Eucharistic adoration following Pope Francis’ Corpus Christi Mass on June 14, 2020. / Vatican Media.
Vatican City, Oct 22, 2022 / 08:45 am (CNA).
It is good to “waste time adoring” Christ present in the Holy Eucharist, Pope Francis said on Saturday.
“I urge you to especially devote yourselves to the prayer of adoration — this is important,” he told a group of religious sisters at the Vatican Oct. 22.
“It is good to adore in silence before the Most Blessed Sacrament,” he said, “to be in the consoling presence of Jesus and there to draw the apostolic impetus to be instruments of goodness, tenderness and welcome in the community, the Church, and the world.”
Francis said the world today has lost the sense of what it means to engage in the form of prayer known as adoration or worship; “to waste time adoring.”
“This prayer is not often done: I ask you to do it. Adore, immerse yourself in divine love and give it with full hands to those you meet on your path,” he urged.
Pope Francis met Saturday religious women belonging to two communities: The Comboni Missionary Sisters and the Order of the Most Holy Savior, also known as the Bridgettines.
He said the sisters’ mission of hospitality is improved with time spent contemplating Christ.
“Welcoming, one of the characteristic aspects of your mission, will be more fruitful to the extent in which the prayer of contemplation will make you come out of yourself and focus your life on Jesus Christ, letting him do things in you, letting him act in you,” he said.
“This inner movement,” Francis added, “will make possible a service to others that is not philanthropy or welfarism, but openness to the other, closeness, sharing; in a word: charity.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Vatican City, Sep 9, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- American seminarians met with Pope Francis this week after completing a 14-day mandatory quarantine upon their arrival in Rome.
For the 155 seminarians living at the Pontifical North American College (NAC) … […]
A view from in St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California. / Credit: St. Michael’s Abbey
CNA Staff, Jan 9, 2024 / 10:30 am (CNA).
An abbey in California launched a consulting and fundraising firm that its leaders say is helping “serve and nourish the Church during a very unique moment in her history.”
The Abbey Group was launched at St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California, in 2020 after the priests saw major success with a capital campaign to build a new monastery there.
The abbey, of the Norbertine order, launched the campaign in 2006 but it stalled after “a decade of fits and starts,” Gregory Clark, the strategic planning director of the Abbey Group, told CNA. The abbey’s leadership consequently assembled “a small, internal team of confreres to rethink the project,” hiring R. Shane Giblin in the process.
Within short order the abbey had secured over $150 million in commitments, more than doubling earlier projections of $60 million. The team also found “creative ways to immediately pay off all their bank debt in the same year it opened.”
St. Michael’s Abbey Father Prior Chrysostom Baer told CNA the project had transformed to the point that it was “no longer about what the abbey needed but rather the opportunity the benefactors had to do something of great consequence for themselves and the Church.”
“This not only fit with our calling as religious, but it was simply more effective,” Baer said.
The major success of that campaign led people to seek out both Giblin and the Norbertine Fathers “asking for strategic counsel on how to move forward with their own projects,” Clark said.
Giblin and the abbey’s Father Justin Ramos “began offering pro bono counsel for about 18 months until they saw there was a real need in the Church that wasn’t being met.” The Abbey Group was launched as a result.
St. Michael’s Abbey in Orange County, California. Credit: St. Michael’s Abbey
‘Not dissimilar from what St. Norbert encountered 900 years ago’
St. Norbert established the Canons Regular of Prémontré in Prémontré, France, in 1121. The order’s task was in part to revitalize both clergy and lay faithful that had become dissolute in the faith at the time.
The Abbey Group “exists to help serve and nourish the Church during a very unique moment in her history — not dissimilar from what St. Norbert encountered 900 years ago,” Clark told CNA.
The initiative “provides strategic counsel and direction to faithful Catholic religious communities, educational institutions, and apostolates around the world,” Clark said, with a focus on institutions that have “ambitious apostolic endeavors and strong leadership but are in need of the financial and temporal resources to accomplish their objectives.”
The Abbey Group team has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for worthy Catholic projects, though it does not engage in any formal marketing. The group intentionally eschews online marketing, avoiding the common business practice to “saturate the internet with messages” of self-promotion.
