Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Lenten Holy Hours...


Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament

Begins one hour prior to every weekday Mass in Lent
From Thursday, February 23 to Wednesday, April 4.


"It was not until 1973, when we began our daily Holy Hour that our community started to grow and blossom." - Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta, foundress of the Missionaries of Charity


"The time you spend with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament is the best time that you will spend on earth. Each moment that you spend with Jesus will deepen your union with Him and make your soul everlastingly more glorious and beautiful in heaven, and will help bring about an everlasting peace on earth."  - Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta


“The holy hour in our modern rat race is necessary for authentic prayer. Our world is one of speed in which intensity of movement is a substitute for lack of purpose; where noise is invoked to drown out the whisperings of conscience; where talk, talk, talk gives the impression that we are doing something when really we are not; where activity kills self-knowledge won by contemplation…
There seems to be so little in common between our involvement with the news of the world and the Stranger in whose Presence we find ourselves. The hour means giving up a golf game or a cocktail party, or a nap…
Sometimes it is hard, especially during vacation when we have nothing to do. I remember once having two hours between trains in Paris. I went to the Church of Saint Roch to make my holy hour. There are not ten days a year I can sleep in the daytime This was one. I was so tired, I sat down at 2:00p.m.--too tired to kneel--and went to sleep. I slept perfectly until 3:00p.m. I said to the Good Lord: "Did I make a holy hour?" The answer came back: "Yes! That's the way the Apostles made their first one." The best time to make a holy hour is in the morning, early, before the day sets traps for us. By being faithful to it, and letting nothing interfere with it, we use it as the sign and symbol of our victimhood. We are not called to great penances, and many would interfere with our duty, but the hour is our daily sacrifice in union with Christ.”   - Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen