Manila, Philippines, May 27, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
As the National Eucharistic Revival comes to an end in the United States this year, many believe there is a need for a global Eucharistic revival in other parts of the world — including the Philippines.
Empty adoration chapels in the majority-Catholic country and lack of belief in the Real Presence are leading more parishes to implement a simple initiative called the “Holy Hour Pledge” and call for more catechesis.
Filipino-American priest Father James Cervantes of the Marians of the Immaculate Conception (MIC) lamented the phenomenon throughout different parishes across the Philippines, despite its renown as the largest Catholic nation in Asia and the third largest in the world.
“I came here to Manila just a year and a half ago. I noticed there are a lot of adoration chapels where Jesus is exposed, but they’re empty and abandoned. I was puzzled. I thought, ‘OK, maybe this is just one.’ But then I visited another church and another, across different cities — and again, Jesus was exposed, but they were all empty. In the U.S. and in Poland, this wouldn’t even be allowed. All I could think was, ‘Oh Lord, no one is in here, I’m so sorry Lord.’”
Cervantes recounted a tragic situation in one of the Manila parishes whereby the monstrance — with the consecrated host — was stolen by thieves inside an empty adoration chapel.
How can a deeply devout nation like the Philippines be devoid of adorers? Cervantes said it is only a symptom of a deeper problem.
“Empty adoration chapels are symptomatic of a deeper problem. People here are hungry for the faith; they actually want to know what the Church teaches, but there is a lack of catechesis and faith formation,” the priest told CNA.
For many Filipino Catholics, the faith is merely practiced in external rituals — but a deep relationship with Jesus, and a strong catechesis, is lacking.
This is not only a Philippine problem but also a universal one. Even in Catholic-majority countries like Brazil and Mexico there has been a reported upsurge in Catholics leaving the faith for Protestant denominations due to a lack of faith formation and personal relationship with Christ.
Both the Pew Research Center in “Religion in Latin America” (2014) and Premier Christian News in “Evangelicals Poised to Outnumber Catholics in Brazil” (2025) have reported on the decline in Catholicism and growth in Protestantism in Latin America, mainly due to “a lack of personal encounter with Christ” leaving them spiritually hungry and vulnerable to conversion. By contrast, evangelical churches often emphasize personal conversion, relationship with Jesus, and Bible study, filling the void left by poor catechesis in Catholic communities.
A Catholic who came back to the faith in the Philippines who preferred to remain anonymous shared with CNA that he felt he wasn’t being “fed” in the Catholic Church and hence had sought what he was hungering for elsewhere.
“In evangelical churches, we have Sunday school and Bible studies and discipleship groups keeping us in touch with our faith,” he shared. “I was hungry for Jesus. I wanted to grow more in my faith, but there are not many opportunities for ongoing formation in the Catholic Church, so I sought for that in evangelical circles.”
What brought him back? The Eucharist.
“Despite all the charismatic preaching and music and evangelism, something felt void and lacking. We didn’t have the Eucharist,” he said. “It was the Eucharist that brought me back to the Catholic faith, and it’s the Eucharist that makes me stay.”
“When I truly understood the meaning of the holy sacrifice of the Mass, and the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, there was just no going back. If I hunger to be ‘fed,’ it makes sense that none other than Jesus in the Eucharist can do that for me. Without the Eucharist, something just felt deeply missing.”
Cervantes agreed. “The Mass is the most powerful act of worship you can participate in on the face of the Earth. There are parishes which are vibrant, full of life, full of spirit … They’re so alive. You can just tell there’s a difference. We need to go back to the basics — more reverent Masses and good preaching.”
“People are coming to Sunday Masses anyway, so we as priests need to make use of that opportunity to give them basic catechesis right then and there. There is a real need for priests to emphasize the doctrine of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. There needs to be a re-catechesis of the most basic foundations of the Catholic faith,” Cervantes added.
