The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Throwback Episode: What Do You Do in Adoration?

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Jeff is traveling overseas and will be taking a break from recording this week and next week! In the meantime, please enjoy this throwback episode. What are you supposed to do in Adoration? How are you meant to fill that time? Today, Jeff dives into the value of going to Adoration and how you might spend that time in Adoration. He offers a “recipe” for Adoration that will hopefully draw you even closer to Christ. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, videos, and resources, to help you live your faith every day, visit ascensionpress.com. Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 317. What do I do in adoration? Well, here we are again together this week. Thank you for joining me. And this is the show. As you know, if you've been with me for a while, we talk about everything scripture, everything, discipleship, being a witness for Jesus, learning how to put all this into practice in our daily life with one goal in mind.

And that is to please the Lord and to be with the Lord forever and ever and ever. And our family dream is that we'll all dance with the Lord in heaven together. That's really what I'm looking forward to. Hey, isn't life busy from time to time? That's a rhetorical question. You don't need to answer that. Of course, life is busy from time to time. And in the midst of that, we hear so often from people that we should have a holy hour. We should have some time out with the Lord where we can relax and maybe do some reading and sit in the presence of the Lord. And so I remember something that a friend of mine told me some advice on what to do in adoration that I want to share with you today that I think is really, really good. And it comes from an old friend of mine, Bishop Paul Dudley. And one of my friends, Alyssa Bormus, he teaches that about adoration

at the Catechetical Institute in Twin Cities. And as she uses the teaching from our spiritual father, that's her spiritual father as well, Bishop Paul Dudley, who has since gone on, to be with the Lord. But I want to share with you what he says you should do in adoration that I think is life-changing. It's probably one of the more creative and powerful yet simple things to do. It's like a recipe for adoration. And I do want to share that with you. By the way, if you do want to show notes, and this is your first time joining me, and you don't get the show notes, all you have to do is text my name, Jeff Kaven's one word, text it to the number 3377. And we will get you on the list.

Okay, so when was the last time you went to adoration? Well, you might be so new, and that's fine that you're asking, well, what is iteration, right? Well, in the Catholic Church, you know what? One of the things that makes us unique is that in mass, when the priest prays the prayer of institution, that is, this is my body over bread, this is my blood over wine, that the the bread and the wine completely 100% change, and they become the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. We call this fancy name for it trans substantiation.

Transubstantiation. And there are groups of Christians out there who believe in consubstantiation, which means that God is with the bread. Catholics believe what the church has believed from the beginning, and that is that it literally becomes the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. Well, there are times when they will take one of the hosts that was blessed, prayed over, and they will carefully put it in what's called a monstrance, which is usually a gold type of star. It is to demonstrate.

You can remember it that way. It is to show the Lord. And the Lord is brought out in certain circumstances for a holy hour, a blessing, adoration, and people in the parishes will sign up and they'll go and spend time with it. the Lord in prayer. In the Twin Cities, we're really blessed here because we have, I think, if it's not the most, it's one of the highest percentages of parishes who have 24-7 adoration in the country. So we are so blessed to be able to find a place 24-7 to go and be with the Lord. And we're encouraged to do that. And I would encourage you to do that as well. This is something

that is healing. It is restful. It is rejuvenating. it's educational, it is comforting, it's so many different things you can get out of being with the Lord. We have kind of a funny phrase that we use, that we need to get some sunshine or a sunburn, and that's S-O-N, to be in the presence of the Lord. You know, Moses was in the Old Testament upon Sinai. You might remember that, and then you have in the Transfiguration in the New Testament, Jesus beginning to glow. And when Moses experienced this up on Sinai, when he came down,

His face was actually glowing because he was in the presence of the Lord himself. And so what I'm recommending for you today this week is that you would take some time to spend with the Lord and to review a number of things in your life at this point. This is a beautiful way to spend time with the Lord, maybe on the way home from work or maybe at night. Many churches have sign-ups, and you can actually own an hour. You can say, I want to take 7 to 8 o'clock on Thursdays. I want to take 1 to 2 in the morning on Wednesdays. You know, you kind of own it. Like you've seen these signs that this block is cleaned up by the JCs or the Optimist

Club or whatever. Well, you're kind of owning a block of time and you sign up for it. And if you can't make it, you call substitutes and you get them to go in. Emily and I are substitutes in my parish. We take anybody that can't do it, we will do it from midnight to five in the morning. And so I just love taking that time. I love the idea of someone saying, I just can't make it. And it's a tough time to get people to come to church.

