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Paul Fahey

12/17/2018

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My oldest son, Simon, turned six last week. I remember the afternoon we were getting ready to take him home from the hospital. I stood there holding him, absolutely terrified that the nurses would actually let us leave the hospital with this baby. Kristina and I had no idea what we were doing. Simon was so helpless, so vulnerable, so dependent on us for everything, and they trusted us to take care of him!?

Christmas was especially meaningful for me that year. The God who made space and time became as helpless as my baby son. He had to learn to walk and talk and feed himself. He got hungry and tired. God became that vulnerable.

In the Garden of Eden, right after they sinned, Adam and Eve saw that they were naked and then made clothes for themselves. They looked at each other’s vulnerable bodies and realized that the other person could be used, and as they thought this they realized that the other person could use them. So they protected their vulnerability.

Our God so humiliated himself that he allowed himself to be beaten, flogged, stripped naked and hung on a cross. All of the crucifixes we have depict Jesus is a nice loincloth, but that is for our own sense of modesty. The God who made the entire universe died with a vulnerable, naked body.

And this prompts the question, why would God do that? Why did God take on our humanity and die for us? The Catechism says, “The Word became flesh for us in order to save us by reconciling us with God” (Catechism 457). Jesus entered into our suffering, sin, and death - and defeated them. He undid all the effects of Adam’s sin. But that’s not the only reason that God became man.

God doesn’t intend to just simply restore us back to the Garden of Eden. He intends to give us far more. The Catechism says, "For the Son of God became man so that we might become God” (460). God’s original plan was to make us like himself. God made us so that we may participate in his divine nature. Jesus wasn’t God’s “Plan B.” God becoming man wasn’t simply a response to Adam and Eve’s sin, he always planned on becoming one of us in order to make us like himself.

Jesus has two natures, his divine nature and his human nature. God partakes of human nature completely so that you and I might partake of the divine nature. As Father says at Mass while he mixes the water and wine, “May we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”


This means that the cross, Jesus’ sacrifice, was a means to a greater end. God didn’t become man just to die for our sins. Rather, Jesus saves us from our sins, restores our relationship with God, so that he can make us like God.

In his letter to the Philippians, St. Paul recits a hymn that captures the humility of a God who would become one of us:

Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (Philippians 2:6-8).

This is how good God is. This is how much God loves us. This is how desperately God wants to reconcile us back to himself. Why? So that we can share in his divine nature. So that he can transform us and make us like himself.

During this season of Advent, Father Dennis has been asking us to reflect on what God is calling us to next. As you pray on that question I think it may be good to start by reflecting on how good God is and the lengths he has gone to in order to save us and bring us to himself. If we start there then we can trust that the next step God is asking us to take isn’t something to be afraid of.

God only desires to make us like himself, to make our mind like his mind and our heart like his heart. God does all the hard work in transforming us, but he respects our freedom. So he asks for our consent, our cooperation. If the thought of taking that next step is intimidating, maybe start my asking Jesus to give us the faith of his mother, that we may also be able to pray as she prayed, "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word."
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Kayla Feldpausch

12/10/2018

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    I’ve been introduced to the idea over the past couple years that I shouldn’t beg God when I pray. Not that I shouldn’t ask for things, but that when I pray, I should have the attitude that God is a loving Father who wants to give good things to me. Therefore, my prayer should come from a place of confidence that whatever God’s answer is always “yes” or “I have something better for you.”
    Honestly, this idea has felt laughable, and I’m sure many of you can relate. How is God’s answer “I have something better,” when a loved one is living with chronic pain and you’ve been asking Him again and again to relieve them? How is God’s answer “I have something better” when we lose a job, a friend, or simply keep hitting the same walls over and over again? For me, for several years, the repetitive situation was my experience of depression. I’ve been a fairly anxious person my whole life, and prone to a few depressive dips, but it wasn’t until college that I was diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety. My experience of those conditions has really messed with my relationship with God at several points. I can say bluntly that for several years, I never knew how to pray except from a place of desperation. A lot of my prayers, the times of Eucharistic adoration, conferences and retreats I have attended, were focused on begging God to take away the endless circles my mind ran in.
    The root of this problem goes back to the Garden of Eden. (Doesn’t everything, though?) In the midst of all the “you should eat the fruit” conversation, Satan was trying to convince Adam and Eve of one major thing: this God who put you here is not good. If he was, why would he keep this good thing from you?” The first humans fell for it. They doubted. And so goes the rest of history. We live with this nagging question of “Is God really good like He says He is?” When we’re in difficult situations, the question looms even heavier. This is made worse by the popular, well-meant sentiment that “It’s a part of God’s plan.” Doesn’t that just seal the deal? Guess what, God wants  you to suffer! All for the good of some cosmic mystery you may never understand!
    While it is true that God can use our suffering for good in the world if we let Him, this should never be confused with the idea that He somehow caused the horrible circumstances we’re in for the good of an abstract plan. That would make us mere pawns in His end game. The verse that can cause some confusion surrounding this idea is Romans 8:28: “All things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to His purpose.” If we read this the wrong way, we can come to think that God caused various things for the good of His plan. But that’s not the point here. Rather, God can take any circumstance we’re in and make good come from it. But he’s not up in heaven saying “You! I’m going to give you cancer for the good of salvation history!” Fr. Mike Schmitz says it wonderfully; our suffering was never God’s Plan A. He permits things to happen as a result of the laws of nature, physics, and free will, but does not desire that terrible things happen to people.
    What does he want, then? Wholeness. Healing. Freedom. We pray in the Our Father, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.” There is no sickness, no mental and emotional illness, no chronic pain in Heaven. So if we’re serious about making “Thy kingdom come,” we have to claim Jesus’ authority to cure the sick and bind up the brokenhearted. That’s why we’ve been having these healing services and encounters with the Holy Spirit over the last year. Whether you need chronic back pain healed, want to move past blocks of anger or unforgiveness in your heart, or simply want to ask the Holy Spirit what’s next for you, these nights are an opportunity to see God’s Kingdom come to Earth.
    So, back to the beginning: begging God in prayer. I’ve experienced healing over time through therapy, and I have experienced healing in prayer. The greatest healing is still taking place in me, the restoration of my mindset to know and believe that God is good and wants good things for me. There is no five-step process toward praying confidently and knowing God is who He says He is. We just have to start going to Him and expecting that because we are His sons and daughters, He will respond. Good fathers love to give their children gifts. Every encounter night, every retreat, and truly every day is a chance to ask God “what do you have for me next?” It’s not on us to bring about our own wholeness. It’s on God, and we can rest confidently in the knowledge that every time we come to Him, He has something waiting for us.

