Online Eucharistic Adoration

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PRAYER51

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Is it possible to obtain the same graces from Online Eucharistic Adoration as going to an actual chapel/church? My thinking is that it is essentially the same thing and that God can indeed work miracles in this manner as well as long as we have faith and trust in His merciful power to be able to do so…what do you think??? Here is where I do my adoration online. Thanks!!!

navanparish.ie/chapel-live.html
 
No, it is not possible to have the same experience or the same graces. God is a personal God and the sacraments are personal encounters with Him. While we inhabit the Earth, we are limited by space and time in our participation with the Divine. Therefore, our space and time must be coincident with Him in order to fully receive the graces in store for us.

That being said, the Church can extend the grace of an indulgence to one who participates by means of radio or the Internet in a particular spiritual work, such as Urbi et Orbi or World Youth Day. Also, modern means of communications are effective and necessary tools for evangelization. I think that evangelization is the primary aim of “online adoration”. By fostering a love for the Eucharist over a video link, more people are likely to visit the Blessed Sacrament in person, and request Adoration times in their own parishes, and therefore spread the devotion more widely. But meditating on a pixellated video image is not comparable to experiencing the Divine Presence in a sacred space.
 
There may be great value in doing so - I have no opinion one way or another…but it is certainly not the same thing as being physically present in the chapel. Our faith is a sacramental faith - an incarnational faith…physicality matters. We do not fulfill our mass obligation by watching a mass on TV (though doing so can be edifying). We cannot receive absolution by confessing to a priest over the phone.

A down to earth example: we cannot maintain our personal relationships by Skype alone…it will never take the place of physical, face to face contact.
 
It seems to me you guys are splitting hairs. Why can’t the Real Presence be communicated electronically? And isn’t the real test in the fruits of the practice?
 
Well, you could ask a priest this question, if you want. But I tend to agree with Elzium23. I’m getting ready to go to adoration right now.

It’s just not the same in my book. This is sort of the same questions as, “Can I go to confession over the phone, etc.?”

If you want to meet Jeus and you want to have an intimate experience with him, why is it so hard is it to get your body to a church and visit Jesus in the tabernacle or exposed in a monsrance?

hmmmm, yeah maybe in some kind of empirical materialistic cartesian fashion one could think what is the difference, but I say there is a big difference! : D

God Bless!
 
I don’t see why God wouldn’t forgive you for confessing your sins to a priest over the phone as long as you have a firm purpose of amendment to avoid those sins and stop sinning…I think God looks at the heart of the person… all the rest is a matter of over-scrupulosity if you ask me…I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary to go to confession to have your sins forgiven anyway and I think ultimately, we’ll only be forgiven if we forgive others…
 
Isn’t going to Eucharistic adoration comparable to SKYPE??? I’m not saying He isn’t really there in the church/chapel with you but He’s also just as present within each one of us at the same time… which makes online adoration even more valid. God is easily accessible…that’s my real point because He is Spirit…it’s us who aren’t always aware, available and therefore accessible…and our notions about Him can also hinder real contact with Him.
 
I’ve been using St.Mary’s website for online adoration…personally, I think it is exactly the same as being in His True Presence…just like being there with Him at real adoration…Jesus himself tells the woman at the well that God isn’t limited to being worshipped at any particular place but is worshipped in Spirit and Truth. I think the key is…you have to have faith in God and Trust Him that he can use an online connection to Him to work the same wonders He does for those physically present at a chapel/church. Physical proximity does not equate to spiritual proximity and vice versa…Jesus himself tells us in the gospel to close the door and pray in secret and that the Father sees this and is well pleased!!! Online Eucharistic adoration is as valid as going to see Him physically because in a sense you are using your physical body to see a live feed of Him in the Blessed Sacrament. We can even feel a sense of closeness to the people we see online in the chapel and I pray for them and I take it on faith that they unite their prayers to mine at the same time…
navanparish.ie/chapel-live.html
 
PRAYER51 said:
Isn’t going to Eucharistic adoration comparable to SKYPE??? I’m not saying He isn’t really there in the church/chapel with you but He’s also just as present within each one of us at the same time… which makes online adoration even more valid. God is easily accessible…that’s my real point because He is Spirit…it’s us who aren’t always aware, available and therefore accessible…and our notions about Him can also hinder real contact with Him.
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God is spirit. God is accessible to all in all places. There is grace available to us participating in “online” adoration or any other kind of prayer…All of that is true.

