Sister Miriam Heidland - Saturday Evening Keynote - 2015 Steubenville Toronto

I don't I don't know if you have these here have you ever been to those burrito places we're like the girl the chicken right there you know and they've got like the cilantro rice and they've got the beans and you've got all kinds of stuff so you get in line and there's like four different tortillas to choose from and they're like gluten free wheat a spinach wrap I don't know just just flour do you want kidney beans pinto beans maybe beans black beans but rich I mean it's like black beans and then it's like people in line are all pushing through and you're getting kind of nervous right and you're also getting kind of nervous because the burrito is getting bigger and bigger you're like how are they gonna get down the tortilla right so they're getting close to the end of the line and then they have this massive thing you know and they actually put the hole all that stuff like four pounds of stuff inside the burrito and then they give it to you like ooh look I love this right so is that one of those places maybe you been in one of those too okay so I'm getting online and when you go places dressed like this interesting things happen to you so there I am singing just kidding I wasn't and so um I was a hungry nun and hungry nuns are not always fun to be around so anyway I'm so hungry and I'm thinking and there's this young guy he's about 20 him and he's grilling chicken and he's looking right at me and I see him go interesting and he he looks at me he's like you a nun and I said yes I am he's like can you see through me and I said no I'm sorry I can't and he's like don't you have any superpowers or anything you know and he's like grilling it's chicken clearly disappointed that he's waited his whole life to meet him none and he meets the only one that's not super none right so he's turning the chicken over and I said I just try to love Jesus as much as I can and I bring joy wherever I go and he's like and so he just kind of starts turning the chicken over and I'm feeling bad for this guy I'm like okay I tell you what uh I'll pray for you right and his coworker was like oh girl he needs that mm-hmm and I said so I he said I said yeah I'll pray for you knees like sister will you Brooke will you pray become a millionaire and I said tell you what and this just came out of my mouth I'm like how about I pray that you get to heaven how about that and he's like okay he just goes back to turning his chicken over right now and I just laugh and I why I mean I sat there and ate my 12 pound burrito and it all went right here and I just was watching I'm like that's so what we do to God right it's been said that our idea of God is not too big it is far too small and so often in our life we ask God for things and we think we would because things are gonna make us happy more really looking for something limitless and we ask God for something in a sense kind of like a million dollars and he's like how about eternal life we're like go back to turn the chicken over right cuz we long for something more or have you ever done this we've ever done like the Twitter Instagram night thing before you go to bed okay so you're sitting there you're laying there whatever you're reclining at table and so yeah I'm gonna pull up my Twitter feed right here so you're pulling up your Instagram feed or wherever and you just start scrolling through verdun that just start scrolling through it and you're like oh man she lost weight what filter is that and she looks good look at three to go oh yeah his dad bought him another truck his dad don't know he was drunk when you crashed the first one but I know that right so you start going through and then all of a sudden you're looking and you're looking and you're looking and you're looking at everybody else's feed and all of a sudden you're like man I think I've got that lamest life ever on planet Earth you know you start comparing your life but you just can't you ever just you can't stop you've done that you just cannot stop and you're like no I mean it it's time and then you pick it back up and you're like no I got any fresh your feed and you keep scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and you're looking for something more and then somebody likes your Instagram photo or they retweet your stuff and for a moment you have this passing kind of moment of satisfaction and then you're hungry again right looking for something more I think sometimes we think well why there's must be something wrong with me because this doesn't satisfy me I don't know it seems to satisfy everybody else and the truth is it doesn't fully satisfy because it's not meant to because that's passing and are made for eternity yes okay so enter the limitless one if you saw the movie Passion of the Christ is a still shot from that movie it's kind of intense yeah a little intense Mel Gibson said when he directed that movie when they were studying the crucifixion scene they actually if you can imagine this that the last time you saw it if you think about that scene and this is the this the picture that you see is actually when he falls when his mom sees him fall and she has a flashback of when he fell as a little boy and she just takes off running for him but see this time she can't pick him up and as he lays on the ground there just covered in blood and just marred and beaten and he says in the movie Mel Gibson