“I urge you to especially devote yourselves to the prayer of adoration — this is important,” Pope Francis said on Saturday, addressing a group of religious sisters at the Vatican.
“It is good to adore in silence before the Most Blessed Sacrament,” he said Oct. 22, “to be in the consoling presence of Jesus and there to draw the apostolic impetus to be instruments of goodness, tenderness and welcome in the community, the Church and the world.”
Francis said the world today has lost the sense of what it means to engage in the form of prayer known as adoration or worship.
“This prayer is not often done: I ask you to do it. Adore; immerse yourself in divine love, and give it with full hands to those you meet on your path,” he urged.
Pope Francis met with religious women belonging to two communities: the Comboni Missionary Sisters and the Order of the Most Holy Savior, also known as the Bridgettines.
He said the sisters’ mission of hospitality is improved with time spent contemplating Christ.
“Welcoming, one of the characteristic aspects of your mission, will be more fruitful to the extent in which the prayer of contemplation will make you come out of yourself and focus your life on Jesus Christ, letting him do things in you, letting him act in you,” he said.
“This inner movement,” Francis added, “will make possible a service to others that is not philanthropy or welfarism, but openness to the other, closeness, sharing; in a word: charity.”