The Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is one of the Catholic Church’s teachings that sets us apart from our Protestant friends. The Eucharist is not merely a ceremonial remembrance or something we do because Jesus commanded us or even a way to confirm our stated beliefs. Still, it is a truly physical union with the Body of Our Beloved Lord Jesus Christ.
How do we teach our children and youth about the Real Presence? This is a doctrine so totally apart from our logic that even most Catholic adults struggle to comprehend it. I find teaching the Real Presence to be even more difficult than teaching the Trinity’s doctrine, another great mystery of the faith. Isaiah 55:8-9 tells us that God’s ways are above our ways, i.e., higher than our reason can comprehend. Ephesians 3:19 tells us that God’s love surpasses knowledge. If the Eucharist is one of God’s primary ways of showing us this love, then how are we ever going to understand the Real Presence, much less teach it to those entrusted to us?
I have found teaching across age groups that this doctrine is not something that can be adequately taught in a classroom, even if you begin there. It is not something that youth can figure out together in small groups, even if small group discussion is a wonderful way for teens to testify their own Eucharistic experiences. The only place any of us can begin to grasp this doctrine is at the foot of the monstrance in Eucharistic Adoration. This doctrine is not best taught or explained but wrestled with in prayer, silence, and song as we gaze upon Our Beloved Lord and feel His Presence in our souls.
In my experience, there are two kinds of Catholic churches: those who never stop talking about their perpetual adoration chapel and those who pull out adoration once a year for Holy Thursday. I absolutely loved the church I grew up in, and God was powerfully present there. Still, the absence of adoration made it easy to dismiss the doctrine of Real Presence, even when it was being taught to me in Religious Education and by my own parents. This doctrine cannot be taught without plenty of time in front of Jesus.
Now I work at a school with a perpetual adoration chapel, and as you can tell, I talk about the beauty of it all the time. However, you don’t need perpetual adoration to incorporate adoration into your ministry. All you need is a priest or deacon who believes in the power of adoration and is willing to expose and repose the Blessed Sacrament.
Don’t stress about their preparation too much – even if they have never been to adoration, this is one area where throwing the kids into the deep end will work out because when we expose the children to Jesus, he will take over.
My 2nd and 3rd-grade class can sit for about 25 minutes with holy books and rosaries before they get too squirrely, but we go to mass every day, so they have learned to quiet themselves. High schoolers with no exposure might need to start at 30 minutes and work up to an hour slowly.
It’s easy to add a student or family holy hour, but can you give up one program a month or half a program a month to spend time in adoration? A wonderful way to kick off a new adoration habit is to make it part of an overnight retreat. The youth never sleep anyway – can you challenge them to take shifts covering an all-night adoration chapel? You’ll need double to adult volunteers to cover the chapel and the sleeping area, but consider the story of Daniel – God calls to our nocturnal youth in the middle of the night.
Singing familiar songs of praise can help students unfamiliar with adoration get comfortable, but the youth need silence in their lives of noise and Tik Tok. God’s voice comes in the whisper, so please do not over-program your adoration time.
Please reach out if you need any help getting started. The Catechism tells us that the Eucharist is the “source and summit of our faith,” and understanding the Real Presence of God in the Eucharist will change forever the way your children and youth see the Church and her sacraments.
Brooke is a cradle Catholic who has done a bit of everything in Youth Ministry – summer camps, high school campus ministry, parish ministry, youth conferences, etc. Currently, she lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and works at a Classical Catholic school teaching second and third grade. She loves her job because she gets to go to Mass every day and teach about Medieval Saints. You can find her at https://brookeannbuth.wixsite.com/writer.
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