A couple weeks ago we were blessed to have our founding pastor, Father Tim Nolan, give the homily at our Masses.  He spoke on the Eucharist, one of his favorite topics, and reminded us of some interesting connections between Family Formation and the beginnings of Eucharistic Adoration here at the Church of Saint Paul:

Let’s go back to the history of this parish, just a little bit.  Some years ago, back in the early 90’s, we decided to have adoration of the Blessed Sacrament extended at 24 hours of adoration. We started out on the first Saturday of the month and lo and behold, the people who worked with Family Formation came to us and said, “You know, when that’s going on, Family Formation goes so much better.  There’s a blessing on it that we didn’t have before!”  And then I recognized in the Masses that weekend it made a huge difference.  With all that worship power behind us the celebrations were even better than otherwise.  Well, pretty soon they wanted to have it on Monday night too when Family Formation met. Then they wanted to have it on Wednesday when the youth group met.  Then the parish council on Thursday and the pastoral council, and it went on continually until, finally, we had perpetual adoration.  It’s been going on a long time.

And then went on to make connections between the success of any ministry and having a solid base of prayer support:

Praying with Jesus in adoration unleashes all the power of heaven on you, on your loved ones and on the programs and activities of the parish. Every ministry, here at the COSP, if it has been founded and called forth by God, will only be fruitful with God’s help and blessing.

The first thing any ministry should do is to enlist prayer warriors, watchmen, to intercede that that work of God will prosper and bring the blessing that it was intended to bring. If a ministry is failing, the obvious question ought to be, Hmmm, I wonder who’s praying? I wonder who’s carrying this in prayer?

The more important the ministry is, the more intercessory prayer is needed to call down the blessing of God and to fend off against the forces of evil bound on discouragement and destroying it. Every ministry ought to have a clearly identified list of prayer warriors and I would offer to you that if it’s not the case, suspend operations until you have it developed. You’ll kill yourself trying to do it alone. It won’t work. God’s work can only be done with God’s power and it’s unleashed in us in prayer.

You can hear the homily on our parish website: September 25, Fr. Tim Nolan