Deacon Ralph Poyo - Rise and Proclaim the Kingdom (2021 Priests, Deacons, Seminarian's Retreat)

[Music] [Music] i'll be the last one to give you a bit of a story in terms of what happened with kovid um although mine is mixed it's not just bad there's i think we're going to be able to look back maybe not immediately but in the years to come and look back and see how the lord really blessed us during this coveted time even while we were kicking and screaming and didn't like what was going on for me my job i'm not a i'm i'm a weird deacon in many ways uh in more ways than one so i'm a full-time missionary so i'm i'm not even assigned at a parish i wasn't when i was here i had a home parish but i i was not assigned there because i was gone i think maybe when i at the height of me going out i was home maybe 10 weekends a year so it's a lot it was a lot different i was just i'm constantly on the road i was going out and so um of course when coveted hit all the churches you know my schedule was full pack and all of a sudden call after call after call after call hey yeah thanks no thanks we're done um we're gonna wait and see but everything came to a grinding halt and of course the three weeks as you know continue to progress and you know the only way that i make an uh income is when i was out on the road so everything came to a grinding halt and you know during that time i'll be honest i i was uh uncomfortable um not enough like oh my gosh what's going to happen kind of way but more so like what am i going to do with myself so i did what most other people did during covid who um aren't clear aren't priests clergy they went to home depot or lowe's and they bought a bunch of stuff and started working on home projects really i mean one of the places that was slammed was home depot or lowe's these places were just so i i was working on these projects and just kind of doing this stuff and praying like lord what do you want me to do you know one of the other things that he told me to do was i've been working on this small group thing project that he'd given me a year before to to work on he says well i've given you the time finish it so from a work perspective i dove into just doing that but to be honest with you i started um i i it's not that i felt uncomfortable like oh my gosh is god going to provide because my ministry started with no money and he built it up and so that piece of the faith component for me was not really bad but what was bad um came in a little bit later i um one of the benefits of it like all of us is we had much more time to pray didn't we and that could have been a good thing or a really bad thing you know because if we had more time to pray did we actually pray you know you started watching the jokes about people going and giving themselves to all the different vices people drank more people binge tv watched all more they did all kinds of things to cope with the uncertainty of the unknown me i would i i took advantage and i actually started sitting in the chair that i had this one adirondack chair that i would sit in front of my house and and i would just that's where i would sit down and spend a couple hours with the lord it was a glorious time i really i really benefited from that but what became difficult was that the lord began um to call me i i got up out of the chair uh one time thinking i was done but he wasn't done and in that moment i heard really loudly the silence ever heard that ever been in a situation where the silence is so loud you can hear it it was yes deafening it it it freaked me out literally i'm like and i just sensed that the lord was saying ralph come come to the silence i'm going to be totally honest with you guys i i said no i was afraid and as i as i tried to look and see what the silence was what is this what try to understand what's going on and what are you doing lord i didn't know it but the enemy had just kind of made the silence appear in my mind's eye like this just huge empty chasm a huge abyss and so i was afraid and the lord kept calling me back at different times in prayer come come to the silence come to the silence and i'm like no no no i was in outright disobedience i knew what he wanted me to do but i didn't want to go i was afraid why should i be afraid it's jesus and yet i think if we're honest there are times in our lives when jesus calls we're afraid we're afraid of what he's going to ask of us who's going to lead us who we're going to have to talk to what kind of uncomfortable situation we're going to be put in because we said yes please tell me i'm not the only one that has that experience praise god so i'm sitting there and i i you know i've got my projects in the backyard i've got stuff in my office so i go into my office one day this i remember the day clearly it's a monday i don't remember what the date was but it was a monday i went to the office clearly and i start you know crunching out some of the stuff and everything in the office stops working computers are down printer is down internet is out i mean it just stops i'm like expletive so i well i'm gonna go in the backyard and work on this project so i go into the backyard and start working on a project and sure enough that breaks down nothing is working and now i know you know another expletive bleep lord ralph come now out of frustration i finally gave up saying no and i just got up and i walk i walked to the front of the house and i sat in a chair in the shade it was a nice breeze blowing and and i sat down