has him say I make all things new I make all things new Mel Gibson said that he actually after studying the crucifixion and setting her Romans tortured people he said he actually had to tone down the violence for the crucifixion scene can you imagine that you said everybody in our minds we have a psychological trauma point where we we experience so much trauma we just can't handle it anymore so we just stopped so he said what he had everybody do in his movie he actually took you to the brink right before your mind just kind of shut down because the trauma was too much and he just let you hang there so you could kind of see what that's like and Jesus says that in the Gospel of John he says I will lay down my life for my sheep and so often we had this kind of sense at I kind of desensitize kind of just sanitized version of Christ and here's a man who lays down his life for his sheep complete limitless love holding nothing back that man is afraid of nothing absolutely nothing I remember hearing a talk on suffering one time and the the speaker said that in antiquity times of antiquity when sheep owners were looking for a shepherd to watch over their flock they would choose the Shepherds that had the most scars on their hands in their arms because they knew that those men had gone to battle and if they would protect what was given to them and so they would choose those men to lay down their life the shepherd with the most scars and so often we have a very interesting idea of love right love is you know whatever we feel strongly about or whatever I feel particularly attracted to and we say I love that and maybe we're affectionate for it but Pope Benedict and his encyclical and God his love he says it is this man here the pierced one hanging there with the blood and water dripping from his side he said this is where love begins and how God reveals his love for us and he reveals his destiny for us and his plan for us not through nice words or nice feelings or just glorious moments but through men's suffering I think throughout generations really that's been the trouble the problem of pain that troubles us the most believers and non-believers alike when we speak of suffering we can't really quite understand it and oftentimes in our minds and our lives we say you know why is this happening to me well why does this have to happen why did my parents have to divorce why did that person have to die why is there so much evil in the world if God is so good if he's good all the time if God is real well then why is there so much evil why is there so much suffering any Pope Francis fans in the house anybody like Pope Francis at all so you might know that last January Pope Francis went to the Philippines and part of his stay there part of his trip he actually met with some Filipino street children and a little boy in the little girl that you seen the photo is an actual photo of two of the kids that presented to him and he heard from four children that day and the second-to-the-last child was a boy and he was telling Pope Francis of how he was 14 years old and he was on the streets by himself fending for his life and he would eat out of the trashcan and how they would try to escape at night from people that were preying upon them would try to sell them into prostitution and slavery and things like that but the last child to speak is that precious little girl that you see and she's 12 and she stood up in front of Pope Francis and all these Cardinals and all these dignitaries and she began to tell her story and she said Holy Father you know sometimes people suffer at the hands of their own parents her mom and dad were too poor and so they left her to herself they sent her to the streets and they didn't take her back and she was telling him how she too had to fight to get food out of the trash can and how she was so afraid for herself especially at night she wasn't sure what was gonna happen and then she she just began to cry and she said to Pope Francis she said why did God allow this to happen to us and then she said how come there are so few people that will help us and Pope Francis watch that little girl and he had a speech all prepared that he sat down and he looked around and he looked at that beautiful little girl and he said this little girl is the only one to ask the question to which there is no answer and he said sometimes the only answer we can give his tears and he stood up and he hugged her and she wept on his heart suffering is very mysterious isn't it and the answer that God gives us ultimately is the answer that we're all longing for the answer of the one who takes on arson who takes on all that breaks us all of our loneliness and all of our isolation he takes it upon himself and he suffers for us the Ennis one where he hears our cries and he sees our pain and it is his desire to welcome us into that embrace this tender embrace but to be embraced requires us to be vulnerable CS Lewis in his very famous book the four loves he says that to love it all is to be vulnerable and if you're like me in your life you've probably been hurt a bit and it's a huge risk to love it's a huge risk to be stripped naked and to be demeaned and to be mocked and to be scourge and to still give your heart dr. Tom Neal is a professor at a Notre Dame seminary in New Orleans Louisiana and he had this beautiful post on suffering and he says this he says in a world where God's mercy is absent people either