Forty Hours

Our parish's Forty Hours Eucharistic Devotion began at the end of today's 11:15 Mass. It's beginning was very unsettling for me. The whole congregation, obviously, knew that Christ was in full view on the altar, yet within about 30 seconds of the priest leaving the altar, the church was filled with the clatter of idle chatter. I'm not sure that I should have done this, but, when I felt my son move to look about himself as I was praying, I whispered to him that he needed to pray that the people gain a better understanding of what they were doing as I prayed in apology asked for forgiveness. Was that too much to have a kid do? I hope it falls into the category of teaching a child to use a situation as a stimulus for prayer, if there is such a category.
Anyway, the other part of the initial moment of the devotion that was unpleasant was the fact that no one had signed up to visit with our Lord for the first 3 hours of exposition. I was stunned - so stunned that I just stood looking at the board in disbelief for about 15 seconds. This was 10 minutes after the last Sunday Mass - 1/2 an hour before the start of the first empty time slot. Only a few stragglers were left. It was so very bizarre. This was at the main entrance. Oodles of people had to have seen that no one was scheduled, yet no one slotted him or herself in. An extraordinary Eucharistic minister who loves to serve on the altar came out as I was staring at the sign-up sheet and said she was amazed that the spaces were empty, yet she didn't do anything to correct the situation.
During my 15 seconds of staring I started to kind of judgmentally think to myself that I was sure that everyone probably had excuses that they thought were pretty good as to why they hadn't signed up. Before that went very far, I thought about the fact that I felt my reason was pretty good for why my name wasn't in one of those time slots. I had just spent an hour in Mass - why couldn't I spend at least a 1/2 hour with Jesus to thank Him for enabling me to successfully ignore pain well enough so that I was able to have shared in that celebration?! So, I signed the sheet, quickly ran for the groceries we needed during the in between time, placed the cold items in the church's refrigerator and then spent almost an hour singing, praying and giving thanks - you know, adoring our Eucharistic Lord.
Scott ended up staying in the church social hall reading because, when he came upstairs to pray, I immediately sent him back downstairs - he had a mean case of the hiccups because, in his hurry to join me, he had eaten the sub I had gotten him for lunch at the store way too fast. Granted there was nobody else upstairs praying, but I didn't want him to disturb or scare off anyone who might stop in to pray. Who knows - it just might have been fear of hiccuping children that had made everyone skip signing up for those initial time slots. Peace.