Jesus in the Tabernacle, Looking and Loving

Divine Appeal Reflection - 184

Today, consider in Divine Appeal 184:  "Many come before My Tabernacle, while in front of Me and I looking and loving them, they turn their mind and attention away."

“Many come before My Tabernacle” begins with a mystery that human language can scarcely contain: the soul enters a place in which the King is already waiting for it. We often think adoration begins the moment we kneel before the tabernacle, yet the mystery is deeper: Christ’s Presence did not begin when we entered the chapel; our awareness of the Presence began (cf. Mt 28:20; Jn 6:35–40). Our Adorable Jesus is not waiting to become present; He is waiting because He is already there, loving, offering, and inviting the soul into communion . We do not enter the Presence to make Him present; we enter so that His Presence may become more deeply present within us. He does not begin looking when we begin praying; He has already been looking. He does not begin loving when we become recollected; He is loving before our attention becomes capable of receiving that love (cf. Jn 6:37–40; 1 Jn 4:9–10). This reverses the ordinary understanding of prayer. We think adoration means looking at Jesus, yet the deeper mystery is that we first enter the gaze of One who eternally sees us. Hagar encountered the God who saw her in the desert when nobody else appeared to care about her existence (cf. Gen 16:7–14). Nathanael (cf. Jn 1:47–49) discovered that Jesus had seen him before their physical meeting, revealing a divine knowledge that precedes human recognition . The tabernacle therefore becomes a school of being seen. The ashamed sinner, the exhausted mother, the priest carrying hidden wounds, the religious experiencing dryness, the young person confused about vocation, the elderly person who feels forgotten—all arrive beneath a gaze that knows everything and withdraws nothing of love. The most profound act of Eucharistic adoration may therefore begin before words: allowing Jesus to look at the person we spend our entire life trying to hide. We may conceal our weakness from family, disguise failure before friends, hide fears from colleagues, and even refuse to acknowledge our sins within ourselves; yet before the tabernacle, we stand before the One from whom nothing within us is hidden (cf. Ps 139:1–4; Heb 4:13). Our Adorable Jesus already knows what we struggle to reveal, yet His knowing is not rejection; it is the beginning of mercy . Yet His knowledge does not become rejection. It becomes love. This is the first mystical wound of the Appeal: He sees us completely, and He remains.

Then comes the painful contrast: “while in front of Me… they turn their mind and attention away.” There is something deeper here than ordinary distraction. The human person possesses a remarkable capacity to escape from the One who is closest. Adam hid from God after sin, not because God had disappeared but because shame had altered Adam's ability to remain beneath the divine gaze (cf. Gen 3:8–10). Cain similarly withdrew into a self-enclosed world after his brother's murder (cf. Gen 4:8–16). The soul before the tabernacle can reproduce this ancient movement in miniature. The body remains, but the interior person flees. The mind may flee into memories, calculations, imagined conversations, resentments, anxieties, ambitions, or rehearsed fears because remaining quietly before Jesus can disturb the fragile securities around which we have built our inner world (cf. Ps 139:23–24; Mt 6:21). Sometimes distraction is therefore more than simple difficulty concentrating; it can reveal a heart reluctant to remain exposed before divine Love . We may escape into thoughts because Christ’s Presence gently reaches places within us that we have learned to avoid. Yet precisely there, Our Adorable Jesus waits—not to condemn the wounded soul, but to receive what it has been afraid to surrender (cf. Heb 4:15–16; 1 Jn 4:18). A man kneels before Jesus after betraying his wife but spends the entire Holy Hour planning how to justify himself. A religious receives a correction and spends adoration mentally proving that the superior was wrong. A businesswoman brings a financial anxiety before the Eucharist but refuses to surrender control of the outcome. A young person asks Jesus for freedom from an attachment while secretly protecting the attachment in imagination. A parish leader kneels before the Blessed Sacrament while internally rehearsing how to defeat another parishioner. These are not simply failures of concentration. They reveal the places where attention is protecting an attachment from the gaze of Christ. St. Teresa of Ávila's teaching on recollection is profound here: prayer gathers the scattered powers of the person back toward the divine Friend. The Catechism(cf. CCC 2709–2711) presents this interior recollection as fundamental to contemplative prayer, where the heart gathers itself before God and lovingly turns toward Him . Therefore, when the mind drifts away, we need not become impatient with ourselves. We can quietly turn inward and ask: What drew my heart away, and what fear, longing, wound, memory, or attachment was seeking my attention? . The distraction itself can become an invitation to deeper self-knowledge and a gentler return to Christ . The wandering mind can become a quiet map revealing what still occupies the interior life . Then every return to Jesus becomes more than the recovery of concentration; it becomes a little surrender, a renewed choosing of His Presence over whatever has captured the heart (cf. Jn 15:4; Phil 3:13–14).

