That burning in your heart right now? Don’t worry it’s not heart burn. You are experiencing the post Steubenville fire! Your heart is filled with the love of Christ and the joy that He gives to those who follow Him. You sang. You prayed. You danced. You listened to the Holy Spirit speak truth into your heart through some amazing speakers. You took way too many selfies and maybe even a picture with Mama Bear. You experienced the mercy of God in confession. You witnessed Christ truly present in the Eucharist. Now that we’re reminiscing, don’t you kind of wish you could stay forever? I hate to break it to you, Peter, but you have to come down from the mountaintop!
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Our final session of the morning, before our closing Mass, was about calling down the power of the Holy Spirit to change our lives. And as we prayed, not just for ourselves, but also for our brothers and sisters, our host Dan Harms challenged us to appreciate the power that’s already within us, by virtue of our Confirmation.

“I never appreciated Confirmation until after I was in my vocation,” he said. “When I don’t have the strength to be the friend, husband, brother, that I am called to be, the Holy Spirit comes and gives me peace.”
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We thirst to be free, to be loved, for an authentic life. As we read in Romans 6, the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life. How do we cast off the sin that keeps us in death? Jackie Francois-Angel’s talk on Sunday morning invited us to ask the Holy Spirit into our lives.

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“We do not tolerate you, you are not accepted. You belong. This is just the truth. It’s not anything dramatic.”

That’s how Fr. Mike Schmitz began the workshop with a title he wouldn’t have chosen. It’s a difficult topic, and tolerance simply doesn’t have anything to do with it.

There were three main principles in play: it’s not about ‘us’ and ‘them,’ there is only us; life is not easy, it’s difficult; and since to be human is to be both a body and a soul, what we do with our bodies matters. Continue reading

Of course it all began with Taylor Swift. We sang a little ‘Love Story’ because we love love songs. We know what real love is and we long for it. We also know what real love isn’t.

That’s because we were all made from love, by love, and for love, as Jackie Francois Angel pointed out. It all started in the beginning, when God created the world. We know from St. John that God is love, and love always has to go out of itself. God created the world out of love because He is love. Continue reading