Revive devotions
for year of priests,
urges Archbishop
By Mark Greaves

26 June 2009

Archbishop Vincent Nichols pictured during the opening Mass for the Year for Priests at Westminster Cathedral last Friday (Mazur / CCN / www.catholicchurch.org.uk)

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster has opened the Year for Priests by urging Catholics to devote an hour each week to pray for priests in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

The Archbishop made the plea in a homily at Westminster Cathedral in which he said every parish should focus its year's efforts on a renewal of prayer life.

He also suggested that parishes introduce Forty Hours' Devotion, where Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is kept up continuously at a succession of different churches.

He said the practice would "sustain us in our life together, enable us to thank God whole-heartedly for the gift of our priests" and be a source for new vocations.

His homily coincided with the Pope's own formal opening of the Year for Priests at an evening prayer service at St Peter's Basilica last Friday.

During the service Pope Benedict XVI prayed in front of a relic of the heart of St John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests. The year-long focus on priestly ministry was meant to coincide with the 150th anniversary of his death.

He said the saint's heart had "burned with divine love", a love that priests need to imitate if they are to be effective pastors.

The day before the Mass Benedict XVI had issued a six-page letter celebrating the priesthood while acknowledging the harm that some priests had done.

He said: "What is most helpful to the Church... is not only a frank and complete acknowledgment of the weaknesses of her ministers, but also a joyful and renewed realisation of the greatness of God's gift [of the priesthood]."

In his homily at Westminster Archbishop Nichols said the Year for Priests was "a year in which, as a Church, we say that we are proud of our priests, that we love them, honour them and recognise with gratitude the witness of their lives and the generosity of their pastoral work".

He said for priests it was "a time for renewal in our ministry" - a renewal that would depend on each priest's relationship with Christ. "It is this relationship, above all else, that we will seek to renew, for from it flows our love for our people and our willingness to serve them freely and joyfully," he said.

The Archbishop said there was no better day for the year to begin than the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The Sacred Heart, he said, was a symbol of "the total self-giving love of the Lord" which priests try to reflect in their own lives.

He said there were many ways to speak about the role of the priest - as a leader, a teacher, and an "enabler, helping his people to live to the full the gifts of the Holy Spirit".

But his favourite image of the priest, he said, was as "an instrument in the hand of the Lord - a pencil, pen or biro perhaps - with which the Lord can write all that the Father tells him. And what he writes - if we permit him - will most certainly be a story of unfailing love."

He said priests were most clearly the instruments of Christ when they celebrated Mass and when they absolved sins - "the great treasure and privilege of the priesthood".

He said: "Today, we priests need to remember that all our words carry great resonance. The words we say, the things we do, can bring about great good, even when we don't intend it. In the same way our words and our actions can also cause great harm.

"Our ill-chosen words and our wrong actions also have a similar resonance. This we know too well."

It is widely thought that praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament has become much more common under the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI after a decline in the practice after Vatican II.

Fr Peter Newby, parish priest at St Mary Moorfields in the City of London, said he had seen a change over the last 10 or 15 years and was surprised by how many churches had some form of weekly Adoration now.

He said life at his own church had been "profoundly affected" by perpetual Adoration.

"It allows people to come and go without having to encounter anyone and just to have a private conversation with God," he said.

Fr Newby also said he thought it had a powerful effect on vocations. "It helps cultivate profoundly committed Catholics in big numbers. It feeds an intensity."

Fr Alexander Sherbrooke, parish priest at St Patrick's, Soho, London, which also has daily Adoration, agreed that it seemed to have a strong impact on vocations.

"Where there has been Eucharistic Adoration, many vocations have come," he said.

"The prayer of Adoration is a call to humility, it's a call to go back on our knees and to implore the Lord for his help.

"It's also a call [for priests] to be more centred on the celebration of the Holy Mass - the Mass is the centre of being a priest."

Fr Tim Finigan, parish priest in Blackfen, Kent, said Archbishop Nichols's initiative was "most heartening". "It is a great consolation for priests to know that their people are praying for them," he said.