“I am looking and loving them” contains perhaps the most astonishing sentence in the Appeal. Jesus does not say merely that He sees them; He joins seeing and loving. Divine vision is not cold observation. He sees everything and loves without abandoning truth. This is precisely what humanity struggles to do. We often see people's failures and withdraw affection; Jesus sees the entire wound and continues to love while calling the person toward conversion (cf. Jn 8:1–11). The gaze of Christ upon Peter after his denial was not merely accusation; it pierced him into repentance without destroying him (cf. Lk 22:61–62). The gaze of Jesus upon the rich young man(cf. Mk 10:17–22) contained love even though the man ultimately walked away from the invitation to surrender his possessions . This gives Eucharistic adoration a profound reparative dimension: the soul comes before the One whose love is repeatedly refused, and chooses to remain where others have chosen to leave. At this point adoration becomes companionship. The world may ignore Him; the soul remembers Him. The world may hurry past; the soul remains. The world may use His Name carelessly; the soul speaks it with reverence. The world may receive His gifts while forgetting the Giver; the soul returns thanks. A hospital cleaner may spend five minutes before the tabernacle before beginning a night shift and offer the coming hours for dying patients. A truck driver may stop at a small roadside church, kneel briefly, and entrust to Jesus the strangers he will meet. A mother may adore while holding the knowledge that her child has abandoned the faith. A priest may remain before the Eucharist after hearing accusations against himself, refusing to let wounded pride dictate his next pastoral decision. St. Margaret Mary Alacoque's Eucharistic spirituality of reparation illuminates this mystery of remaining near Love that is not adequately loved. Yet the deeper mystery is not that we console Our Adorable Jesus because His divine Love lacks power, but because He freely desires the loving response of the creature (cf. Jn 15:9–13; Rev 3:20). When love is refused, the adoring soul offers a free response where indifference has closed the heart: one act of adoration, one hour of loving presence, becomes a quiet human “yes” answering the divine Love that has been neglected (cf. Mt 26:40–41; Jn 4:23–24). In this way, the soul before the tabernacle becomes a small but real response of love to Love.