live in a perpetual cycle of shame and guilt hurt and anger resentment and unforgiveness or they rationalize away their sins dismantle the truth of God's commandments and create a new moral order where an mercy is unnecessary because all is permitted sound familiar it is the fear we have a lot of times of facing ourselves of facing our brokenness of facing this fierce intimacy of God who desires to receive us that we push it away but dr. Tom Neal finishes it by saying but we who have faith in Jesus cross have no problem facing our broken lives is broken in need of repair and I was telling the ladies this morning that I used to work at a daycare I worked at a daycare for children for eight years and I have all kinds of daycare stories and I love little kids I've ever had a little kid tell you the truth they like you know rip your face off they're like you're so cute right so they little kids make you more human and those children made me more human and in our school we had the school and we had the parish and then across the street is kind of an afterthought they built the playground in the gymnasium and during the school hours that Street that actually went through the that separated the two properties was blocked off by these big orange cones but after three o'clock after school finished the state or the city had to take the cones away and the street was just open and many people it was amazing after all those years of that parish being there many people had no idea that there was a school there and the kids would run across the street well the kids are so used to running across the street didn't even think about it so every first week of school at the beginning of school year we'd march all the kids out because our daycare started at 3 o'clock it ended at 6 so the cones were gone by the time we got there and we'd line up the kids along the curb like this ok and we said what what do you guys see oh there's no cones yeah ok there's no cones what happens when there's no cones cars drive by ok cars drive by great so here's the deal one of the sisters will always always walk into the street before you and be able to look both ways just to make sure even if you think you don't see any cars the sisters are gonna go before you to make sure that there are no cars ok ok ok so you know what's gonna happen though if you ever ever ever ever run across the street in front of us you're gonna lose your recess you're gonna have to go back inside oh serious 9 we don't mess around ok ok so for the first week of school we'll be tall Mart's and but the older kids like this is so dumb sister might just do it get on the line ok so we'd all get on the curb you know and we look both ways and the kids across the street well inevitably at some point in the late fall there's like the the swings and the you know gymnasium in the ball and they're like kids just kind of freak out after all they're like ball swing and they just take off the road in front of you and fever I had a little kid run in front of you across the street is stuff to your heart and look bring the kid back to the car what happened well I ran across the street what happens when you run across the street you get run over yeah so what happened it's ok so here's the deal um remember we talked about this that your choices have consequences so we talked about that if you ever run across the street in front of us you're gonna have you're gonna lose your resource you have to go back inside oh and then it is meltdown City I'm the meanest person ever in the history of the world I can't believe just try hate you you're so mean take the ball kick it across into it kicks it off thus off the side of the school and stuff I'm never coming back here I'm never coming to steak here again see you tomorrow tell you mom said hi alright see you later ok or if you've ever watched little kids you know they do this you're not the boss of me don't tell me what to do actually I am so get your crayons and go back inside ok so get your stuffing but you know what how often go miko in our daycare you know now let me ask you this I mean I love those kids and might the meanest person ever on the face of the earth am I do I hate them because I don't want them to run across the street in front of me no I love those kids some of them are in college now and I tell you after out of all the years that I was there by the grace of God nothing happened to those children had any of them ever been hit by a car or something would have happened I would have died I set up rules for them because I know what will make them happy because as an adult I have the foresight to look both ways across the street so to speak and to make sure they're safe I'm creating a place where they can be free where they can thrive but how often in our life I mean little kids remind me so much of myself how often in our lives do we kind of stand in the street so to speak of life and we shake our fist at God saying you're not the boss of me don't tell me what to do cuz we don't get it maybe our image of God is like what you've heard maybe we have an image of God of it as a God whose vindictive or vicious or somebody who just wants to suck the fun out of everything we don't understand that we have a God who loves us and who doesn't just stand on the side of the road and call out to us to come home but who gets into the street and bears our pain if you've ever been a little kid maybe when you were