 Thank you so much. God bless you. Great to be with you. Thank you. You know, when Sister was introducing me, I thought, who's she talking about? Anyway, she's the one I'd like to thank because she's a walking living catechism, especially about the history of the catechetical movement and the bishops rely on her opinion a lot, and she's not shy about registering her opinion, but it's always valuable and we're very grateful to her. Let's thank Sister Joanna for her wonderful work she does. I'd also like to thank Dr. Bob Rice and the beautiful choir we have that are leading us in prayer, and I just love that invocation of the Holy Spirit makes my work a lot easier as I begin this little presentation, so let's thank Dr. Bob and all the musicians. I would like to go over something that I know any one of you could give, but I would like to do it in such a way that hopefully it's invitational to you personally in your own interior life for you to look at your catechetical approach and especially your openness to doing evangelization and introduction of others to Jesus, and then also how you are living that fire, that fire that's been given to you because of your call. Remember, God doesn't give you a call without giving you the grace to do the call, to live out the call, so just count on that and ask for that, especially when it's really hard, it's really tough, don't forget, He doesn't give you the call without the grace to fulfill the call. So the topic tonight is forming disciples and catechists in the 21st century. Now that's a daunting topic. I'm just going to do a little rapprochement toward it. Just begin to set it up a little bit so that hopefully you can come to toward the end of the talk. I'm going to talk about a discipleship formation pedagogy that we're using in Green Bay, and hopefully it might be of help to you. But you know, we don't come by this, this isn't something I made up or you made up or anybody else. Our Holy Fathers have been really encouraging us for over 40 years since that great document, Evangelia Inunciandi by Pope Paul VI. If you want to know what the new evangelization is, go read that document, pray with that document. It is beautiful, it's challenging, it gives you a whole new language and a whole new paradigm to understand the call of the gospel on us today. And this is really what's driving it. Sister Joanna and I agree that he really is the founder of the new evangelization movement, if you want to call it a movement. So we look to Paul VI, John Paul the Great. He used the first to use the term the new evangelization. He labeled it, he called it proposing the same gospel with new ardor and vigor. But he is our hope. So Paul VI, Christ our way, Christ our hope, John Paul II. Christ our truth. Doesn't that summarize Benedict? The more you read about him, the more there is to read and the deeper it goes. I have on my library bookshelf about 30 books written by him and translated into English and I'm just on about book two or three of those 30. I mean it's very well thought out, very beautiful, very holistic and he's going to keep on giving, that's for sure in all of his great works. And we have Pope Francis Christ our life. He's showing us how to live out missionary discipleship, which I'm going to talk about a little bit more later on. But he's showing us what it means to have the fire of the gospel, the love of Jesus burning in our hearts. And he's teaching us especially how to reach out in missionary love for the poor. Those who are disenfranchised. I don't think he's just talking about physical poverty, he is speaking about that, but he's also speaking about spiritual poverty, which Mother Teresa said that our country especially is spiritually poor. What does the word evangelization mean? The word evangelism comes from the Greek word, awangilisomai, which literally means to bring good news. I'm giving you a very simple version of this. You can use some of these thoughts and express them in ways that are similar, but the good news that we are bringing to the world is not only the message of Jesus Christ, but the person of Jesus Christ who desires a personal relationship with each one of us. Isn't that incredible? Jesus wants a personal relationship with you. With you. That's phenomenal. One of the greatest disappointments of my priesthood for 37 years almost now, for 17 of those years as a bishop, is this. I can't seem to be able to convince people that Jesus loves them. And this for me is a heartbreak. I can't seem to be able to convince people that Jesus loves them. So I'm going to say to you throughout this talk, Jesus loves you, loves you, each one of you. Open yourself to that love. Open yourself. Why are you holding back? Why do you resist those movements of love? And we'll talk about that in just a moment. Not that you're holding back, but there might be some resistance there. The church exists in order to evangelize. Evangelization is in fact the grace and vocation proper to the church for deepest identity. If we're not evangelizing, we're going to lose our identity. We've got to get out there and tell the good news, introduce others to our Lord, many of them encounter a company communion and mission. I'm using Pope Francis' words and a pot of seeded document a little bit in four stages. Encounter