A simple solution: the Holy Hour Pledge
In response to the crisis in Eucharistic belief and catechesis, various parishes across the Philippines implemented a simple but concrete solution: a “Holy Hour Pledge” initiative, which has seen remarkable success.
One such parish is the St. John Bosco Parish and Center for Young Workers in Santa Rosa, Laguna, Philippines. Outside its perpetual adoration chapel are pledge cards in which anyone can sign up and pledge one hour a week to accompany Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
Parishioners sign two wallet-sized pledge cards that read: “I love you, Lord. Out of my deep love for you, O my dear Lord, I am offering a Holy Hour each week to console you and to make reparation for my sins, those of my loved ones, and those of the whole world.” At the bottom of the card, one commits his or her chosen day and time each week for the Holy Hour.
One card is dropped into a dropbox outside the adoration chapel while the other is kept in the person’s wallet or on the refrigerator door as a reminder of his or her weekly pledge. Since the initiative began, the parish reported a significant rise in the number of visitors.
“It works because they are pledging not to any staff or person but to the Lord himself,” said Johanna Adaza, head of staff at the Archdiocesan Shrine of Divine Mercy in El Salvador, Philippines, which has also implemented its own Holy Hour initiative. “What we noticed is that most people adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament are old people.”
“There is a lack of formation in the younger generations, and so we need to re-catechize the youth,” she said.
A youth from a Manila parish shared: “We want to grow in faith. We long to understand the beauty of the Mass and the holiness of the Eucharist. But some Masses feel more like shows than sacred moments. Reverence is replaced with entertainment or jokes. We go to Mass because we’re looking for something deeper. We’re hungry for the Word, for meaning, for reverence … I hope priests will really prepare their homilies. It may be as short as five minutes but substantial. The homily is the catechism for some and the only time to know about the faith. Some homilies bring us to ‘aha’ moments.”
Kent, a 25-year-old adorer at St. John Bosco Parish, told CNA: “I used to feel depressed and so senseless. A friend suggested to me to visit the Blessed Sacrament for even just 15 minutes a day. I thought it was an absurd proposition, but I decided to take him up on it. After a while, I started to notice the difference. I couldn’t live without it. I committed to one hour a week on my pledge card, but I started going every day. I wanted to be face to face with Jesus as much as I could. As St. John Bosco, our parish’s patron, would always say: ‘Frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament will turn ordinary men into saints!’”
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It is deeply concerning to witness the continued narrowing of theological focus on the Eucharistic species alone as the exclusive locus of Christ’s real presence, as reflected in the recent National Eucharistic Congress in the United States and echoed in this essay suggesting a similar trajectory for the Church in the Philippines. Such a reductive view not only misrepresents the richness of Catholic Eucharistic theology but also risks obscuring the full sacramental and communal reality of the liturgy. The Second Vatican Council, in Sacrosanctum Concilium 7, clearly teaches that Christ is present in multiple ways in the liturgy: “He is present in the sacrifice of the Mass, not only in the person of his minister… but especially under the Eucharistic elements. He is present in his word, since it is he himself who speaks when the holy Scriptures are read in the Church. He is present, lastly, when the Church prays and sings, for he promised: ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.'” This fourfold presence—rooted in Scripture and the faith of the early Church—was deliberately retrieved and rearticulated by Vatican II as a corrective to centuries of overly narrow Eucharistic piety. Yet more than half a century later, this renewal remains far from fully or faithfully received. Too often it has not been thoroughly read, seriously studied, deeply comprehended, or properly implemented in liturgical practice and catechesis. Until the Church embraces this fuller vision of Christ’s real presence, the Eucharist risks being reduced to a static object of adoration, rather than the dynamic mystery of Christ alive and active in the Word proclaimed, the community gathered, and the presider who leads the Church in worship as in persona Christi.
I think what you described Deacon Dom, minus the Blessed Sacrament,is pretty much what I can find at a Protestant service. God bless our separated Christian brethren, but they lack Our Lord’s Body,Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the Sacrament of Communion.