in the chair and i i was scared i sat down and and i just prayed and i said mama mary you know the truth i don't want to go there i don't even know how to go to the silence so you're going to have to come take me and i just sat there and the breeze blew and it was beautifully calm and pro and calm outside and peaceful outside but inside of me i was just a hot mess i was just man my eyes are closed i'm just in prayer and i see mama mary come up walk up to me kind of go okay let's go she takes me by the hand and we walk over and as we start walking over with my eyes closed in prayer and posture in a chair we walk over right to the place where jesus is now coming into focus and behind him is this huge abyss mama holds my hand takes me up to jesus jesus looks at mom and says thanks mom sure let's go with my hand and jesus looks at me and goes thanks for coming and i'm like you kidding you knew i didn't want to be here you knew i didn't want to come so why are you saying thanks because i wanted you to come i want you to come in but before you can come in pointing behind him i have a question for you and i'm going to give you this question and you know i don't want you to give me an answer now because we both know that the answer to this question is not going to be right don't you hate it when he does that he knows everything it's disgusting sometimes really so anyway in that moment he says what i'd like you to do is go to the backyard and work on that project and don't worry all this stuff is going to start working but the spirit is going to come to you and he's going to ask you he's going to show you some things and i just want you to as he shows you these things i want you to apply the question that i need you to answer for me like well okay what's the question am i [Music] enough am i enough go on and i leave i get up out of the chair i go to the backyard and the machinery is not working i'm doing this he's one of the things he says i don't want you to put earbuds on i don't want you to listen to christian music or talk radio or mute you know a audio book or anything i just want you to listen to what the spirit is going the spirit began as i'm working on this you know like mowing the lawn is a mindless task you just follow the machine it was that kind of stuff and the spirit started showing me parts of my life am i enough here am i enough here and then i am i enough here and some of the places i could say yes but again to be brutally honest i i couldn't say yes to all of them so at different times i heard the lord call and i again continue to avoid spirit would come am i enough see because the problem was that while i say i believe in god and i believe that jesus is my all in all and i and i and i know the things to say the truth is that in my life i still give myself to other things i'm still looking to other things to give life to my existence and i didn't want to face jesus and tell him no so i kept avoiding like duh he doesn't know the truth but i didn't want to look at him in the eyes and say no so this period lasted for about a month and a half am i enough for this am i enough for that am i enough in this situation and the lord called a couple more times and he patiently waited i avoided like i did before and again i'm sitting in my chair during my prayer time my two hours of my controlled time of prayer you know what i mean by that yes when we come and we say okay lord here i am i'm going to be dutiful and do what i promise but i'm going to do the prayer i'm going to punch the list i'm going to you know fulfill my obligation all the while of avoiding the encounter so finally one day i knew i needed to go i just had been telling him no too much and he called again and i said mama she showed up took me by the hand took me back to him hey hi got an answer lord you know i do what is it i don't want to say it i need you to say it no and with great compassion he said thank you thank you for proclaiming the truth now you can enter and when he said now you could enter the fear that satan had put up behind all of that stuff was just his divine loving presence come on in and i just followed him in and i and i experienced this amazing peace and love even though i told him no he knew it was no and so since that time he's been calling me back to the peace and it's still really loud but the more i keep going back to that peace that presence the more he keeps doing what feels like interior surgery and and this week has been a major part of that too kind of i wouldn't say culmination because we all got work to do right the lord has a lot more work to do in us but i if you got nothing else out of this conference i'm sorry but i sure as heck did this retreat i really needed this retreat i really needed to encounter the lord in the way the lord came to me and that's why i'm so thankful and why i love to be a part of this because a lot of times in our diocese we don't get this kind of stuff no bashing here but when i went through and i started thinking through of all that we went through again just kind of taking our minds back at the beginning some highlights that really struck me monday night father dave said we need to go back to the basics it's just about jesus and me no activity no earning his love no serving to pay jesus back for saving you and the lord said come to the silence tuesday peter herbeck the lord wants to revive our faith he wants to give us the vision of his kingdom so that we witness to what we have seen come to the