Jesus is waiting for you in the chapel

Saint Jeanne Jugan, foundress of my community of Little Sisters of the Poor, was a woman of few words. She left behind no letters or other writings but she did impart little bits of advice to the young Little Sisters among whom she spent her final years.

These pearls of wisdom have been passed on to subsequent generations of Little Sisters.

Jesus’ real, living presence in the Blessed Sacrament was the foundation of Jeanne Jugan’s life, the source of her strength and her greatest consolation in good times and bad. For Jeanne, to be consecrated to God meant “to have but one life, one heart, one soul and one will with Jesus.”

One of the most cherished bits of advice we have received from St. Jeanne Jugan involves the Eucharist.

“Jesus is waiting for you in the chapel,” she would tell the young Little Sisters. “Go and find him when your strength and patience are giving out, when you feel lonely and helpless. Say to him: ‘You know well what is happening, my dear Jesus. I have only you. Come to my aid …’ And then go your way. And don’t worry about knowing how you are going to manage. It is enough to have told our good Lord. He has an excellent memory.”

I’ve always found this to be very practical advice – and consoling as well!

No matter what our path in life, there will always be moments when we feel that our strength and patience are wearing thin and it is so very comforting to know that Jesus is always there for us.

When we feel lonely or misunderstood, we can always turn to Jesus as a friend and confidant like none other.

For years I have found solace in these words of our foundress but recently I experienced them as a challenge.

One day, as I was sliding into my pew in the chapel just as our chaplain was placing the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance for a time of adoration – I wasn’t exactly late but I certainly wasn’t ahead of time – I heard Jesus speaking to my heart: “I have been waiting for you … patiently waiting for you …”

As I knelt there in chapel among the other Sisters, I suddenly realized how often I had come at the last minute, how often I had let my mind wander in a thousand directions during our times of Eucharistic adoration rather than concentrating my attention on HIM, the love of my life!

I suddenly felt, quite painfully, that I had been letting him down like a cherished friend we take for granted after many years.

During this time of Eucharistic Revival, I’ve come to understand in a much deeper way just how much Jesus longs to be with us.

I have been mindful of an image Saint John Paul II evoked when he compared the power of Jesus in the tabernacle to a magnetic force: “Let us take the time to kneel before Jesus present in the Eucharist, in order to make reparation by our faith and love for the acts of carelessness and neglect, and even the insults which our Savior must endure in many parts of the world. Let us deepen through adoration our personal and communal contemplation. … The presence of Jesus in the tabernacle must be a kind of magnetic pole attracting an ever-greater number of souls enamored of him, ready to wait patiently to hear his voice and, as it were, to sense the beating of his heart. ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good!’ (Ps 34:8).”

Many of our elderly Residents are souls enamored of him.

Earlier this summer, our Home in St. Paul, Minnesota, received a visit from our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and the Perpetual Pilgrims of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. One of the young adults was deeply struck by the elderly of our Home.

“Walking in and seeing all the Residents who’d come down and were waiting for the Lord, it was incredible,” he reflected. “It was clear that a lot of them had experienced some of this before and were excited to welcome the King … It felt like they were inviting him in.”

And one of the Residents shared, “I rejoice because God wants us. God is so good and infinite that he knows we don’t need to even come to follow him but he will be the one to search for us, to look for us.”

I am so blessed to be living among the elderly, whose prayerfulness helps me to remember that Jesus is always waiting for me in the chapel.

I pray that this time of Eucharistic Revival will help you to grow in this awareness as well!

Sister Constance Veit is the communications director for the Little Sisters of the Poor in the United States and an occupational therapist.