The current pandemic has definitely challenged all of us to adapt our expressions of faith in new ways.
At my parish—the Church of the Holy Eucharist in Tabernacle, New Jersey—a group of men get together for overnight adoration every Holy Thursday evening/Good Friday morning. We pick a time, usually 3 or 4 a.m. on Friday, and we spend an hour together adoring our Lord. Then we go to a local 24-hour diner and have breakfast together. Meatless of course! We've been doing this for five years.
Men of the Church of the Holy Eucharist assemble in their cars for adoration of the Blessed Sacrament on the night of Holy Thursday to Good Friday. The tabernacle in the church is located inside the wall on the right.
At 4 a.m., we all met in the parking lot in front of the wall where the tabernacle is, and we sat in our cars and had our Holy Hour of adoration. Some of us brought prayer books, Bibles, our iPads to watch virtual adoration online in different parts of the world, and silently prayed. Some of us got out of our cars alone and approached the wall for some private prayer. It was a beautiful night with an almost full moon, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with the Lord, a time full of graces and blessings.
Here at RENEW, we have challenged ourselves to create new and relevant ways to practice the faith, offering webinars for you and virtual faith sharing sessions for your small groups. Learn about all our upcoming
webinars and faith sharing sessions. We are also offering our new online program
Baptism Matters for free until June 30, and we are offering our Sunday faith-sharing resource
PrayerTime as a PDF for individual or small-group use. Also, browse our
new online store where we have some specials running. We hope we can be a valuable source for you to continue your small faith communities online until we can all be together again.
Rich Vosler is a sales consultant at RENEW International. Contact him at 908 769 5400 x149 or richv@renewintl.org