Seville (Fides Service) - The Spanish association for all-night Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, founded in Madrid in 1877, is present today in every diocese of the country with a total number of 1,500 sections and circa 80,000 members. Under the guidance of the Bishops these Adorers in parish groups or other groups in other churches and chapels are committed to spending one night every month in prayer in front of the Blessed Sacrament on behalf of the whole Church and the whole of humanity. Besides this monthly commitment these Adorers also promote and support many other forms of Eucharistic devotion in full communion with the bishops, taking part in various initiatives and groups of apostolate as part of local diocesan pastoral activity.
In his address at the 48th International Eucharistic Congress last October in Guadalajara Mexico, Adolfo José Petit Caro Spiritual Director of diocesan nightly Adoration in Seville said many circumstances are obstacles to nightly adoration and they make it appear less timely and less understandable today. “Secularisation of habits and environments, declines in religious and Christian awareness, changed customs and habits in family and social life are part of a cultural context which appears to want to present many religious and church realities as antiquated and outdated by modern humanism without God”.
The Spiritual Director of the diocese of Seville said he hoped the Year of the Eucharist will prompt new efforts for apostolic activity, greater creativity and unity and deeper love for Jesus in the Eucharist to revitalise this admirable work of new evangelisation with new fervour, new methods and more lively apostolic vigour. “New evangelisation called for by the Church in an old de-Christianised Europe, can only be towards the Eucharist and from the Eucharist - centre and origin, source and summit of the Church’s life and mission - and to be convinced and committed apostles Catholics must be ever more intensely Eucharistic”. (R.Z.) (Agenzia Fides 25/5/2005, righe 25, parole 333)