Adoremus Report

Following the coach journey to Liverpool with other parishioners, seminarians and some clergy from our diocese, and an overnight stay in Liverpool Hope University halls of residence, the weekend’s events were as follows.

Saturday 8th September:

The day started with morning prayers in Liverpool , followed by Mass to celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Richard led the celebration of the Mass, which was concelebrated by many other and priests.

During his homily, Bishop Richard made the following key points:

1. The Eucharist is the Source and Summit of our lives. What we have comes from the Eucharist - the source. Our aim is to reach Christ (who is the Eucharist) - the summit.

2. We must not take our eyes off Christ, because when we do we can end up in dark places where we don’t want to be.

3. When we take our eyes off Christ we get distracted by the world and by the values of the world which are often counter to the values of Christ. We need to stay close to Christ, be watchful and be on our guard.

The day then continued at the Liverpool ACC Echo Arena, with a series of talks and presentations, culminating in prayers, Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction led by Cardinal Nichols.

The key note speaker at the event was Bishop Robert Baron (founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries and an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles). He gave two excellent talks which seemed to keep the entire arena gripped throughout. Below are some of the key points from his talks.

Talk 1 – The Mystery of the Mass – The Source and Summit of Christian Life https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPR2u6NkZeU

1. Mass is the Supreme Mystery, not a religiously themed jamboree around the theme of Jesus (Bishop Barron’s words). The Mass is the privileged encounter with Jesus Christ. There is no more intense encounter with the Lord than the Mass. The Mass is a series of mysteries that put us into contact with the divine reality. Mass is not subordinate to some end beyond itself, it is not utilitarian, it is simply good in itself. Mass is beauty in itself. It exists to adore God.

2. When we adore we are aligned unto God, ordered unto God. The master theme of the entire Bible is adoration, teaching first Israel and then the whole world how properly to adore the Lord. When we adore something other than God (money, power, pleasure, honour, country, whatever it is) we disintegrate, we tend to fall apart. But when we adore the Lord we are aligned with God, then we become rightly ordered on the inside and peace tends to break out around us. The Mass is the supreme form of worship or adoration, and in that act we become rightly ordered.

3. By the very act of gathering we are experiencing a mystery as we come together for Mass in our great diversity to this one place, for this one act. In that very act of coming together what is expressed is the Church. We are called together, out from the world (of hatred, violence etc) into a new space, the space of the Church.

4. Singing at the Mass is not merely decorative, our singing here below is meant to be an echo of the heavenly singing. In Heaven the angels sing in harmony around the throne of God. Our singing at Mass mirrors that and joins with it, our voices become one with theirs. Mass is the place when Heaven and Earth meet and embrace.

5. We begin the ritual with the great Sign of the Cross and in doing this we claim ourselves as belonging to the trinitarian God. The common view today is, “I invent myself, through my freedom, I decide my values, I decide my identity, I decide who I am”. No, we don’t belong to ourselves, we belong to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit and with the Sign of the Cross we signal this great identity on our bodies.

6. At Mass the priest is not operating in his own name, he is operating in persona Christi. Symbolically the priest puts on vestments to cover up his ordinary identity. He is in a ritual space and is not greeting people in his own name, he is greeting people in persona Christi capitis. The priest is operating in the person of Christ, the head of the mystical body. When the people respond, “And with your spirit,” it is because this Christ that through ordination is dwelling in him, is awakening.

7. When we acknowledge our sins, we are driving from darkness into the light. We see our own sin, not when we are driving away from the light, but when we are driving into the light. As we turn in adoration toward the light of grace, we acknowledge our sins and cry out to the Lord to have pity on us. We acknowledge our sins and stand as forgiven sinners in the presence off the Lord.

8. When we sing the Gloria, “Glory to God in the highest”, we should ask ourselves, “What really is highest to me?” What, in your life, do you give the highest glory to? The answer this prayer is giving is God. Only by giving highest glory to God will peace break out in me and around me.

9. In the Liturgy of the Word, we are conversing with the Lord, we listen and respond. God is not a mystical abstraction, the Biblical God is a person who speaks, who addresses us. We do not make up our own life stories, we belong within the story of scripture; we need to hear that story told over and over again, to discover who we are. We come to Mass to hear that story again and again. The heresy of Marcionism is alive and well today with a rejection of the Old Testament with this angry God and instead just tells the story of Jesus based on the Gospels (or actually on only certain parts of the Gospels). You will not get Jesus right unless you understand the Old Testament. We interpret Jesus against the Old Testament background.