silence tuesday afternoon john burke dr john bergsma spoke of adam as priest and the failure of man's priestly responsibility what did he do as priests when the threat of the serpent came into the garden he remained silent tell me how many times have i remained silent come to the peace come to the silence tuesday night sister miriam asked a question how did you get here mentally emotionally spiritually do you not see that your life poured out for others is an incredibly beautiful thing wednesday morning she continued on said christianity is not sin management it's transformational glory the spirit came to me and revealed to me that if i'm not experiencing ongoing transformation in the lord then i either don't want to change or i'm stuck either way i need the spirit to break through come to the silence wednesday evening peter reminded us that every one of us is a prophet and the spirit is restoring and renewing our role as prophets he challenged me to evaluate if i fear man more than i fear god this morning john bowl you shared what hope is really all about we tend to place our hope in a desired outcome as if we're telling god how is the best way to go how it should be we must place our hope in the living god who is other statements that just kind of nailed me was you know if jesus christ is the anchor of life then prayer is the chain that connects us to the anchor come to the silence and then he gave that image of concrete and forming right and that struck me really in the eyes i mean like in the eyes struck me because i've seen circum places where um construction workers are working on a uh you know on a piece of a a um highway and they're forming a pillar and the form ruptures it's not strong enough it's not hard enough to hold the pressure that's inside and it ruptures and makes a bloody mess and goes all over the place but and i'm and it struck me too that i went back to peter herbeck and he was he was challenging us about the words that we say in our preaching and how we need to go to the holy spirit and say i i need your help to help me become a preacher who's going to give the full gospel and for me the form you see like you know if we're if we're going to take clay or something and and and form right we're supposed to conform to the image of christ and that means that we've got to take us and shove it into something that's incredibly hard and then when we're done we're peeled out and we take on that image brothers is not the form that we have been given that conforms us to christ isn't that not his word yes or no it's incredibly hard what happens if for example how would you feel if um if you i came to your church and as a deacon i did a baptism for you and you're standing on the wings and i'm doing a baptism and i begin the rite and i say the child's name john i baptize you in my name how would you feel or how about if you go on vacation you go to mass and you see another brother priest my brother priest and they go through the the right of the consecration but they don't say the words of consecration and they just move past it and skip it all together choosing to just leave it out been there seen that is that good or bad why the form has been given to us so that we can conform to christ if we don't keep the form intact and give them the entire form we make something other than what they were created to be amen and therefore we're called to give the entire message the fullness of the message of jesus christ good and bad i was struck by peter when he said that he said but look at what he did to the woman at the well he went up to her he as we've all preached i'm sure we've heard that phrase because it's a great phrase to preach in a homily he thirsted for her soul but before he could bring her to conversion he had to confront her with her truth you're not married and the last five guys you've not been married to either you think at that point the girl would have turned around and walked away i don't need you but it was the truth that brought her back i don't know about you but for me i i got incredibly convicted that i need to do more i need to say more i'm tired you know we all are in paris just to say father keep it to seven eight minutes okay but while we're dumbing down and shrinking the amount of time we're talking with the absence of content the people are getting less and less of the form so why are we upset with them when they don't do and they don't act and they don't be the things we want them to be when we're not the ones who are keeping the form in place that's our job but the truth is sometimes we get afraid i know or the even harder truth is is that you know the only time pastors and priests get phone calls from the diocese is when you screw up or when you don't make your assessment isn't that true and so therefore that puts a pressure on you and then you put it on deacons if you have deacons because i don't want you doing this i had i've had pastors come to me go ralph you need to tone it down bro because he was afraid that if i would upset their people the people wouldn't donate the money then the collections go down and then you get your phone call isn't that just right where the nastiness of the rubber meets the road the reality of parish ministry life i mean isn't that it from an institutional component yes or no but this is the body of christ the bride of christ and our people are giving themselves to all kinds of stuff and we're letting them and we're claiming it in silence by our silence we say okay