Deacon. We hold to a distinction of real presence of Christ present to us in the Holy Eucharist, “The sacraments are holy in themselves and they pour grace into the soul by the power of Christ, when they touch the body. The Highest Kind of Presence” (Paul VI Mysterium Fidei 39).
Your recognition of Christ’s presence through the Holy Spirit in many other capacities is good. Nevertheless, we cannot dilute the exceptional presence in his flesh and blood, soul and divinity – the true, living Christ present to us as the second person of the Trinity. This gift to the Church excels any other act of grace, holiness of person, sacramental or liturgical event.
To teach that he is really present elsewhere in the exact sense as in the Eucharist dilutes the reality and fosters a ubiquitous presence tantamount to pantheism. All the forms of presence you mention receive their efficacy through the living faith of the believing Christian in his adoration of that unique presence when the priest concentrates the bread and wine.
What is implied in our recognition of the uniqueness of Christ’s real presence in the form of bread and wine is that salvation is essentially the work of God, not Man.
I have to say that what the Deacon thinks is a solution is in fact the problem:as central as celebration of the Mass is, that centrality has been used as an argument of diminishing worship of the Eucharist outside Mass. Christ is present to us in multiple ways, but what some pejoratively call “static” is in fact the most ontologically perduring Presence. I do not want to pit Eucharistic worship outside Mass against the Mass, but I think that conflict today is artificial: if 1950s and 1960s Catholics, affected by scrupulosity, focused more on “looking” than “eating,” the exact opposite situation exists today. The fact that adoration suffered eclipse in the immediate post-Conciliar period, to enjoy increasing recovery since the 1990s, is not a theological aberration. It may arguably be a sensus fidelium. I address these issues more at length in a recent review:
https://adoremus.org/2025/05/new-book-seeks-proper-liturgical-context-of-eucharist-with-reservations/
Deacon Dom: Pantheism has no place in the magisterium of the Catholic Church.
DiogenesRedux. Paul VI spoke clearly and best of the error of a “pneumatic” presence of Christ. His elaboration on the centrality of our faith in the real Eucharistic presence are summed up here:
“These various ways in which Christ is present fill the mind with astonishment and offer the Church a mystery for her contemplation. But there is another way in which Christ is present in His Church, a way that surpasses all the others. It is His presence in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, which is, for this reason, ‘a more consoling source of devotion, a lovelier object of contemplation and holier in what it contains’ [39] than all the other sacraments; for it contains Christ Himself and it is ‘a kind of consummation of the spiritual life, and in a sense the goal of all the sacraments.’ [40]
39. This presence is called ‘real’ not to exclude the idea that the others are ‘real’ too, but rather to indicate presence par excellence, because it is substantial and through it Christ becomes present whole and entire, God and man” (Mysterium Fidei).
Father, I remember a priest in our diocese remarking in reference to reverencing the altar, that it mattered not which part of the altar is reverenced since the entire altar is Christ. And, yet, if it came to sacrificing my life in order to prevent the desecration of a consecrated Host vs.that of an altar, I know which I’d choose.
I think Deacon Dom’s words reveal exactly why Mass attendance and Catholic belief are waning worldwide, but he has not at all said what he believes he has said.
Deacon Dom, as a Carmelite nun, I understand the point that you are trying to make. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that there are three forms of Jesus’ real presence: his historical presence in His ascended body in heaven, His sacramental presence in the Eucharist, and His mystical presence through grace in the believer. Those are all forms of His real presence. His mystical presence through grace is the focus of Carmelite spirituality. And not just Carmelite spirituality. To quote an earlier Leo: ““The effect of our sharing in the body and blood of Christ is to change us into what we receive”. (St. Leo) And St. Cyril of Alexandria: ““The Body is given to you under the species of bread and the Blood under the species of wine, so that, participating in the Body and Blood of Christ, you may become concorporeal and consanguineous with him.” (Sr. Cyril of Jerusalem, “Mystigogical Catecheses,” IV, 3 [PG 33, 1100].
