In the city that never sleeps, Christ brings a peaceful respite.

“This is a 24/7 city, and it needs 24/7 prayer,” says Dominican Father Boniface Endorf, the pastor of St. Joseph Catholic Church in the heart of Manhattan.

Until mid-2023, however, Manhattan didn’t have a perpetual adoration chapel. Now, it does, the Divine Mercy Adoration Chapel, located in the rectory.

Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen, who will be beatified in September, filmed his popular television show in Midtown Manhattan. For more than 60 years, he spent an hour in Eucharistic adoration every day, calling it an “oxygen tank” for the soul.

“Looking at the Eucharistic Lord for an hour transforms the heart in a mysterious way,” he wrote.

And it has profoundly transformed St. Joseph’s. The main Sunday Masses are standing-room-only. After COVID, attendance at the weekly young-adult get-together averaged 20 to 25; now, 250 regularly attend. Confession lines are out the door, and more confessionals had to be installed. In 2026, confirmations hit record highs; 2027 projections are even higher.

“I think it’s no accident that this picked up about two to three years ago, and that’s right when we put the chapel in,” says Father Endorf.

Dominican Father Jonah Teller, vicar and a member of The Hillbilly Thomists, is also convinced the chapel accounts for a number of vocations to the priesthood and other religious discernments. He has witnessed the fruit with couples preparing for marriage, too. “God’s the only load-bearing structure for your heart, and that’s really important to learn when you’re preparing to unite your life with somebody,” he says.

But why is a perpetual adoration chapel so important to what’s considered the greatest city in the world?

“How much time do you have?” Father Teller told the Register. “New York is designed for speed and production.” And that’s how people get measured, with the externals “screaming and claiming to be the foundation of your worth. The adoration chapel is a space that explodes all of those myths. Prayer is where illusion goes to die.”

That’s exactly what happened with Daniela Reginato, 51, confirmed at St. Joseph’s in April. Baptized Roman Catholic, she never practiced her faith in communist Slovakia where she grew up. She came to the U.S. in the 1990s and lived life in the fast lane of the art and modeling worlds until her husband’s serious illness “brought me to my knees,” she says. She started attending daily Mass and adoration — and hasn’t stopped.

“I didn’t think I could have been silent for more than three minutes in my previous existence,” she says. She’d never had an interior life and dove “into the knowledge of who I was,” discovering her purpose was to know and love God. “But how can you love God if you don’t know who he is?”

So she got to know him, weeping at first. “All the outside validation is stripped away and there you are, like a baby in front of your Creator,” she says. She lost her old friends and left her prior life behind. She may have out run communism by coming here, but salvation gave her true freedom.

When Father Endorf arrived in 2018, the church needed massive repairs. After that was completed, he brought the aim of raising $850,000 for the chapel to prayer.

“In prayer, I just said, ‘God if you want this chapel, you’re got to do something,’” he says. “The very next day, I get a call from someone out of the blue who gives a significant five-figure donation.” The day after that, it was six figures. By the end of the week, donations totaled well more than half — all from people he didn’t know.

The New York Archdiocese had dreamed of such a chapel for years, but Father Endorf was the first to say “Yes.” Security, a primary concern, was solved by security cameras and keycards, which are even available to out-of-town visitors.

A few years ago, I flew to New York when my daughter became ill. I had read about the chapel, hopped on the subway, and was greeted by a dazzling mosaic of the Divine Mercy image decorating the tabernacle. A few months before, I’d visited Krakow, Poland, where I first learned about St. Faustina at the Basilica of Divine Mercy complex. I poured my heart out to God in silence. Back at the hospital, I asked a nurse for directions to the restroom, thanked her, and then something made me ask her name.

“Mercy,” she said.

Eventually, my daughter recovered. St. Joseph’s has had a special place in my heart ever since, and the experience piqued my interest in adoration back home.

Venisa Ustynoski, 60, and a cradle Catholic, found the chapel just when she needed it, too. While moving around, she’d always found an adoration chapel wherever she lived. Back in Manhattan, however, there wasn’t one.

Last year, she lost her job and became increasingly worried about finances. She “froze,” she says, when a neighbor with whom she was doing laundry told her about St. Joseph’s.

“I felt like God was saying, ‘Come to me,’” she says. So she did — and found peace.

St. Augustine, whose rule the Dominican Order follows, wrote in his Confessions: “[O]ur hearts are restless until they rest in you.” That rest finds perfect alignment before the Blessed Sacrament and fits perfectly within the friars’ mission. As Father Teller observed, in order to preach the Gospel to save souls, one must first be filled with God — and that’s where adoration comes in.

José Silva, 65 and a revert, saw a flyer for the chapel and found his oasis from “this crazy-loud city where you can just get away for an hour and be with Our Lord.” He was awed by its beauty and careful attention to detail. “God is love, but he’s also beauty,” he says. “I’m so grateful for them. God deserves the best.”

Exposition is available Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., with hopes to expand to the full 24-hour period the chapel is open. The friars also chant the Divine Hours. Additional plans include times for the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet.

People associate the command, “Build it, and they will come,” with the film Field of Dreams. But the concept hails from an earlier time, recounted in Ezra, when the Jews prospered after heeding God’s command to rebuild the temple. Thousands of years later, a group of Dominican preachers answered a similar call, and souls have flocked there ever since.

One is Savannah Green, a 23-year-old New Yorker who works in finance. She was baptized and confirmed at St. Joseph’s in April.

In the whirlwind of Manhattan, adoration “is the cornerstone of my life,” she says. After going out with friends during the weekend, “I know afterwards I’m going to adoration,” she adds. “And I’m just so excited.”