little if you have a little brother or sister you know that some kids have a little habit sometimes of what they do is they have security blankets you're a security blanket as a kid alright okay or maybe you have a little special teddy bear and sometimes what happens is we didn't usually let the kids take them outside because they get it dirty but sometimes the kids were so attached to their teddy bear their security blanket they would not leave without them so what they would do is they blink and they just you know walk out to the playground but it's kind of hard to play on the swings when you have both hands full right so what they would do is they'd come and sit with us boring nuns because they couldn't play on the swings that can play because they didn't want to let go of their security blanket and they sat next to us and Buck do I don't want to go and play well sorry and you watch them and their life is being muted because they don't want to let go of something and security blankets after a while I know kids oftentimes think that magical power is like I'm invisible you can't see me I could totally see you know you can't okay and they hold them tight and after a while they kind of smell I've ever tried to wash a kid's security blanket I'll like bite your hand off before they separate you from it right and they sit there and they hunker down in life and they start to miss out on what's most beautiful this Lent what God did because he loves me he started to show me my security blankets what separates me from the limitless love of God what I hide behind because I'm afraid what I cling to because I think it gives me some of us speak powers where I can't be heard I'm not gonna be vulnerable I'm not gonna let anybody see who I am and I'm just gonna hide and security blankets change I think over the years you know I know for a long time I had security blankets of addiction a lot of brokenness in my life and for a long time I was just embarrassed about how I came into the world I was conceived out of wedlock my biological parents were 17 they're in grade 12 obviously not married and probably doing something I should have been doing and I was the result of their union and to this day I don't know my biological parents but I do have a deep intuition that at some point my mother thought of aborting me but she didn't and I sit here before you tonight because a scared seventeen year old girl said yes to life and I was the child in her womb I was adopted when I was three months old and by parents who loved me very much but when I heard about the story that I was adopted something in me happened I thought maybe there was something wrong with me like what would be so wrong with me that my own mother wouldn't want me right and as an adult now I understand the ramifications I look at 17 year old girls and I'm like oh my gosh but I was the little girl I couldn't understand that and I was telling the ladies that early this morning that when I was 10 years old I had my innocence taken from me and I didn't tell anybody and I found that one of the ways that I would forget about it is I would start to drink I started drink when I was 12 and when I was 13 years old I had medicines taken from me by an older boy and I didn't tell anybody and my life shattered and I thought you know what I was you know love volleyball out of school you know and I thought if I was just good enough you wouldn't notice and so I played Division one college volleyball and I wanted to work for ESPN and I had this whole dream and goal in my life but the truth was by the time I was 21 I was already an alcoholic and my life was I was addicted to lust is very promiscuous my life was a mess and you talk about self-hatred that's what addiction does remember who I woke up one morning and I've had a lot of bottoms we hit bottom we talked about hitting bottom as addicts and I've had a lot of bottoms hitting bottoms in my life but one in particular changed my life and I was 21 years old and I woke up and I remember two things number one I remembered what I had done the night before which didn't always happen because I was having blackouts so if you're drinking and having blackouts as problem drinking you're probably an addict but I remembered what I done the night before and it was awful but I think what caused me the most shame was that I'd promised myself that I wasn't gonna do it anymore and I meant it and you mean it don't you if you're addicted to porn or restoration or anger cutting or food or your cell phone whatever it is for you we mean it don't it we mean it we say okay I'm not gonna do this anymore I'm not gonna do it and we put it aside and we don't we turn the computer off or we to close the fridge door we say I'm not gonna do it I mean it but see the problem is addiction seeks to medicate a deeper pain and I was in a lot of pain and so our pain doesn't go away just comes back to the surface and what we do is we go back to our addiction the cycle of shame just goes on and on and on and on and on and that's where I found myself that morning so disgusted with myself so full of shame I'm sure some of you know what that's like and I got up and I'm a big girl right but I curled up in a tiny little ball on the floor of my room and I just wished for death because I didn't know what I was so sick so sick and nobody knew so isolated and I was just longing for something more in my life like how could you just be yourself