…but, you are missing a central Truth of our faith. God isn’t only spirit. The second person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son of God, became flesh…became man. In the Eucharist this great mystery of the Incarnation, of God made flesh, is mystically perpetuated. God is present to us in a spiritual sense everywhere…but only in the Eucharist is He physically present. We are not Protestants who downplay the centrality of the *physicality * of the sacraments. Our faith is rooted in the Incarnation…in the mystical marriage of God and physical matter. Grace can come to us anywhere, but it comes to us in a special and unique manner through the physical matter of the sacraments.
 
I don’t think I’m missing anything regarding the sacramentality of the Eucharist…it’s the actual sacramental body of Christ that is being transmitted online in real time…that and my physical presence makes the practice of online adoration intrinsically sacramental in my view, but the real power of online adoration is that it’s always available…just like God! Watching a mass online is different because you’re not actually receiving the Eucharist whereas God has the power to make up the difference, if any, between personal as opposed to online adoration which is actually also personal if you really think about it.

In both cases prayerful sense perception is used to adore the Lord in the Eucharist…and don’t tell me it’s just a transmission okay because you’re also picking up a transmission from the Real Presence in a chapel in a sense…a modern faithful physicist would probably tell you the same thing.
 
Online adoration is like a televison Mass. It is only a series of pictures of the real thing, it is not the real thing itself. There is value to it, because sacred imagery is holy, but looking at a picture of the Eucharist is not the same as looking at the actual Eucharist. For one thing, you are forbidden from directly worshipping what you look at in online Adoration because it is only an image, not God, but you are permitted to directly worship what you are looking at in a real Adoration chapel because it is not just an image, it’s the real thing.
 
If what you say is true then online adoration is idolatry or is at least encouraging idolatry…that would mean all the websites that have online adoration are guilty of encouraging mortal sin thereby committing mortal sin themselves…online worshippers are obviously not committing idolatry…they’re adoring the same God… a step removed I grant you but still ultimately the same God. It just seems to me that you’re limiting God’s power to work through a form of technology.
 
I’m not so sure about the assertion that we are forbidden from worshipping online. In the absence of a definitive Magisterial document or bishop’s statement in that regard, I am inclined to disbelieve that we are forbidden to do this. We worship God with the understanding that He may be distant from us. I can worship Jesus in the privacy of my home without touching or consuming the Blessed Sacrament, or even seeing it, because it is understood that the object of my worship is God and not the Bible I read or the volume of Christian Prayer I have open or the YouTube channel where Mass is being held.

Still, worship from home over a channel of communication does not have the same quality as worship in a sacred space before the Blessed Sacrament or in community with other faithful. An oft-repeated saying is that “God has bound salvation to His Sacraments, but God Himself is not bound by those Sacraments.” You may receive some graces from watching something online, or tuning in the TV Mass, you may not. There is ambiguity there. You certainly do not receive the same graces as you would in person. The history of salvation is experiential and personal and incarnational. God works through personal encounters. Yes, he speaks through technology - look at the level necessary to mass-produce the Bible and other documents. But there is a reason we employ a person to ascend to the ambo and proclaim the Scriptures every day at Mass. Because that person-to-person contact is essential for a true experience of the faith. Catholicism is a tactile religion. We see, hear, smell, touch and taste it. Take away any of these, or channel them through a communications medium, and part of the message is lost, diminished. Because we do not merely experience God in liturgy and worship, we experience each other. Our faith is about encountering Christ in every person we meet, and if we are sitting in the man-cave watching YouTube, we aren’t going to encounter anyone but the delivery boy, and our lives are poorer for that.
 
I understand what you’re sayng and I don’t mean to be argumentative but all our experience of God is mediated through human perception and as such all contact we can have of God is somewhat limited. A Sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace/presence and as such it may/may not be presumptuous to believe that God’s power is diminished through an online adoration of he Blessed Sacrament. I’m assuming that the online Host is in fact consecrated…if so then why should it not have the power to confer graces on those with faith. Of course Eucharistic adoration in a chapel is to be preferred above online adoration because there is more effort/sacrifice involved and He is physically there before you… but when Jesus commends the faith of a mustard seed to be able to move mountains who is to say that real substantial grace is not also given to those who believe with an undivided heart. It is a technology one step removed from actually being there in a chapel but the Rosary, Bible Reading, Lectio Divina are also a technologies and I use them as well.
 
