Volunteer Mass with Bishop Rice: “Look Beyond”

The dorms and hotels sit empty, expecting many high energy teens and chaperones.

The Student Union smells of hot food in preparation for its crowd of exhausted and hungry late night visitors.

The “Q” Arena remains still; awaiting the passionate singing of worship song lyrics, hearts to be touched by the ministry team, countless repetitions of the “Cross Clap” and of course, the pattering of the stadium seats proclaiming “You are My Joy”.

It is the calm before the storm.

This morning at 10am, the excited group of conference staff happily gathered together for the Volunteer Mass to pray for the fourth thousand anxious and faith-filled teens seeking to encounter God in a new way this weekend.

As Bishop Rice said during his homily this morning,

“We know those moments where we have encountered the divine.”

The theme this year is Elevate, encouraging the teens to go deeper and seek the heights in their faith. In his homily, Bishop Rice said that we are called to have the “ability to look beyond” and he challenged the conference staff to pursue their primary goal of helping the teens to “recognize the fact that there is more to this world than this world.”

Whether it is through praise and worship or interactions with their peers and chaperones, it is the responsibility to the staff to ensure that the teens get the most out of their experience as they encounter God this weekend. He has so much in store for these teens and now is the perfect opportunity for them to go deeper, go higher.

Bishop Rice closed his homily with this line from a song that you may know:

“Look beyond the bread you eat, see your Savior and your Lord. Look beyond the cup you drink, and see His love poured out as blood.”