Holy Thursday “Church Crawl”

As promised earlier, here are the details for our first Catholic Life “Church Crawl” on HolyThursday (21 April 2011).

There is an ancient tradition of visiting the Blessed Sacrament at seven altars of repose in seven different churches on Holy Thursday, the eve of Our Lord’s crucifixion.  Therefore, we will join together as pilgrims for a mini-pilgrimage after Mass this Thursday evening.

We will meet at Emmanuel at 730pm for the Mass of the Lord’s Supper.  Immediately following Mass, we will meet together near the altar of repose, to pray and then move onto the next destination.

Itinerary:

1. Emmanuel
2. St. Anthony
3. St. Helen
4.  Holy Family
5. St. Luke
6. Immaculate Conception

Unfortunately, several churches in the area plan to end adoration at 10pm.  Therefore, for the first few destinations we can spend only a few very brief moments in prayer before that church’s altar of repose.  (Matt did his best to avoid this, but unfortunately we will not have much time to pray at the first four churches.)

Keep in mind: the goal is to visit seven different churches – therefore, we will try to focus on the quality of prayer during those brief moments, rather than the quantity!

In order to ensure the success of our pilgrimage together, Matt will keep us to about only about five minutes (or so) each at the first four churches – your assistance in helping to maintain this pace will be greatly appreciated and will help all of us to achieve our goal for our Holy Thursday pilgrimage.

Fortunately, Holy Family and St. Luke go until midnight so we can slow down to catch our breath at those two churches.  Immaculate Conception will have adoration all night and therefore you can stay and watch with the Lord in prayer as long as you wish, at the end of our pilgrimage together.

With help from Our Lady, our pilgrimage will be a great success and will be a prayerful and fruitful experience!

See you at Emmanuel Thursday evening – either at Mass, or immediately after Mass at the altar of repose.