And I think, you're kidding me. I get the Lord all to myself. I'm all over that. So we like to do it. And if I find it to be a very encouraging thing. So what did Bishop Dudley say? When he taught on adoration, he had a beautiful recipe. and I'm going to give you this recipe right up off the top,

and then we'll look at a couple of the points from each of these three points. Here's what he did. He divided the holy hour, which is 60 minutes, obviously. He divided that holy hour into three sets of 20. And on those three sets of 20, in those three sets of 20,

he did one thing special. So, for example, in the first 20 minutes, he said, this is a time to, and he's talking to the Lord, thank you, to thank you, Lord. The first 20 minutes are to thank you. And I'll talk about that in just a second. So hold that steady. The second set of 20 minutes is, teach me, teach me.

And we'll look at that. The third set of 20 minutes, I love this. The third set of 20 minutes is take over. Take over, Lord. Now, when you put those together, you have three. You've got the trifecta going on here. you have three things that are really, really good. One, thank you.

Two, teach me. Three, take over. Isn't that beautiful? Thanks to Alyssa. I was sharing that with me the other day. You know, Bishop Paul Dudley, God bless him, what a saint. He's one that brought me back into the church. He was my childhood pastor, and he had such a simple way of teaching.

And this is an example of it right here. And by the way, this is a very good recipe. I should have called the show Adoration Recipes. That's what I should have called it. Maybe I will. I don't know. But this is the type of thing that you can share with your children. When you go to adoration, a lot of people really struggle with what do you do in adoration.

Okay, Lord, I'm here. What do you want me to do? You know, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be saying. Do I read something? Do I write something? Am I sitting correctly? Here I am, Lord. and you know you tell people that you should go and spend a holy hour with the Lord but we rarely tell

people what to do and so people will go and they just kind of fidget around for a while and they're on their knees for part of it and they sit down and keep looking over at the door like when's the next person coming and they sign out and they leave and yay you know and it's good to be with the Lord don't get me wrong but isn't it nice to have a recipe so this is what we do the first set of 20 minutes we are going to thank God. Now, this is very similar to the examine prayer, the Ignatian, I remember St. Ignatius of Loyola. He had an examined prayer where he would look back on his day,

and he would start the examined prayer. The very first thing was to give thanks, be grateful, give thanks to God for everything, all the blessings, all the gifts in that day. And you've got 20 minutes of this holy hour to thank, God for small and ordinary things. And someone once said, and I thought this was very good, they said, the only thing necessary to make unappreciative, make us unappreciative of a blessing from God is that we should receive the blessing often and regularly. Think of the opportunities.

Think of all the opportunities that you have to give thanks to God for all of these blessings in your life. And the reason that St. Ignatius recommended, first that we give thanks is because the gifts that we thank God for point us to the gift giver. And the gifts that we have, no matter how bad your day was, you can thank God. And certainly there's enough in your week, in your month, in your life to thank God for 20 minutes. I can take the next 20 minutes right here and just thank God. And if you were with me, you'd be adding in. I thank you, Lord, for my wife.

I thank you for my family. I thank you for the health that I have been able to enjoy. I thank you for my home and the cars that you've given us. I thank you for my body functioning well enough to get around and to serve you. Lord, I thank you for my local parish and my pastor and that we have the freedom to worship you. I thank you, see, I can just go on and on and I can sit there and just say thanks to the Lord. And that's really, really important. The simple review of the gifts of God, they cause an attitude of gratitude to swell up inside of our hearts.

And that's really, really important. When you meet someone who is thankful and they are grateful, it's so encouraging when people see God in the little things and the little blessings that they received. It was four weeks ago, I broke the ribs on my left side. and the first couple of weeks were just really difficult. But even in the midst of that, I could thank God for so much. And when I did that, everything changed. It really did. Everything began to change.

Now, I love this story in the Bible, and perhaps you've heard me talk about it before in Luke 17. I'll put this in the show notes for you. Luke 17, 11 through 19, it's the story of the 10 lepers. And I think this could be part of Bishop Dudley's recipe for adoration. In this story, we have ten lepers, and Jesus comes to their village, he enters, and they are standing off at a distance, and they lifted up their voices really, really loud, and they said, Jesus, master, have mercy on us.

And when Jesus saw them, he said to them, go and show yourselves to the priests. And they went, and they were cleansed. And then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. And he fell on his face at Jesus' feet, giving him thanks. And he was a Samaritan. He wasn't part of Israel. He was a Samaritan. He was one of them guys, you know.

And one of the outsiders. And then Jesus makes a very interesting observation. Jesus says, and notice this, when you're blessed, when you're blessed, Jesus looks for the response. He's watching you, my friend. He's watching you. He says, we're not 10 cleansed. Correct me, fellas, here if I got this wrong.