could you just be comfortable in who you are could you just sit and just be at peace and not have to pretend all of us have security blankets whether it's you know I'm so cool or what we hide behind our intellect or we hide behind popularity we're so funny like that because we're so terrified of being stripped naked and just being ourself but what if there was a life really free like that I want to show you a commercial it's kind of self-explanatory but what you're gonna see is two groups of people you're gonna see a group of adults and they're gonna be asked one question and then you're gonna see a group of kids and they're gonna be asked the exact same question but they're gonna give two totally different answers can you show the video for us thank you it is Thanks I don't see this even be ready take one right so we've got one question everyone asks okay what is that what's true the question is if you change one thing about your body what would it be only one and I would change my forehead I have a really big forehead I think to be taller the puffiness of my face my ears big years a lot of times like kids make fun of me definitely my skin because I have dealt with acne and eczema issues ever since I was a little kid it's nice growing up like a lot of people coming 5head different so big they've always liked the airport again didn't he come come guess I'm going trekker when I was younger I felt like I wasn't quite adequate enough can you sit down I'll ask you one question question if you could change one thing about your body what were you you know interesting question yes the adults answered it from a very different perspective and you hear them talking about some deep stuff and some superficial stuff but you hear them talking about stuff that happened when they were kids you know the guys like hey man we know when I was a kid that people make fun of my ears and then I think the woman at the end is it a lot of adults in us in this room know she sums it up quite nicely when she says when I was younger I didn't feel quite adequate enough and then you see the children and one of them so little she can't even get on the stool and one of them wants legs like a cheetah so he can run faster like a cheetah and my favorite one is a little girl who says I wish I had wings so I could fly the adults relating out of their woundedness out of here but the children relate a bit differently they actually relate out of here right so they're free they live out of their identity of his beloved child of God and they see the world not as in our brokenness but in their dreams and their desires and what they authentically desire to be and there's a reason why Jesus tells us not to be childish - but to be childlike we don't have to put on a security blanket to be liked or to make us invisible or pretend that we're something that we're not but that we can live in freedom Jesus has a funny way of always setting people free if you read the story in the Gospel of Luke you know that there's some people crucified with him I went on his right and one on his left and Jesus being reviled the whole time he's being cursed daddy's things spit on and one of the men hanging there with him says man are you the son of God if you're really the Son of God save yourself and save us come on man show up and the other criminal says have you no fear of God we're getting what we deserve because we deserve this punishment we're getting our just rewards because we've done something wrong but this man is innocent he has done nothing and the criminal looks at Jesus and he says Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom and Christ so tenderly looks at him like he looks at us my dear brothers and sisters out of all the fears we have all the fears we have a being stripped naked all the fears we have of telling our story all the fears we have of our addiction in our secrets all the stuff we cling so tightly to just to be loved he's not deterred by any of it and he looks deeply into that man's eyes and he says today you will be with me in paradise a confession from a criminal who thought his life was lost I don't know what your security blankets are I don't know I don't know what your trauma is I don't know what your dreams are what your desires are but I do know that this man loves you limitlessly and he's not deterred by anything we might put in the way this is a very poor and powerless position to be in isn't it with your arms nailed to the cross and literally stripped naked that's what the Romans did to you just to make sure you had no decency left but Christ hangs R as the bridegroom who's going to give his life for his bride so she can live he's gonna come and visit us tonight and my invitation to all of us really myself included is I don't know a security blanket you're clinging to most tightly - were you just afraid maybe it's something really dark maybe something you've never told anybody I would just invite you could you give that to him could you just surrender and open your hands and say yes just a little yes nothing heroic yet but I think saying yes the things is heroic indeed

Channel: Steubenville Youth Conferences

Views: 29,300

Rating: 4.9130435 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, Charismatic, Youth Conference, Evangelization, Steubenville Conferences, Youth Ministry

Id: WiK4_h1P91s

Length: 28min 42sec (1722 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 02 2015