The Church and Internet
Similarly, as noted above, the virtual reality of cyberspace has some worrisome implications for religion as well as for other areas of life. Virtual reality is no substitute for the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the sacramental reality of the other sacraments, and shared worship in a flesh-and-blood human community. There are no sacraments on the Internet; and even the religious experiences possible there by the grace of God are insufficient apart from real-world interaction with other persons of faith. Here is another aspect of the Internet that calls for study and reflection. At the same time, pastoral planning should consider how to lead people from cyberspace to true community and how, through teaching and catechesis, the Internet might subsequently be used to sustain and enrich them in their Christian commitment.
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I suggest reading the document in its entirety and following the references and links to foundational documents. It is quite interesting. It is a 12-year-old document but it still seems quite prescient and relevant for what is currently happening in the realm of social communications.
 
And this from the same document…

Church leaders are obliged to use “the full potential of the ‘computer age’ to serve the human and transcendent vocation of every person, and thus to give glory to the Father from whom all good things come”.[45] They ought to employ this remarkable technology in many different aspects of the Church’s mission, while also exploring opportunities for ecumenical and interreligious cooperation in its use.

In summary, there is no substitute for real Eucharistic adoration in a church/chapel but we are not barred from participating in online adoration and obtaining whatever graces may be had from such practice…Who knows??? Online Adoration may help to evangelize many fallen away/tepid Catholics.
 
PRAYER51 said:
Is it possible to obtain the same graces from Online Eucharistic Adoration as going to an actual chapel/church? My thinking is that it is essentially the same thing and that God can indeed work miracles in this manner as well as long as we have faith and trust in His merciful power to be able to do so…what do you think??? Here is where I do my adoration online. Thanks!!!

navanparish.ie/chapel-live.html
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My question is why would you want to? For convenience sake? To save money on gas? Because you don’t have time to do a proper hour of adoration?

Speaking just for myself, there would be absolutely no efficacy in on-line adoration. I have experienced the power of the Eucharist, sitting before the Real Presence. How could there ever be a substitution for that?
 
Yes…I want convenience above all else…I want to save money on gas, and don’t have the time to do the full hour…not only that, but I want to worship in the nude…lol.You sure you’ve experienced the power of the Eucharist??? You certainly don’t seem be to lacking in a spirit of pride…;)…BTW…I just got back from confession with a real live priest…🙂
 
PRAYER51 said:
Yes…I want convenience above all else…I want to save money on gas, and don’t have the time to do the full hour…not only that, but I want to worship in the nude…lol.You sure you’ve experienced the power of the Eucharist??? You certainly don’t seem be to lacking in a spirit of pride…;)…BTW…I just got back from confession with a real live priest…🙂
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I think I’ll go with Fr. Hardon when he says this: (emphasis added mine)
What is Prayer Before the Blessed Sacrament?
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Prayer before the Blessed Sacrament is prayer offered to Jesus Christ, present in the Holy Eucharist, while the person praying is physically present in the Church or Chapel; in other words, Christ’s physical presence is met by our physical presence. We begin by observing that Christ present in the Holy Eucharist is truly conscious of our being there and we are to be correspondingly conscious of His being, should I say, here. The key to what is prayer before the Blessed Sacrament is that two persons are each physically present to the other. The crucial word, I think, in this expression, “Prayer before the Blessed Sacrament” is the preposition before. A few synonyms; in front of, physically near, geographically close, bodily present, actually in the vicinity of - one reason, by the way, that the Church even with the discovery of our marvelous, modern communications media, has not said that a person would really be present at Mass while watching Mass celebrated — a wonderful experience — the point is, you have to be there.
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However, even as we emphasize the physical presence in explaining the word before, this word before is not merely a bodily proximity, it is also and, with emphasis, a spiritual before; as I like to put it, it is not only proximity but intimacy. But let’s not cheapen or weaken that physical proximity that I would say is the conditio sine qua non, the condition without which I’m not really present as the Church understands being present before the Blessed Sacrament, unless I am there physically where Christ is physically.
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therealpresence.org/archives/Prayer/Prayer_065.htm
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btw, much has been written about the power of the Eucharist when one is *physically *before the King.
 
Thanks for your (name removed by moderator)ut! I credit Fr. Hardon for my wearing the Miraculous Medal as well. His website is amazing !!! therealpresence.org/archives/archives.htm

He says the Eucharist is the Sacred Heart of Jesus which has also been proven by several Eucharistic miracles . I’ll start do the physical benediction as you suggest and let you know if I perceive a difference from online adoration but I don’t think I will as I already know Jesus is always aware of my presence wherever I am and that I need to be more aware of that fact ( that He is in me and with me at all times) The wonderful thing about adoring Christ in the Eucharist is that you become more like Him just by being before Him in faith…the " in faith" is the operative phrase for me. I do feel a profound intimacy with Him online which I’m not sure will be matched by an actual physical adoration in a church but we’ll see!!!
 
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