Adoration brings personal blessings, parishioner says

Intermountain Catholic

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Suzanne Naylor prays before the Blessed Sacrament for family, the sick, people who have asked for prayers, the dying, souls who have no one to pray for them and thanksgiving to God, she said. See video online at www.icatholic.org. IC photo/Christine Young

SALT LAKE CITY — "Praying in adoration has brought me blessings that I can only credit to God," said Suzanne Naylor, a Saint Vincent de Paul parishioner and Lay Ecclesial minister, who spends an hour each week in the devotion. She credits those prayers with helping to bring her son back to the Catholic faith and setting her on a new career path.

The weekly habit started gradually, she said. "I would drive by on the way to work and decided I could drop in for a few minutes, and then I started coming on Saturdays."

Her routine has become almost a ritual.

The Saturday, 9 a.m. Mass at Saint Vincent de Paul Parish has concluded. Naylor walks quietly to the adoration chapel to spend an hour with the Lord, as she does each week.

She enters the small side chapel, stands at the end of the second pew and genuflects on both knees before Jesus in the monstrance. Her knees are flat on the ground, her chest rests on her thighs as she lowers her forehead to the floor in thanksgiving to God. After a minute, she rises, enters the pew, kneels quietly, makes the sign of the cross, clasps her hands in front of her and closes her eyes to bring herself into the conscience presence of the Lord.

The only light coming into the chapel is through a clear-glass window in the back. It is quiet. A few women enter the chapel to get settled and begin their own prayers.

Naylor remains kneeling in silent prayer for about 15 minutes before she sits back in the pew and puts on her reading glasses. She reads from "The Devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Jesus and Mary," as she does every week, hoping to receive the promised graces. In addition, she will sometimes read about saints, pray the rosary or pray for special intentions.

As her hour draws to a conclusion, she again kneels. Her head tilts downward, her eyes close and her folded hands rest on the pew in front of her. She makes the sign of the cross before standing to walk slowly out of the pew and genuflect on both knees in honor of the Lord. She leaves the chapel walking out backwards in respect for God, never turning her back on him.

"Our Catholic Church is so blessed with so many different devotions to pray during adoration," said Naylor. "You don’t have to do anything but be calm and give God one hour of your time."

Naylor has been praying in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament for the past 20 years.

"I began when my daughter was in junior high school," she said. "I would go to Mass on Sunday, but it seemed like there was so much going on that I would get distracted. Then someone told me about daily Mass and I found it so quiet and peaceful that I started also coming on Saturday morning and followed it with adoration."

Naylor grew up in Our Lady of Lourdes Parish and Our Lady of Lourdes School in Salt Lake City from kindergarten through eighth grade, and learned the practice of adoration from the Holy Cross Sisters, she said. "It became a part of me. I don’t think people really know about it or they may be afraid of it, but that is the only thing Jesus asks of us – to spend an hour with him."

When Naylor started going to adoration, she found "I could unload all my burdens on him," she said. "Before that I would make the excuse that I didn’t have time, but I found that if I turned my life over to God in adoration, there was always time for what I needed to do. The hardest thing for me was having the courage to let him guide me. I know God is there for me, I just sometimes have a hard time opening up and letting him come into my life."