Holy Hour

On Wednesday May 1, we begin our monthly time of Eucharistic Adoration, a Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament. Read a reflection about this time of prayer

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Last year, during Refugee Week, when Mrs Prichard, headteacher of St Mary’s Primary School, bought us each a Peace Lily, I wasn’t too hopeful that I’d be able to look after it.  House plants have often succumbed to an early death under my watch.

In the early weeks, I kept checking the plant for growth, eyeing it up with the window frame, like a proud parent measuring their child from time to time, making a notch on the doorframe to mark the growth. 

Of course, I can’t detect the plant’s growth by staring at it for hours on end.  And what use would that be? It would be like watching grass grow. I could sit and stare as much as I liked, what I was hoping to capture could only be achieved with some time lapse footage.  Despite my natural lack of perception and eye for detail, the plant continues to grow.

For some people, times of stillness and prayer can be a bit like watching grass grow.  We want a fast and fervent world, full of colour, filled with excitement and experience and which can often make us dissatisfied with what we already have.  In the search for more, we overlook the much.  In the desire for something different, we dismiss the daily blessings.

There are so many beautiful moments in our lives which are so fleeting, so fine, that we overlook them or take them for granted.  During the Eucharist, our minds can often be elsewhere, or we fall so easily into the familiar way of doing things, without giving them too much thought.

The Sacrament of Christ’s Body pressed into the palm of our hands is such a beautiful and treasured moment, but we too often take it for granted, easily forgotten, a fleeting moment in the Mass.

During the Eucharistic Prayer, the Sacred Host is lifted for all to see.  Bells ring, smoke rises, our heads are lifted, we bow in adoration. That too is, perhaps, another fleeting, fine moment, taken for granted, taken as given, sometimes lost in the midst of so much more to see.

Away from the Mass, time spent in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament provides a time of stillness.  It’s not so much a time lapse video which speeds things up – as we watch the grass grow or flowers bloom – in fact, it’s the opposite.  A moment from the Mass is frozen in time.  Time stands still.

There is time to stop and contemplate the great gift we have been given, to pray and praise and acknowledge or need, our hunger for Christ, so that whenever we celebrate the Eucharist we can appreciate the significance of the sacrament, the love that has been poured into the meal before us.

So why not join us for our Holy Hour?  It takes place each month, on the first Wednesday of the month.  You’re free to come for the whole hour, or just for part of it.

Wednesday 1 May, 2024 at 6pm at St Mary’s Church

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Order of Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction.

6pm: Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.  (The sacrament of Christ’s Body is taken from the Tabernacle and placed in an item called a Monstrance, so that the sacrament is exposed upon the altar.)

After a short time of prayer, readings and reflection we spend some time in Silent Prayer

6.45 pm Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament.  (The priest takes the monstrance, raises it and makes the sign of the cross over the people in blessing)

The Sacrament of Christ’s Body is then returned to the tabernacle.

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