Yes, Deacon Dom, SC does say that Christ is present in multiple ways in the liturgy, and the CCC defines liturgy as the participation of the People of God in “the work of God.”
The Eucharist IS God, so Eucharistic Adoration is our work. It is the basis, the commemorative reminder, the BEING of God given to us. The visibility of the Living Eucharist sharpens a man’s focus in a way no field of wheat or grain of sand can.
Eucharistic Adoration will never be piety gone astray. One who sees God in the Eucharist and adores Him there in all His mystery will find His presence there and extending everywhere. The obverse is not necessarily true.
So take your static sticks and electricity to Him. He waits for you. You can see him and talk to him. He will bless you.
P.S.: The host in the monstrance has been consecrated at a Mass. It reminds of the Mass, derives from the Mass where the Word makes Himself visible and edible for us. No way in hell is Eucharistic Adoration a downgrade from Christ present at the liturgy of the Mass. The Eucharist at Adoration calls to mind His beginning and our end.
Very well explained.
I think that Leo will show the way.
Bit confusing at present with recent appointments: Paglia’s replacement who believes in artificial contraception; a theological disaster awaiting in St Gallen and “nun” leading a Vatican Dicastery? Come on Holiness, we need Good News here!
We need Good News & a lack of negativity both.
I made a New Year’s resolution to avoid what’s negative in 2025. That’s not always possible but I’m doing my best. The hope I have is that we can turn a new page with Pope Leo & think twice before we take up the old bickering & grievance competitions from the past dozen years.
🙂
J. Mcallion Why do you put “nun” in quotation marks, please?
Hi Sr. Gabriela,
I do not answer for McCallion. The question of a difference between a religious sister and a nun arose in another OP, with some questioning whether Sr. Merletti is a ‘nun’ who took vows in a contemplative order. Do you know? I don’t.
Sadly, this is a result of our faith being watered down due to numerous compromises we made in order to be up to date with everyone else.
For most Catholics, their faith begins and ends at Sunday mass rather than being the source of grace to live our faith in the world. We have lost our identity as Catholics, the fasting, abstinence and devotions that once defined us has been lost.
Your comment is spot on correct, Nick.
Unfortunately Cleo, as Edward Pentin indicates in his assessment of Pope Leo’s appointment of Msgr Pegoraro, Paglia’s assistant during his tenure, as the new president for the Academy of Life – the iniquities of the recent past are being reconfirmed by our ‘beloved’ Pope Leo XIV.
Fr. Morello above (4:50 p.m.) – Interesting comment re Catholic understanding of salvation as the work of God, not man.
Cf Dr. John Bergsma – What Protestants get wrong about the sacraments (Matt Fradd, Pints with Aquinas).
Thanks Cleo. I just watched and listened to Dr Bergsma in that YouTube clip. He was excellent. He explained well the misunderstanding that what Catholics believe leave it all up to God’s work, Pelagianism in the sense we simply carry on as usual, whereas Bergsma responds we must also respond, to do our part as Christ would say.
That’s the issue with loss of faith in the Eucharistic real presence. We lose our faith in God’s continued presence through the gifts of grace given us. This is what occurred in the Philippines.
Kneeling to receive Communion is discouraged most emphatically in our church! Receiving Jesus, standing, with a so-called “throne” formation of the hands is now the most accepted way to receive. I kneel and receive on my tongue, but I always, always sense the disapproval. Where is the reverence? Where is the fear? I thought only the ordained hands of the Priest were to touch our Lord in the Eucharist. The sermons are rudimentary, and the children and young people in the Mass are not given even one minute of personal advice or attention in each homily: I think this is a mistake, because the young feel disconnected from a sermon that is directed at adults only. The Protestant churches can be so vibrant, but no matter how much they reach the hearts of the people, only the Catholics have the Divine Presence, but it is not reverently feared, loved or received with a reverence that was shown for thousands of years.
The Philippines is just another place where liturgical innovation and persecution of the Latin Mass, and indeed any reverent Mass, have produced the expected results. There is nothing to analyze.