a company communion, worship, and mission. So in these four stages, we begin to see that we need to constantly be going out of ourselves and if we don't, we're going to cease to exist because we'll lose our identity, we'll misunderstand our mission, we'll be lost. The church exists in order to evangelize, that is to say, in order to preach and teach, to be the channel of the gift of grace, to reconcile sinners with God and to perpetuate Christ's sacrifice in the mass, which is the memorial of His death and glorious resurrection. Paul the Sixth, Dave Angelino, it's Yandy number 14. So this is our very being. This is who we are. This is what we're about, bringing that good news, that gospel to the whole world. And brothers and sisters, I would say to you, as many of our speakers have been saying, the world needs it, badly. People are getting so broken. You know, the whole pitch of the world is spinning out of control. We're reaping the benefits of 50, 60 years of the devil running things. I'm getting tired of that. Are you getting tired of that? I'm sick of it. Are you sick of it? Well, let's kick him out. Amen. How do we do this? What are they talking about? What's this all about? Share the gospel in your life, sharing stories of faith. Now I'm going to say to you, brothers and sisters, everything you're doing now you're going to keep doing, you're just going to do it differently. Because remember that beautiful phrase, teachable moments, catechetical moments. Don't you see those all the time now? You see that. Don't you? An opportunity to connect something in life with some teaching of the church you can explain and expound upon. Well, what I'm going to say to you is we, all of us, preachers, teachers, those involved in ministry, we should be constantly looking for moments of witness, moments of encounter when we can help people connect and reconnect to our dear Lord Jesus, our best friend. We are his friends. We are his followers. We should use every opportunity. We wouldn't have to necessarily change a lot about what we're doing right away. But one time I thought, oh my gosh, we got to start all over with the whole catechetical enterprise. Oh my gosh, dive a headache or something. We put so much work into this. All of you put so much work into this. It's still as valid as it ever was because it's the truth. However, if we don't really energize that truth and our mission and passion for it, people aren't going to understand it. We are living in a highly sentimentalized culture among all the other isms. People operate by their feelings. You tell them the truth and they're not going to accept it. Ever had that experience? Raise your hand if you ever had that experience. Tell people the truth. They don't accept it. They walk away. They're bored to tears. They fight you, whatever. They're not going to accept it. They can't hear it. They're too indoctrinated by the culture of today's secularism, materialism, the new atheism. They are so inundated in their brains, there's no room in there for the good news hardly. So what are they going to believe? They're going to believe when they experience genuine love coming from the heart of Christ through you, through me, through our ministries, through our catechesis, through our preaching, through our teaching. That's what's going to make them believe when they know and experience the love of God gushing forth from us because we're connected to the source and we operate by the power of the Holy Spirit. So it's going to happen through sacraments, mass media, person to person. That's a big thing, person to person, personal devotion, small communities. You know, I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of sitting by and watching people just go to hell. You getting tired of that? Get all sucked up in addictions, they're so, you know, and we ourselves, we suffer from it too. We're part of this world. We get, we get hijacked a lot. We got to be careful, we got to make sure we stay on the straight and narrow, have good spiritual direction, go to confession regularly, pray every day, come before the Lord and the Blessed Sacrament. But you know, why are we putting up with this? Seeing our brothers and sisters get addicted, and we might say something but we don't want to offend and we don't want to hurt their feelings? Let's pray them back. Let's fight this battle. They're worth it. Their soul is worth it. Don't sit by and let your brothers and sisters and your family and your friends go to hell in a handbasket. Amen? So let's, let's energize the church to do what we're supposed to do, to tell them about the wonderful gift that is, is faith. Walking with Jesus, loving Jesus, having him at the center of our lives. We share the gospel. The church exists in order to avenge us. Sorry. Oh, there we go. Oh, I'm sorry. I was one behind, wasn't I? All right. We share the gospel by proclaiming the basic story of salvation, which is called the karygma. After the Second Vatican Council, there was a big, what they call the charismatic movement when people were talking about the basic karygma, which is the basic kernel of proclaiming the gospel. And today we need to return to that because this is the kernel of the faith that you and I need to memorize in a very vibrant way so that we can reach out and communicate