Let's not be so devoted to devotions: it warms old-timers' hearts to hear of people flocking to eucharistic adoration, novenas, and other traditional devotions. But is there a downside to all this popular piety? One young Catholic argues we should put our focus back where it belongs--on the Mass.

CHICAGO'S first hot summer Sunday found me on my front porch, finishing up the morning paper, when I noticed a distinctively churchy melody floating down the street: "Alabare a mi Senor," roughly translated as "Praise the Lord." To my further surprise I saw a procession from the local parish, led by the pastor and servers with candles and incense, and a bishop carrying a monstrance beneath a canopy, accompanied by about 200 parish folk. It was the first eucharistic procession I'd witnessed in my 31 years.

Retro is in when it comes to church devotions. Even the young, authors tell us in books like The New Faithful (Loyola), are clamoring for a return to such traditions as prayer to the Sacred Heart, the rosary, and adoration and Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament. Indeed, I'm told a young seminarian at the local parish was the driving force behind that Sunday procession.

Bishops, too, have gotten behind the push for a return to older forms of piety. None other than the late bishop of Rome, Pope John Paul II, had such a devotion to Divine Mercy that he not only canonized its originator, Sister Faustina Kowalska, he even decreed that the Second Sunday of Easter should hereafter be referred to as "Divine Mercy Sunday."

Much of the episcopal energy, though, has focused on eucharistic exposition and adoration, especially during this Year of the Eucharist. These leaders see in Holy Hours, perpetual exposition, and Benediction a remedy for what some fear is a lack of faith in Christ's eucharistic presence as well as a way to focus prayers on the shortage of priests.

While these are laudable goals, it seems to me that a new devotionalism is not necessarily the best means to the end. In fact, something about this return to traditional devotions bothers me a bit. It's hard, of course, to argue against such practices as the rosary and eucharistic devotions, but I think the new energy behind them requires some reflection.

One argument is that these prayer forms have nourished Catholic spiritual life for centuries; they are what "make us Catholic," identity markers that we need in the rough-and-tumble of a secular world hostile to faith and morality.

It's true that some devotions go back many centuries but the first, oldest, and supreme piety of the church--the core of what makes us "Catholic"--is the liturgy: Baptism, Eucharist, and the rest of the sacraments, morning and evening prayer, blessings. This is the common prayer of Christians.

MANY OF THE DEVOTIONS CURRENTLY REGAINING POPULARITY arose after more than 1,000 years of Christian history precisely because the liturgy had slowly been removed from the great mass of Christians. As Latin ceased to be the language of the people, it continued as the sacred language of the liturgy, known only to the learned; even many priests didn't really understand it. The liturgy, once the great equalizer of Christians, came to reflect the stratification of medieval society between nobles and peasants, priests and laity.

As if in revolt, common folk often created "liturgies" of their own as ways to imitate the lifestyle of clergy and monks. One of the origins of the 150 Hail Marys of the rosary is the 150 psalms, which monks prayed every day. The illiterate peasantry of medieval Europe couldn't pray the psalms themselves, of course, and the parish morning and evening prayer of the ancient church had largely ceased, eventually to be replaced by prayers like the Angelus, prayed at times that mimicked the monastic liturgy of the hours.

Eucharistic exposition and adoration, too, grew popular in the 11th and 12th centuries, by which time almost no one but the clergy understood most of the Mass, though they did understand that at some point the bread and wine became Christ's Body and Blood. So strong was their focus on this transformation that people began worshiping the elements well before the appropriate time; the bells at Mass during the Eucharistic Prayer were first introduced to let the people know when it was OK to worship the eucharistic Christ.

This "holy gaze" largely came to take the place of actual Communion, since common folk were considered far too sinful for so great a mystery. From here it was a short step to monstrances and eucharistic processions, which sometimes even turned into brawls when rival groups from different churches ran into one another.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS HISTORY LESSON IS SIMPLY TO POINT out that devotions arose when the place of the laity in the church had been greatly diminished, their rightful role in the liturgy reduced to that of spectators. The liturgical reforms of Vatican II were meant to restore to the baptized their right and duty to "full, conscious, and active participation," in the words of the council, and to once again make the liturgy--all liturgy, not just the Eucharist--the "source and summit" of the Christian spirit.

Yet why is it, then, that so many bishops, priests, and even laypeople are trying now to restore a piety that characterized a medieval church? Do they hope for a return to a different age, when the church was neatly divided between the ordained and the merely baptized? Will such a church attract more men to a celibate priesthood? Maybe I'm overreacting, but I do think many of these devotions indeed have the effect of returning us to a medieval model of being church.

I've no doubt there are higher motives lying behind the energy of many proponents of the new devotionalism. People are rightfully hungry for silence amid the daily deluge of images and information, and changes in Catholic liturgy and piety, sometimes haphazardly implemented, have left some hungry for a time when a different kind of reverence and decorum marked Sunday Mass.

But it seems to me that this desire would be better served by other practices equally rooted in the tradition. Why not restore the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours? Why not promote lectio divina, the ancient practice of prayerful reading of scripture, to families, who could pray with, reflect on, and live the Sunday readings during the week, and so more fully hear their challenge at Mass?

The current official teaching of the church supports this approach, insisting that devotions must flow from and lead to the liturgy, since, as the bishops at Vatican II asserted, "the liturgy by its very nature is far superior to any" devotional practice. But what of exposition and adoration? Surely this is a practice that flows to and from the liturgy.

The risk of adoration, as theologian Sister Susan Wood, S.C.L. noted at a recent liturgy conference held at the University of Notre Dame, is that we might get "stuck" at the Real Presence, forgetting that the eucharistic mystery also contains what she calls a "presence of absence." In other words, Christ, though truly present, is yet veiled in the sacramental symbols of bread and wine. That veiling is a reminder that the eucharistic mystery has yet to come to fullness, that its fulfillment will only come when we baptized are also fully transformed into the Body of Christ.

That transformation demands something of us, as another theologian, William Cavanaugh, points out. Once we are transformed, we must live out in the world the politics and economy of God's reign, where all share equally from the one table.

IN LIGHT OF THIS CHALLENGE, MIGHT EUCHARISTIC ADORATION leave us focused on the sacramental Body of Christ instead of becoming ourselves Christ's body in the world? Why is there not great energy poured into recognizing the mystery of Christ's presence "in the waiting world," to use Pope Paul VI's words, that is, in the poor, in those devastated by war, in the suffering at our doorstep? Isn't such a Eucharist the remedy to society's addiction to violence and apathy toward the poor? Some may argue that worship of Christ in the host leads us to service, but I don't see the connection.

And there's the rub, really. Christ never asks for our worship, though sometimes that may be our appropriate response. I can't think of any place in any gospel where Jesus says, "Worship me." He does, however, say over and over, "Follow me." He says, "Eat ... Drink ... Do this in memory of me." He says, "Whatever you do to the least of these, you do to me." All the rest is icing, pieties that are helpful to some but not necessary. For those who wish to practice them, churches are always open, the Blessed Sacrament always reserved in the tabernacle, the beads always ready.

But for all of us there is the liturgy, especially the Sunday Mass: the challenge of God's Word in scripture, the grace of becoming the Body of Christ broken and his Blood poured out for the sake of the world.

BRYAN CONES, associate editor of U.S. CATHOLIC.