I thought I saw 10 of you. Where are the nine? Where'd they go? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this one guy, the foreigner? Oh, that's interesting, isn't it? Jesus took notice that the nine did not return to give thanks.

but the one did. And he said to the man, rise and go your way. Your faith has made you well. So you have 10 people whose lives have been given back to them, but only one of them turned around, went back to Jesus, and said, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Now, using Bishop Paul Dudley's recipe of 20 minutes to give God thanks at the beginning of adoration, you probably have a lot to give thanks for.

And so the first 20 minutes, just settle back. Settle back and kneel down, sit, whatever you want to do, and just give God thanks. You'll change your day. If you're having a crummy day, promise. This will change your day or your time back. I'll give you your time back. But seriously, it'll change your day. If you'll have a heart of gratitude, an attitude of gratitude, which we like to say on the show

here, and it will change your perspective on the rest of your day. If you're coming home from work, I'll tell you what, your family's going to meet a new man, a new woman when you come home, because you have just spent time with the king, and you gave thanks. Now, we're going to look at the other two. 20 minutes, teach me, 20 minutes takeover. And we're going to do that right after this. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. Someone shows up in your parish because they're being drawn the Catholic Church. Maybe they can't quite explain why, but something is pulling them. OCI could be the moment that changes everything for them, where a quiet curiosity becomes a real encounter with Jesus Christ. But the gap between how OCIA is and how it could be is real,

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what it was always meant to be, a true journey into life with Christ. To learn more, visit ascensionpress.com slash invited. talking here today about what do you do in adoration, subtitled a recipe for adoration. And the recipe here is an old recipe in the family, you know, for the Irish. And it's 20 minutes of thank you, 20 minutes of teach me, and 20 minutes of takeover. So we were looking at thank you prior to the break. Now let's look at 20 minutes of teach me. Now here you have the opportunity to move from Thanksgiving and gratitude to, Lord, I need to learn from you.

I need to understand your ways. I need to know your plan. I want to know your heart. And I need you to teach me about so many different areas of my life. And I'm going to sit here for 20 minutes and listen. Now, if you just sit there for 20 minutes and listen, the Lord is capable of speaking to you for sure. but you may want to at this point read scripture. And when you read scripture, the Lord can teach you. He can lead you to where you need to be. You might just take the gospel of the day, of that particular day, and say, Lord, here's my Bible, and I open it up. Teach me.

Teach me, Lord. You might have a devotional. You might read a bio of one of the saints. Or do Lexio Divina. You know, in Lexio-Devina, I think that's the fastest track to hearing a word from God for that particular day. I really do. And I do it every morning. We come together every morning and we pray and we read the gospel reading and then we spend some time reading, meditating, praying, and then contemplation. And we are taught by God every single morning. And so in your adoration recipe,

you can be taught by God and you can bring either the Bible, a devotional, or a bio of a saint, or some other kind of book that is really encouraging to you and say, Lord, teach me, teach me how to be a better husband or wife. Teach me how to be a better father, mother, best friend, employer, employee. Teach me how to be holy, oh Lord. I want to be like you. My goal is to be like you, Jesus. Now, once you have gone through 20 minutes of teach me, Lord, then you come to what, for me, at least, is, I think the most important for me at least. I am not good at running my life.

I need help. And you might be in the same boat. You need help as well. So the third 20 minutes is, Lord. Take over. Take over. The first was, thank you, right? The first one, the first 20 minutes we were filled with Thanksgiving. It was thank you, Lord. Second, teach me, Lord. Third, Lord, take over. Take over. Now, isn't there's almost something encouraging and inviting just about those words. Lord, take over. It reminds me of Carrie Underwood song. You know, that country song, Jesus, take the wheel,

if you can call it country, I guess. George Jones type of music, not really, but Jesus take the wheel. I love that. She's this all frustrated, needs help, and says, Jesus, take the wheel. That's what the third 20 minutes is about, Jesus takeover. And in this period of time for 20 minutes, oh, this is good. You are going to turn your will over to the will of God. Not my will, Lord, but your will be done.

That's what Jesus said, remember? Not my will, but your will be done. Father, and that's what we're saying is not my will, but your will be done. So, Lord, please take over my life. And then what you can do is you can go through the areas of your life and ask, Lord, have I given you the reins here? Have I invited you to take the wheel in this area of my life? Because, Lord, I'm struggling. I think I make mistakes. I'm not sure which way to go. I'm asking you to help me. Take over. and I give you a wheel. I give you the reins.