10. The Liturgy of the Eucharist is a great act of sacrificial adoration. When we give to God, the little offering of bread and wine, we give what God doesn’t need, but God elevates, multiplies and transfigures it for the spiritual feeding of the world. The Eucharist is a word event, Christ becomes really, truly and substantially present by the power of the word. Our human word is passive, but God’s word is active, it creates. What Jesus says is. When Jesus says, “This is my Body”, it is His Body. Jesus is the Word made Flesh. When the priest says these words at Mass, he is at the moment when he is most fully in persona Christi capitis, speaking not his own words, but the words of Christ. At this moment we present to the Father, not puny gifts of bread and wine, but the Son, with all of us united to Christ the head. That is the moment of supreme adoration, when we become properly aligned. That is the moment when creation is knitted back together. This supreme sacrifice offered to the Father, comes back to us and we become fed by the Body and Blood of Jesus. That is the great climax of the Mass, that’s what we are there for.

Talk 2 – Sainthood, Sanctity and what makes us Holy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EU-lAFC2eo

Christianity is a walk of three consecutive paths. Find the centre. Know that you are a sinner. Realise that your life is not about you.

1) Path 1. Find the centre.

i) When Christ is at the centre of our lives, everything falls into place. With Christ at the centre, everything else in our lives will be connected, integrated and in harmony.

ii) In the Gospel account of Martha and Mary, Mary focussed her life on the one important thing (the unum necessarium) while Martha was focussed on many different things. All parts of your life, as complex as your life may be, should be gathered harmoniously in Christ.

iii) In scripture when there are accounts of demons, they refer to themselves as many, “We”, “Legion” etc. This represents a scattering, a disunity, not a harmony.

2) Path 2. Know that you are a sinner.

i) In the light of grace we realise that we are sinners. GK Chesterton once said that we’re all in the same boat and we’re all seasick. He also said that a saint is someone who really knows he is a sinner.

ii) Only in God will our souls be at rest. The heart is wired to God and only in God will our hearts be at peace.

iii) Thomas Aquinas said that here are four great substitutes to God: wealth, power, pleasure and honour. If we drink from these four wells we will always be thirsty, we will never be satisfied and will always want more. Like the Gospel account of the Woman at the Well, we will always get thirsty drinking from these wells. The well we need to drink from is the well of eternal life. iv) John of the Cross said that an attachment is anything in this world, including your own life, that you’re convinced you can’t live without. To identify your attachments is to know that you are a sinner.

3) Path 3. Realise that your life is not about you

i) It is your life, but it’s just not about you. It is about something that stretches infinitely beyond you. The notion that, “I invent my own life,” is nonsense. Your life is not about you, and your small ideas, your little plans. Your life is part of something much bigger. It is about finding God’s plans for your life.

ii) The term pusilla anima refers to the ‘small soul’, closed in on itself, with its own little ideas. The term magna anima refers to the ‘large soul’, connected to truth, to beauty and to goodness and finally to God. St Augustine said that sin is to be caved in around oneself. That’s the ‘small soul’; my little plans, my little preoccupations, my little fears. We need to move from the musty, stuffy confines of the pusilla anima to discover the great space of the magna anima.

iii) In Ephesians, St Paul says there is a power already at work in you that can do infinitely more than you can ask for or imagine. We could bore ourselves to death with what we could ask or imagine, but there is a power at work in you that can do infinitely more than that. Surrender to that power and you’ll realise your life is not about you.

iv) The Catholic theologian Balthasar distinguished between the ego-drama (the drama we are producing about ourselves and above all starring in) and the theo-drama (the drama that God is producing and directing). Most of us sinners live our lives in our ego-drama. Find what God wants you to do and do that with all your heart. The spiritual writer Jean Pierre de Caussade said that everything that happens to you is in some sense the will of God. Either God directly desires it for you or God is permitting it. God is directly involved in everything. God is everywhere. Stop directing your life ego-dramatically, start thinking about it theo-dramatically.

v) Your life is not about you, it is about cooperating with what God has placed in front of you, what God’s purpose is for you. Find the centre, get your life gathered around Christ, know you are a sinner, name your attachments and false forms of worship, and then realise that your life isn’t about you, but about your participation in this great divine adventure.

