“Come and see. And please bring your children!” says Jacki Schrader with her husband Lorin and their son David as they enter the Perpetual Adoration Chapel at the northeast corner of St. Mary Church in Corvallis. (Kathy Shantz/Catholic Sentinel)
“Come and see. And please bring your children!” says Jacki Schrader with her husband Lorin and their son David as they enter the Perpetual Adoration Chapel at the northeast corner of St. Mary Church in Corvallis. (Kathy Shantz/Catholic Sentinel)
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CORVALLIS — “It feels like you’re in pure daylight!”

For Jacki Schrader of Corvallis, time spent in the perpetual adoration chapel at St. Mary Parish here every Thursday night isn’t time spent in darkness; it’s time spent in the light of Christ.

Schrader has been doing nighttime adoration for 14 years, the last six at St. Mary’s. A mother of five, she describes herself as someone who suffers from “the spiritual disability of busyness… where everything is busy, busy, busy.”

As she explains, “In the morning, my mind is thinking and planning the day. It’s too full of all the happenings to really settle.” But Schrader says that at the end of the day, after school, sports, dinner, and homework are finished and the daylight has faded, there is a natural flow toward a quieter mind and a more peaceful feeling that helps her prepare for her scheduled appointment with Jesus.

When her children were younger, Schrader rotated nighttime adoration with her husband, Lorin, who describes their routine: “Whichever parent was going would take a kid or two, and then the other would stay home with the others. We rotated every week.” As more of their children reach adulthood, the Schraders find that they are occasionally able to do adoration together as a couple. “It’s like a date night,” she says.

Schrader claims that many fruits have come to her family through nighttime adoration, especially when she takes her more difficult concerns to Jesus. She says, “Sitting in front of Jesus and asking puts you in a really humble place.” She finds that answers then come to her.

For the Schraders’ older children, the nighttime adoration they grew up with has found new meaning as they’ve finished high school and started college at Oregon State. “They always know where we'll be at that time (on Thursday nights), so sometimes they'll pop in,” says Schrader. She observes many OSU students dropping in at night, especially at exam time.

“They get that it’s a quiet place,” says her husband. “A place of refuge from the world.”

The Schraders speak gratefully about the encouragement they have received from the priests of the St. John Society in their weekly commitment to nighttime adoration. Schrader says it’s “a real blessing” to have a perpetual adoration chapel available during the night. Her 8-year-old son David, agrees. “It’s good,” he says. “It’s a time to pray to God.”



Learn more

stmarycorvallis.org/adoration