by our silence we just look the other way i was convicted brothers because the truth is that it's only going to get harder and darker and the passage that comes to my um mind is when elijah has he's the last prophet left right and he confronts the the prophets of baal right remember we all know this is a great passage it's an awesome passage he's the last one left and you go through the whole story you know what happens at the story but elijah tells the people elijah then came near to the people and said how long will you go limping with two different opinions if the lord is god follow him if the lord is god then we're called to follow if the lord is the truth then why why do we live as if the kingdom of god can only be experienced after we die tell me that didn't jesus say it's at hand yes or no didn't he bring the kingdom of god to us aren't we praying that thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven then why are we living as if we're waiting till after we die so that we can be filled and completed and healed is it just me i mean sometimes i'm looking at what jesus says and what he did and i'm like well that's what he says but we're not living it that's what he says but we're not teaching that peter was just was telling us look guys he tells us all these warnings about what's going to happen to our people because they're in sin boy when he said when's the last time you warned your people i don't know about you but i started squirming in my seat a little bit the truth brothers the truth is that every one of us in this room is totally capable of doing that warning our people the truth is that all of us in this room i don't care what your personality style is every single one of us has the ability to call out what is sin in the world the truth brothers is it's much easier not to who are we taking care of me first or my people and this isn't an indictment please understand me we're all in the boat we're all experiencing this pressure but i believe our lord is now coming to us and saying now is the time i believe one of the major things about covet is this is the time when the church should be shining brighter than ever before this is the time when we're supposed to be standing up and saying look is jesus christ not the lord of heaven and earth and of life and death then why does everybody think that covet is stronger than jesus because everyone started looking at their mortality including our priesthood and bit and deacons and bishops but 65 percent of the presbyterate are 65 will be in retirement age within seven years they're in that age bracket that was most susceptible and i think our lord is coming and he's he's pulling us close come come to the silence let me affirm you because i called you your ordination is not an accident it is a call a holy duty but you're never meant to do it alone you're meant to hold on to me and in fact let me do it through you but you will never get to that place until you come to the silence i love you i loved you before you heard your call to orders i loved the little boy that was broken in you while you were trying to figure out how to just run away and protect yourself i love that little guy and while you still look back at that little boy and don't understand anything i see you completed in my form this is what you have to give me this is what you have to offer me but am i with you always or ralph are you giving yourself to other things still when you hurt ralph where do you go when you get frustrated and angry ralph where do you go when someone calls you and says dude you totally blew that where do you go when your wife confronts you and told and and calls you out can i have an amen you know my brother priest there's one thing us deacons can really relate to is when the bride calls you out we know it sucks particularly when it's true i think our lord is saying the days are coming and things are going to get really hard but i will be with you always if you would but come to the silence and let me fill you let me heal you let me restore you go out take the hits like my son said you would get if you preach the truth they will hate you because of me but what you will be doing is shining a bright light for everyone to see the way the truth and the life are people hurt and really bad you know sin really is just the pursuit of happiness they've just been deceived to believe that doing all this stuff and this new way of thinking and a gazillion genders and everything else is is the way to happiness and yet john one of the things he shared was this litany of how many things things are exploding in our culture i want i asked john to send that to me because i want to do some more research on that because when i go out and start preaching and i'm going to wait i'm not going to preach on that stuff i'm going to hold in my back pocket and then when someone comes and starts confronting me about confronting them with the truth why are you saying this that's so hateful i'm going to say because the increase of suicide has started by such and such percent because because why am i doing this why am i preaching the truth because god made you in his image and he knows what's best for you and you're never going to be happy until you find him but you don't want him right now you want to do your own freedom the lord's already telling me here it comes because if i'm really going to put myself out there you know and i have a little bit of an easier situation because i'm the guy that comes in stirs up the