I give you my schedule. I give you everything, Lord. I have thanked you today. You have taught me something. And I'm just going to give everything over to you today. And there's something beautiful about giving everything over to the Lord. Take over. And so think about those various areas of your life where you're saying to Jesus,

take over, Lord. Like, take over my life. Break it down. Lord, take over my family. Take over my family, Lord, take over my job. Help me. You take the reins, Lord, with my money. You help me, teach me, and take over the reins of my fears.

Lord, I have so many fears. Take over. I can't handle this. I can't do it. Take over, Lord. I'm giving it to you. And you know that your Heavenly Father hears you, and he is not going to leave you. He's not going to forsake you.

He is going to be with you. And this is where it's at. is Lord, take over. Take over my cares about what people think of me. Take over my future. Maybe you're all worried and all tied up in the worries of your future, your finances, your job, your children, so forth, Lord, I trust you.

I take over. And you know, when you say take over, when you say take over, it's really saying, I believe, I believe you. Because believing is made up of two things. One is you are making mental assent, Lord, I know that you are my Lord and Savior. I know, Father, that you're there. I know that you care for me.

I know that you're gentle. I know you're merciful. I know you are the one who has all the provisions that I need. And number two, I'm going to entrust myself to you now. I'm going to take the keys out of the ignition, and I'm going to pass them to you. I'm going to entrust myself. I'm going to get myself out from behind this wheel. I'm going to ask you, Lord, to slide over behind the wheel.

I'll get in the passenger side. Let's go. You take over. I will obey. I will do whatever you want. Lord, take over my anger, take over my envy, and take over my schedule, and my spare time and so forth, my evenings, my television. Take over. So during this 20-minute period, you have the opportunity to really sift through the individual areas of your life where you currently are running them.

And I'll speak for myself and not doing a very good job. Lord, you take it over. And you can end that time of adoration after you had 20 minutes of thanking God, 20 minutes of teach me, God, and then 20 minutes of take over, God. It's at that point where you can get up and you can say that I have some area of my life. I know I'm turning over today. And then when you leave, take the fruit of that time together with the Lord in adoration with you. Don't leave all the work there. Don't leave those three sets of 20 there.

The next person that comes won't know what to do with it. Maybe they got their own list of things. Take it with you. Take what you gained in that heart. holy hour with you, where you can walk out of there with a thankful heart starting to look for new things for tomorrow that God is provided in your life and areas that you need to be taught and putting into practice the things that you learned in that holy hour. And then, Lord, I'm ready. Let's go. I've given you the keys. Let's drive. And then watch what he does in your life. Now, that doesn't mean

that you're going to go to sleep in the passenger site. It means that you're going to be alert. and your will is a part of this, but he is going to help you directing your life. And that's really what you want. That's optimal for you. So that's what I wanted to share with you today. And I'm going to encourage you to take whatever day you hear this show on. And for some of you, it might be two years later, three years later,

just to sort of identify where we're at right now, Lincoln was just made president. Okay? No, I'm kidding. We, this is in 2003, March of 2023. And if this is a year from now, a year from now, you're listening to this, do it, do it the same. And that is, find the time this week to do an hour with the Lord, bring this recipe. It's called the Bishop Dudley recipe, and then go and do it.

20 minutes. Thank you, Lord. 20 minutes. Teach me, Lord, 20 minutes. Take over. Lord. I'd love to hear from you. you can write me an email.

Everyone's doing it. It's The Jeff Kaven Show. That's one word, The Jeff Kaven Show, at ascensionpress.com, and let me know how this works for you. I really would like to know. Also, you want, give a thumbs up to the show and make a comment,

let others know about it, share them with them. All we're trying to do every week is bring you closer to Jesus. And may your life look more like Jesus. that's what I care about. I really do. Well, I want you to know that I love you. I really do. And I want to pray for you right now that God will meet you right where you're at. I know this week for some is tough. It's tough. And this might be the recipe you needed. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Lord, we love you so much. And we thank you. And we ask you, O Lord, we thank you and ask you to lead us. And Lord, as we come together with you in a holy hour this week, Lord, prepare our hearts with all the things that we're thankful for, bring them to our attention. We're going to ask you to teach us, Lord. We're going to ask you to take over. And Lord, I pray that you'll free up the time in our schedule and make it

obvious when we're supposed to do this, to go away with you for 60 minutes. Thank you, Lord. In your name we pray, amen. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. I love you. Can't wait to hear from you. 2020, 20, 20, 20. Thank you, Lord. Teach me, Lord. Take over. talk to you next week