Eucharistic adoration in the dark at 6:30 a.m.
Wednesday, November 4, 2026,
Memorial of Saint Charles Borromeo, Bishop
At 6:30 in a morning still dark as night,
with my partner Raphael,
I go to Eungbong Catholic Church for Eucharistic adoration.
The day I began this spiritual diary was also a dark dawn here at Eungbong Church. A little tree frog stuck fast to the handle of the church’s glass door seemed to ask me, “Even the tree frog came to see Jesus, and you…?” The Conversations with God I began again that dawn continue this morning in my twenty-third diary.
Before going to adoration,
I read and meditate on the day’s Mass readings.
When I sit before the red lamp beside the tabernacle,
it becomes a time of meeting the eyes
of the Lord who is silently present.
1. To shine like stars in the world
Today the words of the first reading
are engraved within me.
“For God is the one who, for his good purpose,
works in you
both to desire
and to work.
Do everything without grumbling or questioning,
that you may be blameless children of God
in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation,
among whom you shine like stars in the world,
as you hold on to the word of life.”
(Philippians 2:13-16)
Both the desire to do something
and the strength to see it through
are gifts of God at work in me.
So there is no reason to grumble.
2. The Gospel met again with a Conversation with God from seven years ago
Today’s Gospel is Luke 14:25-33:
“Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.”
Reading these words, I remember the Conversation with God I wrote on Sunday, September 8, 2019, waking at 5 a.m. to listen to the Mass readings. It was a time of recovery after the car accident, a day of “a date with God the Father within me.”
Two days before, on September 6, in a body that spent 20 hours a day asleep, I woke at dawn and left my 255th Conversation with God. As in that record, which I moved into Diary 8, even when I had no strength the Lord invited me every dawn to the place of his Word.
The meditation I kept in my heart that day
People often cannot tell
“love” from “possession.”
Things are to be possessed,
people are to be loved.
When we love, we must instead let go.
Here, “hate”
means “offer up.”
To entrust everything we love to the Lord
for the sake of a greater love:
that is love for the Lord.
(From the meditation of Father Joseph Jeon Sam-yong)
At Mass that day at Dujeong-dong Catholic Church,
Father Peter Shin Baek-cheol asked:
“In our lives,
what is each of our crosses?”
Seven years later, today,
before the same Gospel, I ask again:
Am I carrying my cross
with joy?
3. One who first sits down and calculates
“Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?”
Not a tower only begun and never finished,
but a tower built all the way up.
So every morning
I first sit before the Lord.
A time to ask the Lord first
what to fill today with:
for me, that is Eucharistic adoration.
4. The good news a magpie brought from atop the cross
When I came out after prayer,
on top of the cross of Eungbong Church
a magpie went kkak-kkak~🎶,
singing me a joyful song.
This weekend,
at the Bible school of Taean Catholic Church,
I am about to spend time walking with the Lord
with 40 children, from kindergarten to high school.
A good idea for a joyful, lively PuNolChi mind picnic on the theme of Scripture finally came to me. I am grateful, picturing the joyful time with the children.
5. A universe where differences become stars: the PuNolChi Bible school
July 25, 2026, this past summer’s Sunday school camp at Taean Catholic Church. At the first camp ever held at the church, the children played joyfully and excitedly with PuNolChi and met the Lord who lives within us.
The words I engraved in my heart that day were these:
“I chose you out of the world and appointed you
to go and bear fruit
that will remain.”
Some 30 years of preparation, and now I begin again.
On their plates,
the children made their own stars and flowers bloom.
〈A Universe Where Differences Become Stars〉
With different lights and shapes,
we live together in one universe;
when we respect our differences
and join hands in joy,
all of us, in love,
become the most beautiful stars.
A PuKaSi (food card poem) by Healing Santa Kim Ji-yu
“To shine like stars in the world”:
the words I received this morning
will likely become the theme
of the Bible school with the children.
6. This morning’s PuNolChi mind table
Yellow fruit ripened by autumn,
and the seeds hidden neatly inside.
As I placed the slices of fruit one by one on the plate,
a small life was born,
busily flapping its wings.
Like God at work within me,
I pray that today too I may fly up joyfully
without grumbling.
The words I engraved in my heart at the summer camp
I receive again this morning as the Communion antiphon.
“It was not you who chose me,
but I who chose you and appointed you
to go and bear fruit
that will remain.”
(John 15:16, today’s Communion antiphon)
This morning,
what did you ask the Lord first?
Healing Santa Kim Ji-yu
This story was first posted in the Conversations with God spiritual coaching of the healing space Haengbok Yeolgi cafe, woven together with Spiritual Diaries 1 and 8 and the record of the 2026 summer Bible school camp.