Many people choose to receive communion on the tongue instead of in the hand as a sign to themselves that they ought to show reverence towards the mystery of Christ in the Eucharist.

This does not imply any negative judgment of those who choose to receive in the hand. All I intend by the comparison is to draw attention to the fact that reverence today needs to be a matter of decision.

Why is that the case? A church is often a place where sacredness is the last association one has.  Churches appear – and sound – like meetings places, where talk – every kind of talk – is quite in order.

Once again, this is not to say that a church should be deficient in warmth or fellowship. It is to recall that sacred space is a distinctive kind of space, and too much activity of an ordinary kind, perfectly legitimate in other places, may detract from the sense that this space is special.

The larger issue, of course, raised by these observations is the issue of sacramentality. By sacramentality I mean the sense that everything is sacred from being suffused with Presence, from the fact that the world is the sacrament of creation. I suspect that is where our problem really lies. Taking it from the side of our church experience is to put the cart before the horse.

For the culture we live in and breathe daily, is neither sacramental nor hospitable to sacramentality. Reality is just an assemblage of things. There’s no mystery in or behind any of it. What you see is all there is – and one building, call it what you will, appears just like any another.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote. And it seems a long time ago when this sentiment rang true. What is the world today charged with?

This is the first significant context, in which one must situate the return of Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. It is an attempt to recharge our soulless environment with spiritual energy.

The return to this devotion has another context of equally great importance. Prayer focussed on the sacramental bread within the tabernacle or displayed in a monstrance was central to the faith of many people in the days before Vatican II. Passing before the Blessed Sacrament, they would stop in for a brief “visit”.

In the quiet, with the darkness punctuated only by a few vigil lights, there was the sense that God was close, a hidden source of life just beneath the surface of daily routine.

Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, a 15-minute service involving the exposition of the Eucharistic host, a few familiar Latin hymns, prayers, incense, and a multitude of candles, was the normal conclusion to services other than the Mass.

Similarly, Holy Thursday included not only a solemn liturgy and procession, commemorating the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, but also long periods of silent prayer before the sacrament itself, now moved from its normal place in the tabernacle to an altar of “repose” in some other part of the church.

As with so many other aspects of Catholic life, Eucharistic devotion of this sort disappeared from the Church’s normal agenda in the late 196s. It was pointed out that the Eucharist is a ritual meal, in which the whole community, gathered around the headship of the bishop or priest, worships God as one body, and is nourished by the Word and the signs of Jesus’ sacrifice. The purpose of what was called “the Eucharistic species” was not to be the object of worship, but the daily food of God’s pilgrim people.

Vatican II in its Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy stated further that devotions practiced in the church, important as they are, should be “controlled so that they cohere with the sacred liturgy, in some way derive from it, and lead the people to it” (#13).

The Council also emphasised the central importance in the Mass of Scripture and the homily (#24), and stressed that liturgy is by its nature not a time for private prayer but the community’s public celebration (#26-28).

In a famous passage, the Constitution broadened the notion of Christ’s presence in liturgical celebration to include not only his presence in the Eucharist (where he is found “most fully”), but also in the other sacraments, in the person of the presider, in the word of Scripture and in the whole congregation gathered in Christ’s name (#7).

There’s no doubt that there was a great need for correction in the imbalances, excesses, and omissions in Catholic worship since the Reformation.

But this needed correction led to imbalances of its own: a new wordiness in worship, little room for symbols to be symbolic, an emphasis on community formation rather than adoration in some Sunday worship, preaching without Scriptural content, and self-celebration in liturgical music.

So once again the pendulum has swung. Since the 1990s, there has been a greater sensitivity to the Church’s symbolic world and to the divine presence it embodies.

This is the second important context for the renewed attraction of Eucharistic adoration. New guidelines offer a variety of forms adoration services may take, incorporating readings, a homily and various prayers, as well as contemplation, and the climactic blessing of the congregation.

Adoration, in other words, can become more consciously part of the liturgical year, and an occasion to let the heart of the Eucharist, our encounter with the risen Lord under the sacramental signs of bread and wine, become the object of our continuing attention and gaze.

Prayer before the sacred host continues to be a moving and nurturing practice for many people. It offers a dimension to prayer that prayer by oneself doesn’t have. It is also a powerful reminder of the multifaceted nature of the body of Christ. St Augustine remarked in one of his Easter homilies: “If you are the Body and the members of Christ, your own Mystery is placed on the table of the Lord – you receive your own Mystery.”

Prayer, of course, is always an encounter with mystery. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament reinforces this, while at the same time giving the believer the living assurance that the Lord is there!