Mass at the Grotto

with Dioceses of Hexham and Newcastle, Salford, and Shrewsbury on August 3rd 2026

St Matthew recounts how crowds sought to draw near to Jesus on the shoreline of Galilee. And today three English dioceses gather on the banks of the Gave with the same desire, the same intention, recognising the same Jesus coming to us now under the lowly appearances of bread and wine, saying to us, "Take heart, do not be afraid, it is I." Yet we of little faith can fail to recognise Him who is now so close to us in every Mass, in every tabernacle of every Catholic church on earth.

"What more could Jesus have done for us?" Pope St John Paul II once asked. The Mass makes it possible for us to be united with His offering of perfect love made once on the cross.Yet we can allow this moment to pass us by.

In every Mass, in every Holy Communion of our lives, in every moment spent in silent adoration before this great sacrament, “the happiest moments we will spend on earth” said St John Vianney, we can draw closer and closer to Jesus Christ, yet we can remain unmoved.  In this Blessed Sacrament, the Son of God has come so close to us that we can reach out to Him, just as the crowds sought even to touch the fringes of His garment as He passed.

Yet we can fail to see, fail to recognise; like the story we heard just before setting out, of an elderly man in North London visited by a man called Andy, who failed to recognise the new Prime Minister in front of him. He said afterwards, "how can I be expected to recognise him when they change every five minutes?"

Yet the Lord does not change, he remains patiently and steadfastly with us. And it is not a matter of comedy, but of tragedy that we should fail to recognise that the Lord is with us and offers to each of us the fullness of grace in this Holy Eucharist. And so we can understand why returning to the Eucharist — going to Mass "fully, consciously, actively," said the Second Vatican Council — will always form the constant pilgrimage of our Christian lives. And it is to deepen this Eucharistic pilgrimage that we come to Lourdes at Mary's invitation.

Today we cannot fail to remember the millions who have knelt here before us, in all their need, with all the hopes of their youth, beginning with St Bernadette herself, on her own pilgrimage to receive the Eucharist. We think of those pilgrims who set out from Newcastle a hundred years ago. They were dressed differently, as Bishop Stephen’s just reminded us, they had different preoccupations; the coal dispute they had lived through, the catastrophe of the Great War, and would soon face a second, still more destructive war. And the same was true of the pilgrims who travelled from Salford and Shrewsbury, over ninety-two and seventy-five years respectively. They came, amid all the challenges of their lives and their times, to draw nearer to Him who has drawn so close to us.

Pope Leo, in his recent letter on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence, reminds us that every generation has met every new challenge, faced every new storm, drawing on the wisdom of the Gospel and the deep resources of our Catholic faith in Christ. Through the upheavals of industrial, technological, and sexual revolutions, through the devastation of global wars and threats to human lifeand the created order, this rock stands more solidly than the limestone behind me.

For the challenge of our time, Pope Leo says, demands a Eucharistic spirituality, a deepening in all of us of Eucharistic faith and love. And this is the invitation of Our Lady in the pilgrimage of Lourdes. To echo the words of St John Paul II to “constantly turn our gaze to the Lord present in the sacrament in the altar in which we discover the full manifestation of His boundless love”. In the silence of prayer, in the attentiveness to His Gospel, in the confession our sins, in our continuing conversion, in striving for holiness, our only real happiness, in charity, in service of each other, in recognising Jesus Christ, truly God, truly man, present in His church, supremely in His Eucharist, we will be moved like the first disciples caught in a storm to fall down and worship Him; the very thing we do with joy and recognition whenever we enter a Catholic church where the Blessed Sacrament is found.

And on our return to England, we will quickly enter another storm as the euthanasia lobby relentlessly seeks to remove legal protections from some of the most vulnerable, to sanction medically assisted suicide. An Assisted Dying Bill whose dangers have already failed Parliamentary scrutiny, will be brought back again to the House of Commons on 11 September.  Prompting us not to fail in our resolution, we must contact members of Parliament in our three dioceses, asking them to oppose this change to the law, which would create a culture of suicide, threaten the vulnerable, and open the doors — as the euthanasia lobby is well aware — to the medical killing of the sick and the aged.

Amid all the storms of time,Lourdes has offered each generation an enduring vision of what our life and commitment to each other should be. This is the vision Our Lady desired: that we should find in the light of the Gospel, in the light of the Eucharist.  

May it be so for the pilgrims who have gathered here from Hexham and Newcastle, from Salford and Shrewsbury, and every pilgrim to Lourdes who has joyfully echoed the Gospel greeting “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you”.

 Amen

+Mark

Listen to the audio of Bishop Mark's Homily here

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