The Church That Never Sleeps
October 9, 2025 · VESTA KASSAYAN
It’s 9:53 p.m. when I roll into the Church of the Nativity’s dimly lit parking lot. Besides a couple of bright lampposts, the only other light source is the glow from a trio of blue-and-red stained glass windows on the front of the Neo-Gothic church tower. From the outside, it looks deserted. Inside, however, at any hour of the day, you’ll find parishioners faced up toward a sun-shaped object at the front of the main hall, deep in prayer.
Constructed over 150 years ago, Nativity Church was originally built a few blocks away from its current spot on Oak Grove Avenue. Due to a change in surrounding land ownership as a result of a declining Menlo Park logging industry, Nativity was relocated in 1879. The church was raised onto a set of logs and wheeled several blocks over to its current location.
More recently, Nativity has become known for its practice of Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration. Put simply, churchgoers can come at any time of day—whether that be 5 p.m. in the afternoon or 3 a.m. in the morning—and pray. During prayer, they look to a sun-shaped object, known as a “monstrance.” Inside its central compartment lies a “consecrated host,” a piece of bread, which, according to Catholic belief, is the body of Christ. Nativity’s bread is whole-wheat, though, and acquired across the street at Corpus Christi every month.
In keeping with Catholic law, the monstrance is staffed overnight by parishioners, who volunteer for hour-long shifts. If someone misses their slot, the person with the preceding shift covers for them.
“It’s a way for people to deepen their relationship with God,” Mary Ellen Peloso, who helped start the practice at Nativity in 1996, said. “We used to be the only ones in our diocese, which goes from here all the way through Marin […] and now there’s more.”
The primary purpose of Eucharistic Adoration is to provide an opportunity for parishioners to foster a closer, more individual relationship with God. However, Dominick Peloso, Nativity’s deacon, notes that Eucharistic Adoration also allows for so-called “Eucharistic Miracles” to occur. During these events, the consecrated host (bread) inside the monstrance is thought to transform and to become a living piece of Jesus Christ, living up to the Bible’s scripture. “It happens every once in a while, just to keep us going and remind us,” D. Peloso said. “We’ve probably had several hundreds of these over the last several thousands of years.”
Although D. Peloso is open to the scientific skepticism that something so seemingly outlandish couldn’t happen, he doesn’t take the doubt to heart. “Science looks at this stuff and says, ‘What the heck is this?’ And they say it’s heart tissue from a human,” he said.
One of the most well-known Eucharistic miracles occurred in Buenos Aires in 1996. There, a young Pope Francis (before he was pope) oversaw an event in which the consecrated host (bread) transformed into what seemed like a beating piece of heart tissue. He quickly obtained samples and sent them to scientific labs worldwide. Dr. Frederick Zugibe, an atheist cardiologist from Columbia University, was sent a sample of the tissue, given no information about its origin. Following extensive testing, Zugibe later testified that the sample he had received was of human heart tissue. When informed that it was the result of an Eucharistic Miracle, Zugibe reportedly remained in shock for several minutes. In the following months, the lifelong atheist converted to Catholicism.
The stories of such Eucharistic miracles have led to no shortage of scientific debate. Articles in the Journal of Forensic Science and Research and a 2021 book by Dr. Stacy Trasancos and George Elliot critiqued Zugibe’s experiments and suggested foul play. Finding out the truth is difficult, given the lack of forensic evidence and even greater lack of clarity on what happened on the day of the miracle.
Regardless of whether the miracles are true, the Pelosos maintain that Eucharistic Adoration, especially at nighttime, fosters a closer connection with God and holds transformative power. In one story, D. Peloso recalled how a devoted Nativity parishioner prayed for her son to land the job he’d been interviewing for. After the first interview, he got rejected. Then again, for the second interview. Just as the parishioner was ready to give up, her son got the job at his third interview.
“About two weeks later, 9/11 happened. Her son has a job a couple of blocks away, and watched people jumping off the World Trade Center, where he would have been working for the first two job interviews,” D. Peloso added.
