5th December 2011
For immediate release:
Young people who wish to follow Our Lord faithfully must put the Mass at the centre of their lives, the Rt Rev. Mark Davies, the Bishop of Shrewsbury, has said.
Preaching at a Mass during a Diocesan Day of Recollection with Youth 2000 at St Mary’s Church, Middlewich, Cheshire, on Saturday 3rd December, the Bishop said that there were now more obstacles preventing young people from observing their faith in its entirety than at any time since the Church in this country met with persecution.
Young Catholics who wish to be true to their faith today need to urgently rediscover Sunday not as “the end of the weekend”, the Bishop of Shrewsbury said in his homily, but as the first day of the week by recognising the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Mass. The Bishop said he wished to echo Pope Benedict’s words to the youth of the world: “Do not be deterred from taking part in Sunday Mass and help others to discover it too … Let us pledge ourselves to do this – it is worth the effort!”
“As the women and the Apostles had made their way in the first light of Easter Sunday morning to that meeting with the Lord so we are called on the first day of the week to meet the same Lord truly present with us now in the Eucharist,” said Bishop Davies.
“You will sometimes hear people say, ‘what would Jesus have done, what would Jesus have said,’ as if He were some distant figure of history whose words and actions we can now only guess at. In the reality of the Eucharist, in the reality of this Mass we hear what He says to us, what He now does for us,” he said.
Bishop Davies added: “Never since the days of persecution have so many obstacles been put in front of a generation to prevent you finding your way to Him.
“And it isn’t so much Sunday working, Sunday shopping, social lives which block out Saturday nights and Sunday mornings but losing sight of Jesus Himself which eclipses Sunday, not knowing where He is found which leaves it empty.”