Tonight, Bishop Rice talked about the best Confession he ever made in his life – when he was one week shy of his 50^th birthday. The penance was especially extraordinary for him; he was told to go into the chapel and “just thank God that you are His son, that you are a child of God.”

This truth can easily go in one ear and out the other, but it is important that we claim it in our hearts. This is our greatest identity: we are children of God.

We were blessed to have Bishop Rice lead us in a prayer that, for some of the teens here tonight, might be the most important prayer of their lives: a prayer of commitment to Christ.

Quotables

“You make Him smile.”

“The greatest dignity that we have is to be a child of God.”

“God is fascinated by each one of us.”

“He never ceases to draw us to Himself.”

“Jesus doesn’t work magic; He works miracles.”  Tonight, Sr. Miriam asked each of us to look at our own lives and ask ourselves what it is that we want of Jesus.

Sister told the story of the blind man Bartimaeus who laid all that he had on the line in order to call out to Jesus (Mark 10:47-52).  He called to Jesus in a way that no one had before.  Bartimaeus called Him the Messiah and thus acknowledged that He was the Son of God.  One of the promises associated with the Messiah was that the eyes of the blind would be opened (cf. Isaiah 35:5).

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Just before this afternoon’s dinner break, Cas shared about the ways that Confession has enabled him to more freely encounter Jesus in the Eucharist.

Quotables:

“Something spoke in my heart, and I went to confession to completely open myself up to the priest.  What I saw wasn’t the priest judging me, but was the Holy Spirit freeing me through the Eucharist.”

“The freedom from sin changed how I was able to receive the Eucharist.”

“There are still times that I walk out of Confession and I don’t feel different, but I still know that God is working in my life.”

“Sin is ugly; we can’t sugarcoat this.”

The Healing of the Lepers

Mike Gormley begins by discussing the social effects that were impressed on lepers in Jesus’s time. They were isolated physically, emotionally, and spiritually for their disease was deadly contagious. However, he references Luke 17:11-14, which describes the story of the leper whose faith in God ultimately healed him. Now that he had been healed, he could go about his normal life again. Included in his schedule would be returning to the Temple, and that is why Jesus instructed him to tell the priests of his healing first. When Jesus healed someone, they were able to return home and their home is the Temple. Mike states that “Jesus is not just concerned with the individual, he wants to bring that individual into the life of the Body.”

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In his talk on prayer, Fr. Martin shared some of his own struggles with prayer and gave tips on how we can improve our own prayer lives.

Before anything else, Fr. Martin made an important distinction. While many of us are tempted to make prayer about us seeking God, Fr. Martin explained that prayer is all about God seeking us. In order to respond to God seeking us, there are a few things that Fr. Martin suggests.

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