Our 24/7 Adoration Chapel began on October 23, 1994. People from Our Lady of the Gulf parish and the surrounding parishes participated in their weekly hourly encounter with the Lord in its sacred space.

This Adoration experience continued until Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005 when the Adoration Chapel (pictured above right) was destroyed.

Later, Adoration continued on Thursdays at St. Augustine Seminiary Chapel in Bay St. Louis.

 

In late 2010, plans were formulated to build a new Adoration Chapel and Catholic Life Center to replace the destroyed one. It would be named "St Joseph Adoration Chapel" in recognition of the St. Joseph Chapel on Dunbar Ave. that was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. It had been closed some years earlier because of the lack of priests. The new "St. Joseph Adoration Chapel" was dedicated by Bishop Roger Morin, Bishop of Biloxi, on February 26, 2012.

 

The simplest way to express what Christ asks us to believe about the Real Presence is that the Eucharist is really He.  The Real Presence is the real Jesus.  We are to believe that the Eucharist began in the womb of the Virgin Mary; that the flesh which the Son of God received from His Mother at the Incarnation is the same flesh into which He changed bread at the Last Supper; that the blood He received from His Mother is the same blood into which He changed wine at the Last Supper.  Had she not given Him His flesh and blood there could not be a Eucharist.

We are to believe that the Eucharist is Jesus Christ – simply, without qualification.  It is God become man in the fullness of His divine nature, in the fullness of His human nature, in the fullness of His body and soul, in the fullness of everything that makes Jesus Jesus. He is in the Eucharist with His human mind and will united with the Divinity, with His hands and feet, His face and features, with His eyes and lips and ears and nostrils, with His affections and emotions and, with emphasis, with His living, pulsating, physical Sacred Heart. That is what our Catholic Faith demands of us that we believe. If we believe this, we are Catholic. If we do not, we are not, no matter what people may think we are.
 

Our faith is belief because we do not see what we believe.  We accept on Christ’s words that all of this is there, or rather, here in the Holy Eucharist. Faith must supply what, as the Tantrum Ergo sings, “the senses do not perceive.”  And faith must reveal what the mind by itself cannot see.  Let us never forget this phrase, first in Latin, lumen fideism, the light of faith.  Faith reveals, faith discloses, faith enlightens, faith empowers the mind to see what the mind without faith cannot see.

Pictured:  Our Lady of the Gulf Adorers

A list of available hours is listed in our parish bulletin,
on the 'Home' page of this web site, and on our Facebook page.
For questions or more information contact James San Fillippo at 228-671-1835.