SAINT-LOUP-SUR-AUJON, France: The moment a monstrance bearing the Blessed Sacrament was fixed high over an altar in a convent church in a remote French valley, a nun stepped forward to start the process of Eucharistic adoration – one the sisters hope will continue day and night, week after week and year after year.
Mother Marie Xavier McMonagle thus began the perpetual adoration of the “Tyburn Nuns,” an order of enclosed contemplative Benedictine nuns established to worship the “Eucharistic heart of Jesus.”
In so doing, she also closed a day of ceremonies to install the order’s newest community, situated near Dijon, France.
This community, the 12th to be established in less than a century, has eight members, each of whom will spend a minimum one hour a day in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament.
Sometimes they will be assisted by lay Catholics.
A founding charism of the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre is the unceasing Eucharistic adoration, which continues round-the-clock when the community is large enough for its members to physically and mentally sustain such prayer.
