LONDON, Nov. 8, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Bishop Terence Drainey of the diocese of Middlesbrough was featured in the November installment of a monthly video series, in which bishops each month are invited to share their personal testimony of faith.
This initiative comes from the Bishops’ Department for Evangelization and Catechesis in response to the Year of Faith, which was inaugurated early last month by Pope Benedict XVI. The aim of the Year is to encourage people to grow in and discover anew the riches of the Catholic Faith.
Speaking earlier this year at the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in June, Manchester-born Bishop Drainey said: «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 centered on the Church.»
Ever since he was a child, the bishop testified, «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.»
Bishop Drainey continued: «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 baptized. 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.»
