For our second workshop of the day, Brian Greenfield presented an honest and vulnerable message about family. When everything goes as God intended, our families are havens of love, consistency, and healthy boundaries. Unfortunately, Brian’s family (and many of our own families) don’t always meet that call. It is in these times that we need to remember that God is our perfect example of holy, familial love.

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Being a member of God’s family is more than just belonging; it’s also an adventure of learning to love each other the way God loves. Fr. Joe Freedy explained this during our first workshop of the afternoon.

For Fr. Joe, that adventure began with learning to love himself. As a young adult, he battled with addiction and anxiety. The different ways in which he was struggling, and also the ways he was trying to prove himself in sports, were really a result of a fundamental need that we all share: the need to be fully seen, fully known, and fully loved.

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In this session, Michael had a difficult, yet profoundly simple message: Fear prevents healing.

So often, we have wounds and struggles that we keep hidden. We might pretend that we don’t have any sins or problems at all. We might, like Michael did as a teen, go to the Sacrament of Reconciliation without acknowledging the deepest and most painful wounds in our hearts. And God, who is the Divine Physician, cannot heal the wounds that we will now show Him. Many times we can fall into cycles of sin due to feeling pain, regret, and shame. Those cycles can lead us to sin over and over again. This is often the case with sexual sin, such as pornography and masturbation. These sins cause us to forget the beauty of humanity and sexuality. They cause us to reduce ourselves and others to body parts for use, instead of whole people that are made for love.

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“To be fearless is to come back to our deepest identity. Courage comes from knowing who we are… When you receive your deepest identity, you are free.”