A Blind Dog at Adoration

In the early days of my conversion to the Catholic Church, I spent an hour before the blessed sacrament five days a week, M–F, in what Catholics call eucharistic adoration.*

More recently, too much taken over by my life, I fell away from this regular devotion. Now, with the prompting of my friend Joanne, I am back on the adoration schedule in the lower church at St. Mary’s, one hour a week. I put it this way—on the schedule—because I do my best to make it, though life still has a powerful hold on me.

This week, I shared space in the chapel with an elderly woman and her dog. While she sat and knelt with rosary and breviary before the Holy Eucharist exposed in a monstrance behind the altar, the lady’s dog snuffled about and slept on a long soft blanket of crimson and gold, which the lady had arranged by her side.

Like many human-canine pairs, the lady and her pet resembled one another. I especially noticed a common squint: in the lady a sign of absorption in her devotions, in the dog a hint that the bitch (for it was a she-dog) was blind.

I became as interested in the blind dog before the Lord as I was in the Lord himself. Sadly, life takes over one’s life even in His presence. I was moved by the old woman and her steady squinty gaze toward the Holy Eucharist, but I was even more moved by the dog.

The dog was almost completely docile before the Lord, only getting up and shifting her position every few minutes, partly to sniff about and orient herself to her mistress. But otherwise: quiet, peace, serenity in the dog, and as I contemplated the dog, in me.

Finally, the woman rose to gather her things, held the dog’s leash in one hand while deftly folding the long gold and crimson throw with the other. I looked toward the woman’s face and asked, “Is she blind?”

“Yes,” she answered and then added, without missing a beat: “If no one’s here when you leave, would you please close the tabernacle?” With this single thought for the sanctity and safety of the consecrated host reserved behind the altar, she and her companion walked slowly out, the woman waiting for the dog to follow her nose at each turning.

A few minutes later, an old smart friend of mine came into the chapel, bringing me a magazine. It was a publication of The Society of Saint Pius X in which the question of “The Papacy and Sedevacantism” is debated. This friend is one of my oldest and dearest in the Church, and under many circumstances, I might have taken the journal home and read it, if only out of devotion to my friend.

But I had just seen a docile dog—blind and unblinking—kneeling before the Lord, and I concluded that I would rather be that dog than a man in his now-nearly-late 60s (i.e., me) torn by doubt and argument.

To put it another way, I would rather go to hell for being stupid and docile than to heaven stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey with the certainty of my own wisdom. Of course, neither is likely to happen. Blessed are the poor in spirit, and your little dog too.

* If you are unfamiliar with eucharistic adoration, take a look at this YouTube video. In a second video, Bishop Robert Barron explains in part why eucharistic adoration is enjoying a comeback today.