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Corey Luna

12/3/2018

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This week I want to share about the High School Retreat, but to really share in what the Lord has done on the retreat as a whole, I really feel like I have to back up to what has been happening to lead up to this important retreat in our youth ministry program.

At the beginning of this year, I believe that the Lord instilled a new sense of faith in me. I have loved and believed in God for quite a long time now, but there was sometimes an obstacle holding me back from having total dependence on Him. I have always known it was there, but just chalked it up to something that had to be healed in me. At a healing conference I went to last January, I finally understood that obstacle and that area of healing that I needed. It was really a place in my identity that needed shifting. An absolute belief that I am first and foremost a daughter of the Heavenly Father and that I have an inheritance and worth that is unending and untainted. This is something I always knew in my head, but something that never transferred to my heart. At that conference it finally transferred and brought healing. Since going to this healing conference, I have not only seen a shift in myself but also in my fellow staff members. Although we didn’t all go to this conference, we shared this new vision of being able to boldly ask our heavenly Father for an outpouring of healing, signs, and miracles in the ministry we have at the parish.

Now why I bring this up, is because I believe that we are experiencing a beautiful shift in our parish where we are starting to call upon the Lord more in expectant faith and receiving huge outpourings of the Holy Spirit and this shift has been pouring itself into the youth ministry program as well. In the last year I have seen huge responses in the youth of our parish participating in the things that we offer.


2016- High School Retreat: 48, Mission Wixom: 7, Steubenville: 106, Mission: Flint: 10 
2017- High School Retreat: 60, Mission Wixom: 8, Steubenville: 95, Mission: Flint: 10
2018- High School Retreat: 70, Mission Wixom: 24, Steubenville: 75, Mission: Flint: 26

Numbers don’t explain everything and they definitely don’t describe the stories that are behind the numbers of youth who experienced the retreats, but I think that we can still get a good idea of a shift in what’s been happening over the last year especially. There’s some slight differences between 2016 and 2017. Similar numbers in the Mission retreats, and then slightly less kids going to Steubenville and slightly more kids going to the H.S. Retreat. From 2017 to 2018 there are pretty major shifts in all the retreats across the board, with an exception of a lot less kids choosing to go to Steubenville. In addition to those increases in numbers, we also added more things to our schedule which included the Diocesan Youth Conference and our Spring Break Trip. These increases in numbers and interests in these retreats are evidence of a growing hunger that our youth have to encounter their Heavenly Father in a real and dynamic ways. Over the last year, I have had more and more faith that the Lord will provide these encounters, for our youth and He has come through in providing powerful healing and in outpouring different gifts of the Holy Spirit such as joy, peace, etc.


During the High School Retreat weekend, I started to really understand and step into the changes in myself as well as knowing that the Lord was going to do show us Himself in a very real and powerful way. There has been other retreats that I have put on where I’ve been so wrapped up in my own inadequacies that I haven’t been able to really engage without worry or anxiety. This year (not that there wasn’t anxiety beforehand, because there was!!) I actually felt so much more relieved stepping into Camp Roger’s main hall and starting the weekend, because of this new faith that the Lord would provide despite whatever wasn’t perfectly planned. I definitely felt a resistance overall to what the Lord wanted for the weekend, so on Friday night I was really tempted to give into fear and worry about things not being good enough, but instead of feeding those I just powered through it. The next morning really changed everything. I got a text from someone who participates in our prayer ministry that was interceding for the retreat over the weekend. She said that she got a sense that the Lord was going to bring huge “breakthrough” over the weekend and that this word in particular was what kept coming to her when she was praying for us. Immediately when I read the text, I just felt a huge wave of peace. The Holy Spirit was in that message and I felt very called to tell my team of young adults about it. We had a meeting and I shared this word and all of them seemed to respond in excitement to this word shared by the Spirit. Over all of Saturday, it seemed as though that word kept coming up in my conversations with kids, in the talks, and especially in adoration. During adoration, before Father Dennis processed around the room with the blessed sacrament, he spoke into exactly what was going on. He said that he was receiving images from the Lord that major chains were being broken in the room and that the Lord was outpouring a huge amount of BREAKTHROUGH out to people. I felt that happening in the room. I’ve been to a lot of retreats before, but I have to say that this was the BIGGEST outpouring of the Holy Spirit that I have ever seen on one of these things. There were a lot of kids that encountered the power of God and started to take part in that overall shift that they too can have expectant faith that God will actually respond to them in ways they can see and understand. Even though this is still one of the most powerful outpourings of God on a H.S. Retreat that I have seen, I believe that the Lord has even greater places to take our retreats, our youth ministry, and our parish, and I’m even more encouraged and excited to see how the Lord will keep working throughout the year of 2018-2019!!
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