Giblin, now serving as CEO and co-founder of the Abbey Group, said this is intentional. “All of our clients come to us through unsolicited word of mouth,” he said. “So our reputation is all we have — if we don’t do good work we won’t exist — and we shouldn’t exist.”
The group has already developed “a queue of clients” — it takes on just four projects at any one time, vigorously vetting each proposal for its fidelity to the Catholic Church as well as the leadership guiding the project in question.
The majority of the staff are drawn from the laity, and the Norbertine Fathers offer “spiritual guidance” to the team and play a role in the governance of the organization.
Altogether the effort is directed toward “providing worthy Catholic projects with the strategy and resources they need to fulfill what God is calling them to accomplish,” Clark said.
Giblin said he was fortunate to have had “a front-row seat to see the way Father Abbot and Father Justin were able to work with a special group of people from all over the country to courageously support this unique project.”
“I saw people grow spiritually through this process and I realized this was just as much an opportunity for them as it was for the abbey,” he said. “It is an authentically Catholic approach to fundraising — one that is desperately needed in our Church during this moment in her history.”
Co-founder of the Abbey Group Father Ramos, meanwhile, said the endeavor’s work “is rooted inexorably in faith and charity, and in Christ.”
“We’re aiding in discernment,” Ramos said, “to allow generous souls to participate in the renewing of the Church.”
CNA Newsroom, Dec 1, 2022 / 16:30 pm (CNA).
Father Alberto Reyes, a priest of the Archdiocese of Camagüey, Cuba, recently shared a reflection on Facebook about human dignity as experienced in his homeland.He noted that “… […]
“It is good to waste time adoring Christ present in the Holy Eucharist” (Il Poverello Papa Francesco).
Poor Francis. Even when he’s in his kindly, insightful best self he gets hammered. Most in our world indeed do consider hours [or an hour as recommended by bishop Sheen for the laity, and many ordinaries for their clergy] consider it a waste compared to activity. Loving intercessory prayer draws grace down upon us and those who most need it.
And as Francesco adds it hones our efforts for the wanting into charity from the heart rather than impersonal ritual.
Considering his history, it is difficult to not be skeptical whether words of wisdom actually originated with him, or that a slipped word of waste might even be a precursor to a future plan to admonish the entire Catholic world to abandon “wasteful” devotions while establishing cover against future criticism by giving his defenders something favorable to quote. His defenders never seem to notice or care when he speaks or acts with contradictory values.
Scripture proves the devil knows scripture. He surely knows the Letter to the Ephesians (5:15) where Paul urges Christians to ‘redeem’ their time: “See how you walk circumspectly, not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
The bishop of Rome proclaims Eucharistic adoration to be both a waste of time and a valuable devotion. The devil must be salivating at the size of his prize.
Isn’t this rather “backwardist”?
“It is good to waste time adoring Christ present in the Holy Eucharist” (Il Poverello Papa Francesco).
Poor Francis. Even when he’s in his kindly, insightful best self he gets hammered. Most in our world indeed do consider hours [or an hour as recommended by bishop Sheen for the laity, and many ordinaries for their clergy] consider it a waste compared to activity. Loving intercessory prayer draws grace down upon us and those who most need it.
And as Francesco adds it hones our efforts for the wanting into charity from the heart rather than impersonal ritual.
Considering his history, it is difficult to not be skeptical whether words of wisdom actually originated with him, or that a slipped word of waste might even be a precursor to a future plan to admonish the entire Catholic world to abandon “wasteful” devotions while establishing cover against future criticism by giving his defenders something favorable to quote. His defenders never seem to notice or care when he speaks or acts with contradictory values.
Scripture proves the devil knows scripture. He surely knows the Letter to the Ephesians (5:15) where Paul urges Christians to ‘redeem’ their time: “See how you walk circumspectly, not as unwise, but as wise; redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”
The bishop of Rome proclaims Eucharistic adoration to be both a waste of time and a valuable devotion. The devil must be salivating at the size of his prize.
I just wish Bergoglio would follow his own advice.
The more time he spends in quiet adoration, the less damage he can do to this poor, suffering Body of Christ.