29th August 2011
For immediate release:
Fidelity to the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI and sincere prayer before the Most Blessed Sacrament will help young people to discern God’s will for them, according to the Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury.
Hundreds of young Catholics attending a major annual prayer festival over the August Bank Holiday weekend were advised by Bishop Davies to anchor themselves securely in the truths of the Catholic faith and to listen to the voice of Jesus by entering humbly into His presence.
This, Bishop Davies explained at the Youth 2000 Walsingham Prayer Festival in Norfolk, would help them to make the right choices for themselves at an important moment in their lives.
Drawing closer to God in this way will help the young, even amid the “storm” of confusion, distractions and temptations of modern life, to understand more clearly if Our Lord was calling them either to the “total self-giving” to a spouse in marriage or if He was calling them to follow Jesus Christ “more closely” in the priesthood or consecrated life, the bishop said.
Bishop Davies said: “As you consider your own call in the morning of your lives, how you are to give your life when there may seem many a storm around marriage and family, around priesthood and consecrated life, making such commitments seem to some around us almost impossible, then think on that parable of World Youth Day 2011, the lesson Pope Benedict asked us not to forget, of how we stand together with Peter’s Successor in the joy of our faith even when the wind is blowing, the rain pouring down because we fix our eyes on Jesus truly present with us in the Eucharist. For we put our faith, as Pope Benedict said, not on an idea or a slogan but a person: ‘Christ, God Himself, who has come into our midst … (who) had always loved you and knows you better than anyone else’.”