hornet's nest and i leave right i come in i say the stuff and then i go and leave you to pick up the pieces but it creates plenty of opportunity for conversation and self-evaluation but i know i still get slammed i leave you know at the end of mass people come out and they do the drive-by slap in the face that really was a horrible homily thank you deacon bye and i try to engage in a conversation they don't want to talk to me they just want to slap me in the face and walk out you know what i'm talking about we've all gotten that but none of that's the point the point is is that at the end of the day when we come back to the silence and we encounter the lord as the scriptures say when you come to encounter the lord do not let your own heart convict you you know what i think is one of our greatest problems and i think it's collective i think it's easy to believe in god from our perspective what i think is really challenging for us is to believe that god believes in us you know what i've been sensing all week a spirit of resignation we just resigned ourselves to say this is the way it has to be this is the way it's always been this way it's gonna be that we really can't go back and make a difference i'm just i'm just a hobbit deacon i i'm not even assigned to a church what what could i do but i think god looks at us and he says when you entrust your entire ministry to me and stop trying to earn my love but just receive it and open up that heart and let my spirit go you will be a very strong weapon in the transformation process of my kingdom i want to use you to move mountains in the lives of people and that requires you to bear witness to bear witness in my apostolate one of the things that i have the pleasure of doing is going out and doing like staff retreats and things like that and sometimes when i'm preaching a mission or something i'll i'll challenge the people as the lord calls me to and i'll say you know you people you want me to buy into your jesus right and they all go yeah i mean you believe in jesus right yes you want me to you want me to buy in jesus let's say i'm the guy that lives across the street from your church which none of you have ever come to my house before to visit because we only minister to fallen away catholics why churches are closing down you know why because we see our churches much more instead of seeing it as a beachhead where we're gaining territory we're seeing it as the exit point because we're getting our butts kicked so i'm sitting here with the crowd and i i'm like so let's just say i'm i'm the guy across the street and you want to come and you're lit up on fire you've been trained in evangelization and you want to come share the gospel of jesus christ with me and you want to make this happen and so you come and you knock on my door and you say hey have you ever heard about jesus christ and i'll say yeah i've heard of him well we think you should open up your hearts and let them in you want me to buy into your jesus yes that's why we're here well let me ask you just one question why should i buy into your jesus when you don't because you look just like me you dress just like me you watch the same television programs just like me you worry about money just like me what makes you different from me besides the fact you get up on sunday morning i don't i sleep in because i was up saturday night it's not much of a difference that's why the world doesn't want to knock on our doors to find out what we have i mean do we really believe that in christ we have everything we need do we really believe do we really believe do we really be living that in christ we have all we need and here's the spirit whispering saying come to the silence i'm encountering people who are starving for truth but you know what they want they want to know the why from an evangelist standpoint hence my job an evangelist the number one question that is confronting the church today from the world is how do you know jesus is real because those people can't see jesus in the tabernacle heck 70 of our people don't see jesus in the tabernacle why because they don't know that he's real they can't see the lord in the blessed sacrament when they can't encounter the lord in their hearts so are we putting that vision out in front of the people are we are we showing them beginning to say that disciples of jesus christ real people catholics are people who have a viable relationship with jesus christ such that their hearts are on fire because they encounter the love of god that's the question i ask on all my missions and you know the weekend masses that you preached before to kind of give people a taste i said give yourself your own test if you're sitting here today do you have a love for god in your heart if the answer is no then ask the other question in your heart do you experience a love from god if the answer is no then i'm here to tell you you're missing the very best part of being catholic you're missing god and we're meant to have god do you think jesus came and he did that so that we would have to come to church every sunday obligatory and have a mediocre experience of the faith because we don't understand what's going on or could it possibly be then maybe we're just missing something or more accurately someone you know when elijah the prophet finished that he ran away because his life was threatened right the lord asked him several times why are you here lord i'm your last prophet i'm the last one they've killed all the rest and they