News Item: : The Peace of Christ - Let Us Adore Him
(Category: Torch of The Faith News)
Posted by admin
Saturday 08 September 2018 - 00:54:48

The Blessed Sacrament Shrine on Dawson Street Liverpool - as viewed on the Twitter feed for Adoremus 2018.

There is a tangible peace on Merseyside tonight, which must surely be due to all the Eucharistic Adoration happening around the city for the Adoremus Eucharistic Congress.

We've just been heartened to learn that some 450 people entered the Blessed Sacrament Shrine on Dawson Street, during this evening alone, in order to pray before the Real Presence of Our Blessed Lord in the splendid Monstrance there.

The Blessed Sacrament Shrine on Dawson Street has been an important place in the faith journey of so many of us Catholics from in and around Liverpool.

It was an oasis of peace that helped my late father to convert and come into the Catholic Church in the late 80's. It was also a favourite place of prayer for my late friend Fr. Mike Williams. If I ever popped into the shrine to pray, Fr. Mike would invariably be there already - kneeling bolt upright with his eyes fixed on Jesus in the beautiful, golden Monstrance. He could sometimes spend hours in silent prayer there.

The shrine was also always one of my own favourite places to pray and to go to Confession whenever I was in the city.

Perhaps we could say a prayer this night for the shrine's former superior, Fr. Gary Walsh SSS, who died young just a few years ago. Like the shrine, Fr. Gary was also an important part of the faith journey of so many Liverpool Catholics. He'd have loved to think of so many souls coming to adore Our Lord in the chapel there. May he rest in peace.

I've just been reading Bishop Mark Davies' encouraging Adoremus article on the need for a return to the Most Holy Eucharist in the Church and in society. It really is a most heartening piece.

I was particularly struck by something quite remarkable whilst reading it.

For so long, I have been identifying and articulating for others the stages of decay which have led from the 16th-Century Protestant Revolt, down through the Enlightenment, French Revolution, Sexual Revolution and two World Wars through to the collapse into the Post-Modern relativistic society of today.

Reading Bishop Davies' inspiring article, I was struck by the fact that he focuses not on the stages of decay, but on the fact of restoration. And it is clear from what he writes that, with the sight of faith, he understands the start of this restoration as a fact.

Indeed, I was most intrigued, and even moved, by his identification of the start of this restoration, this re-evangelization, as being focused on the life and times of St. John Vianney, with his awesome apostolate in the small town of Ars.

Bishop Davies wrote that he contends that the new evangelization of Western society began there at Ars with St. John Vianney.

This is certainly a fresh, positive and thought provoking perspective; and it is clear from what he writes that this has come as the fruit of much prayer offered before Our Lord in the Tabernacle.

His Lordship explains: ''In later years when the Cure was asked how Ars was converted (along with many other people in France), he would simply point to the place where he knelt in prayer before the Tabernacle... In this same place we too must begin the wider renewal of faith in the Holy Eucharist. We might say it is something that can only be accomplished on our knees.''

By God's grace, many people have begun to do just this today before the Blessed Sacrament at the various Adoremus venues for Eucharistic Adoration.

This Adoremus Congress is certainly turning out to be a time of unexpected graces and blessings.

Please join us in praying that it will be a time for: renewal and reform in the Church; for a return to orthodoxy in our bishops, priests and lay faithful; and an opportunity for new people to come to know, love and serve our Divine Saviour in the Most Holy Eucharist. May this weekend draw down many graces for our city, our dioceses of England and Wales, and also far beyond.

St. John Vianney - pray for us! 

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