The Rt Rev Terence Drainey, Bishop of Middlesbrough, has spoken of the importance of his faith in the second of a new series of bishops’ video testimonies being released during the ‘Year of Faith’.
Speaking in June this year at the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, Bishop Drainey said:
“So if I was to be asked what does my faith mean to me, the simple answer would be it means everything. I just could not imagine my life without my faith in Jesus Christ. I just can’t imagine my life without it being centred on the Church.”
“As a child, the person of Jesus Christ was really really present to me. I wasn’t a particularly pious child but I knew that Jesus was real in my life, I knew that he was with me, and again my prayer as a kid wouldn’t have been a pious type of prayer. It would have just been a conversation with a friend and sometimes as curt and straight forward as a conversation with a friend. As I’ve grown up, the presence of Christ has always been very, very close to me.”
He added:
“Something which I never tire of saying to other people, and I’m saying it to myself really, is that for me the most fundamental and most important moment of my life was that moment when I was baptised. The Father looked into the very depths of my heart, and to the very depths of my spirit and said to me, ‘You are my beloved Son and I delight in you.’ That’s what’s kept me going through thick and thin.“
This is the second video of the series. The first, released last month, featured the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster.
Both recordings are being offered in support of the Year of Faith that was opened by Pope Benedict XVI on 11 October 2013. The Year aims to encourage people to grow in and discover anew the riches of the Catholic Faith. The video series is an initiative of the Bishops’ Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis, with the videos filmed and edited by its Home Mission Desk. They are being released monthly.
catholicnews.org.uk/year-of-faith-bishops-videos
We have a section in our Videos area for the Bishops’ faith reflections for the ‘Year of Faith’
catholicnews.org.uk/year-of-faith
For a snapshot of what’s happening visit our Year of Faith section
middlesbrough-diocese.org.uk/
Official website of the Diocese of Middlesbrough
