Blessed Fulton Sheen – The Hour That Made His Day

In his Autobiography called A Treasure in Clay he wrote chapter called “The Hour that Makes My Day”. In this chapter he describes the two resolutions he made on the day of my Ordination.

1. I would offer the Holy Eucharist every Saturday in honour of the Blessed Mother to solicit her protection on my priesthood. The Epistle to the Hebrews bids the priest offer sacrifices not only for others, but also for himself, since his sins are greater because of the dignity of the office.

2. I resolved also to spend a continuous Holy Hour every day in the presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

I would like to reflect briefly on point number 2 above.

In the chapter he expands on how the hour started and why he did it. He writes that the “purpose of the Holy Hour is to encourage deep personal encounter with Christ”. One of reasons that he started the daily holy hour was because he wanted to “grow more and more into (the) likeness” of Jesus Christ. He wanted to become “like that we gaze upon”. He believed that going to adoration for an hour before the blessed Sacrament “transforms the heart” in the same way “as the face of Moses was transformed” after he “encountered God on the Mountain”.

He also wrote that it “takes time to catch fire in prayer”. I have found this myself. Recently I had to do two hours in a rom in our perpetual adoration chapel. I was amazed to find how easy it was and also have fruitful the second hour was. In this day and age on constant noise and connectivity, it can often take us time to truly be silent and let ourselves listen to Jesus.

Later in the chapter he writes how important the daily holy hour was for his vocation. He used the image of being ‘tethered to a tabernacle” to keep him from wandering too far from the Lord. He also showed the witness this daily holy hour had on others. He especially encouraged priests to make a daily hour and received thousands of letters giving testimony to the huge impact made it made on their lives. He also encouraged the lay faithful to make a daily holy hour where they could. It is not easy to make a holy hour a day and Blessed Sheen recognised that. He also spoke about the benefits of short visits to the tabernacle during the day. He even had chapels put right at the entrance of his house so he could make a visit every time he came and went from his house.

I find his commitment to his daily holy hour inspiring. Many years ago when I was a single man in youth ministry I tried to do something similar before the tabernacle. Today the demands of raising a family do make it much harder. In my role as Coordinator of the Perpetual Adoration Chapel here in Christchurch, I do encourage people to sign up for one hour a week. Making such a commitment means that you go no matter how you are feeling or what is going on in your life. Often times I would go into the chapel not really wanting to be there, but by the end of the hour I was always glad I came. The Beatification of Archbishop Fulton Sheen is a great inspiration and encouragement to all of us about the importance of a regular prayer life and the power of Eucharistic Adoration. If we desire to be saints as Blessed Sheen surely is, we would do well to follow in his footsteps and commit to Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

7 Ways to Make a Holy Hour Like Archbishop Sheen

Amy Smith from the National Catholic Register gives seven tips for making a Holy Hour Like Archbishop Sheen. These are set out below and have been slightly edited.

1. It’s okay if it’s not easy — or you fall asleep. In his book, Archbishop Sheen recalls a Holy Hour at St. Roch in Paris: “I entered the church about three o’clock in the afternoon, knowing that I had to catch a train for Lourdes two hours later. There are only about ten days a year in which I can sleep in the daytime; this was one. I knelt down and said a prayer of adoration, and then sat up to meditate and immediately went to sleep. I woke up exactly at the end of one hour. I said to the Good Lord: ‘Have I made a Holy Hour?’ I thought [my] angel said: ‘Well, that’s the way the Apostles made their first Holy Hour in the Garden, but don’t do it again.’”

2. Sometimes making that hour involves intrepidness — and an extended time frame. “One difficult Holy Hour I remember occurred when I took a train from Jerusalem to Cairo. The train left at four o’clock in the morning; that meant very early rising. On another occasion in Chicago, I asked permission from a pastor to go into his church to make a Holy Hour about seven o’clock one evening, for the church was locked. He then forgot that he had let me in, and I was there for about two hours trying to find a way of escape. Finally I jumped out of a small window and landed in the coal bin. This frightened the housekeeper, who finally came to my aid.”

3. Go when your schedule allows. He began his hourly habit during the day or evening, but then priestly demands prompted a new time: “I made the Hour early in the morning, generally before Holy Mass.”

4. Be ready to meet Christ. “The purpose of the Holy Hour is to encourage deep personal encounter with Christ. The holy and glorious God is constantly inviting us to come to Him, to hold converse with Him, to ask for such things as we need and to experience what a blessing there is in fellowship with Him,” he writes. “… Neither theological knowledge nor social action alone is enough to keep us in love with Christ unless both are preceded by a personal encounter with him. … I have found that it takes some time to catch fire in prayer. This has been one of the advantages of the daily Hour. It is not so brief as to prevent the soul from collecting itself and shaking off the multitudinous distractions of the world. Sitting before the Presence is like a body exposing itself before the sun to absorb its rays. Silence in the Hour is a tête-à-tête with the Lord. In those moments, one does not so much pour out written prayers, but listening takes its place. We do not say: ‘Listen, Lord, for Thy servant speaks,’ but ‘Speak, Lord, for Thy servant heareth.’”

5. Await being taught. “The Hour, too, became a magister and teacher, for although before we love anyone we must have a knowledge of that person, nevertheless, after we know, it is love that increases knowledge. Theological insights are gained not only from the two covers of a treatise, but from two knees on a prie-dieu before a tabernacle.”

6. Encourage others to make one too. “Finally, making a Holy Hour every day constituted for me one area of life in which I could preach what I practiced,” he reflects. “I very seldom in my life preached fasting in a rigorous kind of way, for I always found fasting extremely difficult; but I could ask others to make the Hour, because I had made it.”

7. Stick with it, for such a habit only grows. “When first ordained and a student at the Catholic University in Washington, I would never go to class without climbing the few stairs to the chapel in Caldwell Hall to make a tiny act of love to Our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. Later, at the University of Louvain in Belgium, I would make a visit to Our Lord in every single church I passed on the way to class. When I continued graduate work in Rome and attended the Angelicum and Gregorian, I would visit every church en route from the Trastevere section where I lived. This is not so easy in Rome, for there are churches on almost every corner so that you may pray to get across the street; the church on the other corner is to thank God that you made it,” he writes.

“Later as a teacher at the Catholic University in Washington, I arranged to put a chapel immediately at the entrance of the front door of my home. This was in order that I might never come in or go out without seeing the sanctuary lamp as a summons to adore the Heart of Christ at least for a few seconds. I tried to be faithful to this practice all during my life, and even now in the apartment in New York where I live, the chapel is between my study and my bedroom. This means that I can never move from one area of my small apartment to another without at least a genuflection and a small ejaculation to our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.

“Even at night, when I am awakened and arise, I always make it a point to drop into the chapel for a few seconds, recalling the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Our Lord, offering a prayer for the priests and religious of the world, and for all who are in spiritual need. Even this autobiography is written in his Presence, that he might inspire others when I am gone to make the Hour that makes Life.”

Matt O'Connell

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