Adoration

I am still in recovery from the past two weeks, (elective sleep deprivation is a terrible thing, as is elective consumption of Things That Might Be Bad For Me, "eating out" is always risky and eating out for two week straight is dermal suicide, and a moment ago I inadvertently shook out and chugged the largest safe dose of my nighttime antihistamine, so I expect this not to be all that comprehensible if I indeed post it, rather than just putting my head down on the nearest horizontal surface and ambling on over to the land of nod...) but I am also reading and watching obsessively as I come to the realization of how much I depend on television and the internet to keep me abreast of goings on in the world, in matters both saecular and Catholic. (Oh, heck, I'm not even observant enough to dress appropriately for the weather, without media advice... ordinarily not a problem, I get to the loft and find it unbearable, I walk one home and put on lighter weight clothing, but the Colloquium schedule was so packed and the Loyola campus so difficult to traverse that that was hardly ever an option.)
The Eucharistic Congress was something to which I would have happily given more attention, (I didn't even realize that the gathering more or less coincided with the Colloquium. That explains the absence of Fr. Keyes from the CMAA event, ( Fr. Keyes' blog, Rifugio San Gaspare )
I did watch a bit of the concluding Mass last night on EWTN, it seeemd to suffer from the usual faults of stadium Masses, but until I fell asleep. I was not horribly displeased by the music, genuinely liturgical and otherwise.
Anyway, Gashwin Gomes was in attendance, and blogs about the power of Eucharistic Adoration.
http://gashwingomes.blogspot.com/2008/06/eucharistic-congress.html
In my tradition of using multitudenous words to say, basically, "I have nothing to add," I say, YES.
It was pretty widely agreed at the Colloquium that the Holy Hour, organized almost single-handedly by Jenny Donnelson, was among the spiritual and musical highlights of the week.
Of course Exposition and Benedicition has a prescribed form, but its roots are devotional, and once again I mount one of my hobby-horses --
the de facto suppression of Catholic devotions has not only left the Church, the Body of Christ as made up by Her members, but has had precisely the opposite effect of that intended by those who effected it.
The neglect and even outright denigration of Adoration, of the Rosary, of novenae, of processions, by some of the Forces of Dimness has NOT occasioned the realization that it is the Eucharist that is the Source and Summit of our faith, it has NOT filled the pews at Mass, it has NOT led to a more authentic Eucharistic spirituality, it has NOT brought about a greater understanding of Theology.
It has caused an insertion of fabricated rites into the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, it has led to a mind-set that unless I'm "doing something" at Mass other than, well, than the Mass itself, I don't much need to be there; it has deformed our understanding of the god of progs, Full, Conscious, Active Participation in convincing the PIP that only the visible and audible is "participation" worthy of the name.