want my life now so he's hiding in a cave right brothers it might very well be that you are the last prophet in your town you are the last prophet but you know what the lord told him afterwards while he was hiding he says go back and he gave him a list of a couple of things to do anoint this guy king anoint that guy king make alicia your you know your replacement tell me who's your alicia who's your alicia every one of us should be working on one who's your elisha who's the one that's going to take over who's the one that you're pouring yourself into who's the one that you're allowing the anointing of the living god to flow through you and begin to start resting on them we need to start living that model brothers it's a model jesus gave us amen we need to be doing it i was at a church and i asked i asked the staff and i said how many of you are disciples of jesus christ they all raised your hands i said great your disciples wonderful tell me who are your disciples who are the people you're training up to follow christ and the dre she's one of those kind of people that just kind of speaks her mind she goes are you kidding me i don't have time to make disciples i'm the dre and i i heard that and i just i was stunned by what she just said and then i started to smile and then everyone you know it's like a pregnant pause and everyone busted out laughing but she really did illustrate a very critical point sometimes we're so busy running programs that we have no time to make disciples a couple a couple of closing thoughts brothers because i'm sure you're tired of listening to me when joshua stood before the israelites after they conquered the land of canaan just like moses had done before remember when moses came to the people it kind of was his grand goodbye he stands before them he says i set before you life and death blessing and curse right joshua does the same thing after they go into the land of of canaan and they com they conquer canaan he gathers the people i'm looking at joshua 24 starting in verse 14 and he says this now therefore revere the lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness put away the gods of your ancestor your ancestors that your ancestors served beyond the river and in egypt serve the lord now if you are unwilling to serve the lord choose this day whom you will serve whether the gods of your ancestors your ancestors served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the amorites in whose land you are now living but as for me and my house we will serve the lord you know a lot of us are asking well what do i do now where do i go from here and how how can i even get close to starting to do this because i'm still fighting my spirit of resignation and yet i think the lord has been showing us pretty clearly this week that satan seeks to rob us of our identity as sons of god and just even in our priesthood in our orders and diaconate and in seminary because we focus on what we do instead of who we are brothers are you a son of the living god do you treat yourself as a son of the living god i've been kind of chewing on that a long time wondering how would i behave differently if i really did treat myself as the son of god as jesus has always done would i lose hope so quickly would i doubt so quickly i don't know about you but i i'm convicted the truth is not meant is not just meant to be known but lived and we're living in a world where we're we like plastic christianity everything's in place everything looks good everything is right and yet i think the spirit's coming and he's stirring didn't he do that in you this week stirred up went to the spots you knew you were trying to tuck away and keep in the junk closet of your heart and he went in there open up the door and says man is it stinking here or what and he's going in and he's causing chaos and you're like what is going on and the one thing we begin to realize is that we're not in control you realize every time that we try to attain control we step out of god's will every time we lose our peace we step out of god's will because in him there is nothing but peace now can we still feel fear because we're confronting our our our parishes with the truth of god yes but we're we are created if the higher function of our soul is operating properly and the lower we experience emotions in the lower and in the higher function of our souls we sense the fruits of the spirit it's god's way of communicating to us through the spirit of how we are called to follow him but satan has trained us all to pay attention to the emotions the fear the anxiousness the resignation the whatever else is going on in us but god calls us to embrace him and encounter him in the silence in the spirit to move where he moves us to allow him to flow and have access to every part of our humanity can we sit here today and say that jesus that the spirit has every has access to every part of our humanity or are there still things in our lives that we're holding on to our false gods that we believe give us life that we go to because they whether it's enjoyment or whatever my brothers if we're really going to leave here and go and evangelize first couple of questions do you know how sounds like a stupid question i'm talking a bunch of priests and deacons but i've talked to plenty of priests and deacons who've told me they don't really know how to do it they've just been taught how to do the priestly and deacon things if you don't know how then it's maybe some boning up to do how do