There is another mystical paradox hidden here: Jesus remains perfectly present even when the soul is imperfectly attentive. The Eucharistic presence does not fluctuate according to our emotions. The consecrated Host does not contain “more Jesus” when we are recollected and “less Jesus” when we are distracted. Christ remains wholly present by the sacramental reality of His Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity (cf. CCC 1374). This is spiritually devastating to the ego because it destroys our tendency to make experience the measure of reality. A person may feel nothing and yet be before infinite Love. A person may experience profound consolation and yet be spiritually resisting conversion. The prophet Elijah discovered God not in the spectacular manifestations he expected but in the mysterious stillness that followed them (cf. 1 Kgs 19:9–13). The disciples(cf. Mk 4:35–41) on the stormy sea believed themselves abandoned while Jesus was physically present with them, even though they interpreted His silence as absence . Likewise, the soul may say, “Jesus seems far away,” while the deeper truth is that Jesus has not moved even one step. This becomes crucial for the sick, the elderly, the depressed in spirit, the exhausted parent, the religious in dryness and anyone who cannot sustain prolonged concentration. An elderly woman whose memory permits only brief moments of attention may repeatedly turn toward the tabernacle and whisper the Name of Jesus. A dying patient may be unable to formulate a prayer but can offer a single conscious movement of love. A person with a restless mind may spend an hour returning to Christ a hundred times. Heaven does not measure prayer merely by the length of our concentration, but by the love with which we return whenever distraction, weakness, or dryness carries the mind elsewhere (cf. Mt 6:6; Lk 18:1). St. John of the Cross reveals through his teaching on spiritual dryness that the disappearance of sensible consolation does not signify the departure of God; often, the soul is being invited to love Him more purely, beyond feelings and spiritual sweetness . The distracted soul that lovingly returns to Christ may be offering Him something more precious than it realizes: the freedom to begin again. The soul may actually be learning a purer faith: to adore not because adoration feels beautiful, but because Jesus is worthy of adoration even when the soul feels nothing (cf. CCC 2729–2731). This is one of the deepest forms of Eucharistic fidelity.

The final mystery is perhaps the most demanding: what Jesus asks to receive from us before the tabernacle is ultimately not our attention alone, but our entire attention transformed into love. The mind is the doorway through which the heart gathers itself; attention is therefore capable of becoming an offering. When we deliberately return from resentment to Jesus, we offer Him our memory. When we stop planning revenge, we offer Him our imagination. When we surrender anxiety, we offer Him our future. When we refuse impurity, we offer Him our desires. When we forgive, we offer Him our wounds. When we choose silence instead of immediately reaching for the phone, we surrender our attention to Christ and allow our time to become an offering (cf. Ps 46:10; Mk 1:35). When we kneel before the tabernacle after a serious fall and refuse to hide from His mercy, even our shame can become the beginning of repentance and return . Nothing sincerely surrendered to Our Adorable Jesus is wasted—not even the time we give Him, nor the shame we bring before His merciful Presence. This is why Eucharistic adoration can become a hidden school of self-emptying. Jesus is not merely asking, “Will you look at Me?” He is gradually asking, “Will you allow Me to possess the places to which your attention continually escapes?” The Samaritan woman discovered that Jesus could enter the hidden history she preferred not to expose (cf. Jn 4:16–19). Peter discovered that Christ could enter the wound of his denial and transform it into pastoral love (cf. Jn 21:15–17). Mary Magdalene(cf. Jn 20:11–18) discovered that the place of her deepest grief could become the place of resurrection encounter . Thus the tabernacle becomes more than a destination; it becomes an interior furnace. We enter carrying scattered thoughts and gradually learn recollection; we enter carrying wounds and learn trust; we enter carrying sins and learn mercy; we enter carrying other souls and learn intercession; we enter carrying ourselves and learn surrender. St. Gertrude the Great's Eucharistic devotion, St. Clare of Assisi's profound Eucharistic contemplation and St. Peter Julian Eymard's spirituality of Eucharistic self-giving each point toward this transformation of presence into offering. The final question of the Appeal is therefore terrifyingly intimate: While Jesus is looking at me with uninterrupted love, where exactly am I looking? And if I discover that I have wandered, the answer is not despair. It is simply to turn again. To look again. To remain again. To let His gaze find us again. For perhaps the greatest Eucharistic miracle within us is not that we never become distracted, but that after every wandering, grace teaches us how to return to the One who never stopped looking at us.

Prayer 

Our Adorable Jesus, You remain before us, looking and loving when our minds wander. Gather our scattered hearts back to You. Teach us to adore You in silence, consolation and dryness. May every return to Your Eucharistic Presence become an act of love, reparation and surrender to Your Sacred Heart. Amen.

Sr. Anna Ali of the Most Holy Eucharist, intercede for us.