How can we help our young people know the Lord?

   I have a desire to do something that right now seems impossible.  That is to have perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament in our parish church as a way for the whole parish to put our bodies as well as our souls into praying before the Blessed Sacrament for one hour per week (besides Mass) for our young people and all the students at the university.  Why?  So that they may be safe from harm and come to know the Lord.  Imagine if the college students knew that a parish was praying around the clock for them!

   It seems impossible, but a parishioner here recommended taking a lesson from a story about St. John Neumann (1811-1860), an early Bishop of Philadelphia.  Why not start with just 40 consecutive hours?  The story goes this way:

   Loving his Eucharistic Lord and wishing to dramatize the Blessed Sacrament and to center spiritual life in his diocese around Him, he dreamed of bringing the Forty Hours Devotion to the United States.

   At first the idea was received coldly.  People on all sides told him:  "You can't do that!  If you left the Blessed Sacrament exposed in churches for over forty long hours, don't you know what would happen?  The ignorant and the impious would profane and dishonor it."

   The idea might have died there except for what happened one night.  The Bishop had been writing letters for hours and he grew so weary that he fell asleep at his desk.  When he awoke an hour or so later his papers were a charred mass.  Whether a puff of wind had blown a letter into the flames of a candle, or whether the candle had overturned, he could not tell.  Only one letter remained intact, except for charred edges.  Picking it up, he saw that it was the only letter he had written that evening about the Forty Hours Devotion.

  At this discovery he dropped to his knees  It seemed to him that a voice was telling him:  "As this writing was saved from the flames, so shall I preserve My Son, present in the Blessed Sacrament, from profanation and dishonor.  Wait no longer.  Carry out your plans."

   The Bishop again eagerly took up his pen.  Letter after letter he wrote on through the night, ordering the celebration of the Forty Hours Devotion in every church of his Philadelphia Diocese.  The custom spread . . . throughout the entire United States.