i share the kerygma with someone the good news the gospel how do i bring them to a point of proper disposition where as it says in the catechism in 1131 that we need to bring people the fruits of the sacraments will not come to fruition without the proper dispositions peter teaches us those proper dispositions repentance you can't start learning to be a new identity in christ a disciple until you give up trying to be god and baptism you can't live a new life until you die from the old one there's a place to go we need to start boning up does our staff know how to do it to our volunteers but here's the real key this is what i've discovered if we're really going to go out to do that then we need to answer this question upon what do you base your conviction of our faith upon what do you base your conviction of our faith because the people will see right through it if they don't see that we're sold out what is your conviction based on if it's book knowledge it's going to fall flat on our head right they need to see the lord activated in our hearts upon what is our conviction of the gospel of jesus christ based when we know that answer and we start preaching that answer people are going to start seeing something different they're gonna start understanding they're gonna start seeing you and the ways that you preach the gospel and sometimes you say the good love warming stuff and other times you're calling the kettle black and they're gonna see why because of the conviction because you have such absolute certainty that god is real how do you know and then you're able to give the answer hello which is something that we oftentimes don't like to do you know it's really easy to just officiate the role of the office we've been called we can put on the caller and we can read what it says in black and do what it says in red and never once reveal the truth of our own humanity but the truth is brothers and then i'll close with this get out of your hair the gospel of jesus christ must go to the very places and people's hearts where they most desperately need hope and if we're not prepared to talk about the ways that god has given us hope in our lives even from this week because you know your staff are going to go how was it father and you can just give them the one word answer fine or you could say could we sit down for about 30 minutes 45 let's make it an hour and open up your heart and show them you know what that's going to do to your staff you show people your heart they'll follow you you give people your heart they'll die for you but if you give people your heart you're going to suffer because love is going to be free to flow and they're sinners just like us but we are not alone you are not in your office alone the lord is calling us to rise brothers and go and proclaim the gospel of jesus christ and we're never meant to do it alone we're always meant to do it with him always meant to do it with him but to do it we have to come to the silence it's there in that encounter where we are going to be replenished we're going to be challenged or we're going to be made uncomfortable and where we're going to be loved i don't know where you are today right now i don't know what satan has been throwing up in your face as i've been talking maybe trying to get you to stick with where your plan was you know as you started looking back to your parishes and starting to dive into your emails and stuff over the day you know the temptation comes and brothers how are we going to be different when we go home and is that difference going to be something that we do or we let god do some people i know here still have that fear i'm not like that i don't do that kind of stuff deacon i i can't do this and that and this and that and and i've just come to recognize in my own life because as a middle school kid if i looked at a girl in the eyes i about peed in my pants i was so shy i believe that the gospel of jesus christ has not gone out to the four corners of the world the way it could because those of us who profess to believe in him say we can't instead of saying i can't but god can god can and yeah i might be living in a dark world and a sinful parish or all kinds of stuff going on but but the spirit is alive and well and jesus christ did rise from the dead and he did conquer sin and death and he has done all these things and if he's done all those things then dog on it he can do those things in my parish i just got to bring him there but he wants to move through your hearts brothers he wants to move through your hearts because once he captivates your heart and that fire starts blowing through you it's gonna spread that spirit that love is gonna just flow freely but we're the ones that keep saying no so as we prepare to close out the night in terms of going into prayer can we just begin to pray for each other about the things in our lives that we're afraid to do can we proclaim it ralph i'm afraid to go back to my parish and preach the truth because say it don't keep it secret anymore say it i found tremendous freeze and freedom when the lord made me go to him face to face and say it they put it out there let's just calm our hearts down be still close your eyes let's go before the lord

Channel: Steubenville Conferences

Views: 15

Rating: 0 out of 5

Keywords: Steubenville Conferences, Catholic, Franciscan University, Catholic Ministry, New Evangelization, Youth

Id: LkbBbVhZuJ4

Length: 58min 15sec (3495 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021