore always

Continuing alone the lines of my last entry on adoring always and everywhere, I thought it would be useful to translate some pertinent passages from the writings of Mother Mectilde-du-Saint-Sacrement. For Mother Mectilde, the adoration of Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament is not an occasional devotion; it is, rather, the direction given to one's whole life. Adoration is not perpetual because one never leaves one's prie-dieu before the Blessed Sacrament; it is perpetual when one makes the Eucharist the treasure of one's life. "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Matthew 6:21) Mother Mectilde writes:

Our vow of adoration binds us indispensably to live only from the life of Jesus Christ in this divine Mystery. To observe this vow it is not sufficient to keep one's hours of adoration. It is necessary that our heart love Him and adore Him always, and that in all our actions we remain constantly united to Him. Let us apply ourselves only to loving Him and adoring Him.

You have seen His star and have come to adore Him. But what is the length of this adoration, and how extensive must it be? We must adore in all the movements of our life and in the whole extent of our being. Our adoration must be perpetual, since the same God whom we adore in the Holy Sacrament is continually present to us in every place. We must adore Him in spirit and in truth: in spirit by a holy interior recollection, in truth by acting in such wise that all our exercises become a continual adoration by our fidelity to make ourselves over to God in all that He asks of us, because as soon as we fail in fidelity, we stop adoring.

To adore always it is not necessary to be saying, "My God, I adore Thee." It is enough that we should have a certain interior attention to God present, a profound respect in homage to His greatness, believing that He is in you, just as He is in very truth: the Holy Trinity there making Their abode; the Father there acting and working by His power; the Son by His wisdom; and the Holy Spirit by His goodness. It is, therefore, in the intimate depth of your soul, where the God of majesty abides, that you must adore Him continually.