Other speakers

There were various other speakers including:

i. Magnus MacFarlane, founder and CEO of Mary’s Meals. https://www.marysmeals.org.uk/ He spoke of the work of Mary’s Meals charity, which currently provides more than 1.1 million of the world’s poorest children in 13 countries with a daily meal in school, and how it was instigated, not by a great plan or strategy, but as a result of prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament. He also spoke of a miracle that had been told to him by the Sisters of Charity in Haiti when he had visited during an earthquake in Haiti. During the earthquake the nuns had prayed in front of the Blessed Sacrament that the children they had been caring for would be spared and while they were praying the statue of Mary had turned around to face the Blessed Sacrament with them, at which point the tremors stopped. They believed that Mary had joined them in their prayers before the Blessed Sacrament, imploring her Son to help, and the children were saved.

ii. There was a presentation from the Apostleship for Prayer who spoke about the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer network https://www.pathwaystogod.org/org/popes-global-prayer-network which includes an app to help people pray.

iii. Marie Fahy and John Pontifex from Aid to the Church in Need. They spoke about the persecution of Christians in the world today and how there are more Christians being martyred today than there were in the early church. Christian martyrdom is happening at unprecedented levels. 200 million Christians are under threat today. They are being tested in faith and we are being tested in love. They introduced the ACN initiative which asks that people offer to go to an extra Mass or an extra Eucharistic adoration in place of a persecuted Christian who would want to go, but can’t. https://acnuk.org/resource/go-to- adoration-for-someone-who-cant/

iv. There was a presentation about the Night Fever initiative which is an international Catholic initiative for young people (aged 16 to 35). This initiative involves young people meeting to adore the Blessed Sacrament and going out to encourage others. https://nightfever.org/us/location/gb I know that St Patrick’s church in Soho are very involved in this initiative.

v. There was also some inspiring testimonies from some young people about how they returned to the Catholic faith through adoration of the Eucharist. The one that stuck in my mind was an account from a young woman which went something like this. While she was at University (I think) she went into the church when adoration happened to be taking place and sat in front of the Blessed Sacrament when it dawned on her, in a bit of shock, that this was God. As there was Confession happening at the same time she went to the priest, pointed to the Blessed Sacrament and asked him, “Do you realise that that is really God?” He said, “Yes, of course.” She then pointed to all the people sitting and kneeling in the church and said to the priest, “But do they know?”

vi. There was also a very thought provoking and moving presentation through drama by some young people about adoration of the Blessed Sacrament based on the question, “Who do you see when you look at me?”.

The Saturday ended with prayers, a homily from Cardinal Nichols, a procession of the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham carried by members of HM forces, then Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament and Benediction.

Sunday 9th September:

We had breakfast at the university campus, followed by the walk to the coach to go to the cathedral. Before Mass we had the opportunity to admire the beautiful crypt under the cathedral. The crypt was the original church building before the current cathedral was built on top of it. We then attended Mass in the cathedral, which was celebrated by Cardinal Nichols with a great many other bishops and priests concelebrating. The choir was huge and was accompanied by a beautiful orchestra. An impressive carpet of flowers had been laid out down the length of the main aisle of the cathedral by volunteers from the cathedral flower team. The statue of Our Lady of Walsingham was present at Mass, as she had been at the conference on Saturday.

After Mass, Cardinal Nichols processed the Blessed Sacrament in the monstrance, across the carpet of flowers and through the cathedral, out into the streets outside. Then the procession of the Blessed Sacrament, also including the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, proceeded through the streets of Liverpool. There was a huge train of bishops, priests, seminarians, papal, knights and dames following the Blessed Sacrament and this was followed by 10,000 Catholics following behind. It was an amazing sight and experience, even though for the first 20 minutes the rain poured on us.

The procession ended with Cardinal Nichols carrying the Blessed Sacrament up the huge set of steps outside Liverpool cathedral, followed by Benediction of the crowd beneath.

There are various images and video clips online, but the following are quite good links. http://www.catholicnews.org.uk/Home/Special-Events/Adoremus-National-Eucharistic-Pilgrimage/Watch- Again/Procession

http://catholicherald.co.uk/news/2018/09/10/the-best-pictures-from-the-adoremus-eucharistic-procession/

We then had a short time to admire the impressive Liverpool Cathedral before leaving for the coach trip home. We both feel very blessed to have been able to attend such a prayerful and informative weekend with so many of our Catholic brothers and sisters.

With best wishes,

Catherine and Brendan