Presence and Abstraction. Interpreting the practice of Eucharistic Adoration online

This paper takes as its point of departure the rise of online Adoration of the Reserved Sacrament during the widespread suspension of worship in response to Covid-19. Taking the phenomenon seriously as an instance of the sensus fidelium exposes limitations in the tridentine formulation of the mode of sacramental presence. Alternative approaches may be developed with reference to the thinking of two post-Heideggerian philosophers, Marion and Nancy, who in different ways explore the subject’s encounter with the divine in the phenomenal world as a double kenosis, without reference to an abstract concept of Being. These accounts both together suggest an account of adoration as a kenotic response to divine kenosis and so suggest understandings of eucharistic Adoration that are not bounded by the constraints of physical materiality. The paper concludes by considering the wider applicability of this approach in a world that is, increasingly, a hybrid of physical and ‘virtual’ phenomena and at a time when US Catholics are believed to be losing their faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharistic elements.