the good news. What is the karygma? On the lips of the catechist, the first proclamation must ring out over and over. Jesus Christ loves you. He gave his life to save you. And now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free you. That's Pope Francis' version of the karygma. Isn't that beautiful? Evangelio Gaudium, paragraph 164. That's a summation of what he wants us to say and explain in the karygma, which comes right out of the scriptures. So let's practice this a little bit. On the lips of the catechist, the first proclamation must ring out over and over. Jesus Christ loves you. He gave his life to save you. And now he is living at your side every day to enlighten, strengthen, and free you. Get to know them. Get to know their story. I have a solution. The solution is someone you've heard about. You may know a lot about him, but maybe you don't really know him. And if you don't know him, it's hard to love him. That's Jesus. That's Jesus. According to Jesus, the cost of being a disciple, Luke chapter 14, without the karygma, the other aspects of this process are condemned to sterility, with hearts not truly converted to the Lord in a potasita document. How many of you have read a little bit of the potasita documents? Very good. Very good. Very challenging. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The Joy of the Gospel is much easier by Pope Francis, but that is a very thorough document. And I encourage you to read it because it has that evangelical fire in it, that Gospel fire in it. But if we don't do the karygma with living faith, with dynamism, and with real love coming from what we're saying, everything else is going to be condemned to sterility, with hearts not truly converted to the Lord. You know, we all go to Mass every Sunday with people sitting right next to us. God bless them. God love them. They're good Catholics, but they don't know Jesus. God bless them, and they're faithful still. They're faithful, but they don't know Jesus. I keep thinking, oh my heavens, they're not reaping the benefits. God bless them, but they're persevering. That's the diamond in our own backyard. Those people are the diamonds in our own backyard. Let me explain what I mean. There's a book called The Diamond in Your Own Backyard. It's a business book, actually. It's about an African farmer who has a farm, and it's arid, there's no rain, and he gets so discouraged. So he sells his farm, and he goes off and search for diamonds, because there was a diamond strike in Africa. He goes on in search of diamonds, and he gets a couple here, he gets enough to get by, and he moves on to the next place where they've struck diamonds, and he gets a few more diamonds, but just gets enough to get by. He goes around and does this for years. Finally he makes the way all around the diamond strikes, and he comes back to his original farm, and he doesn't recognize it. Places beautiful, lush, terrific mansion on this farm. And he goes and knocks on the door. It's the guy. He sold the farm, too. He said, hey, remember me? I sold you this farm several years ago. What are you doing here? What happened? The guy said, you know, a funny thing happened to me. I went out to till the soil, and I hit some rock. The rock was really hard, and then I saw that it was shiny, and I wondered what it was. When I went and had it checked, and it was a diamond. Then I kept digging, and digging, and digging all through this property, kept tilling the soil, tilling the soil. And I found out the property you sold me has acres of diamonds. What a story, huh? So I find that's really true. The diamonds are in your pews. The diamonds are the good people who are striving to be holy, but they may not yet know Jesus or be on fire with their faith, because they think all they have to do is fulfill the obligation, sit and get, and go home and live their life. Very compartmentalized, you see. So the most loving thing we can do, the kids in your classes, your catechetical sessions, the people in our pews help them to know and to love Jesus. Tonight I'm going to be spending almost all this talk, if you'll bear me, on that first module of Pope Francis, which is encounter in the diocese of Green Bay, we are using the term discovering Jesus. You know, when we just set it on the pathway of disciples on the way, which we started in 2014, which is a programmatic way to introduce the leadership to discipleship, the concepts, the movements, et cetera, to tie it into catechesis, et cetera, we're on this journey. And the priest said, hey, bishop. I said, yeah. So we need to have a talk. Okay, let's talk. You know, I said, guys, let's face it, this discipleship stuff and evangelization, it's not going to go anywhere unless you decide to do it. Let's be honest, that's the elephant in the room. Let's talk about it. Let's have a heart to heart talk. It's not going to go anywhere unless you, my brothers, decide to do it. So they were a little ticked at me, you know, but they went home and they came back and we had another one of our, come to Jesus meetings. And they said, bishop, you're right, but we want to study discipleship. We want to pray about it. We want to use the same terms. We want to use the same type of programming. We want to be able to do this. So we're fully engaged. So the people aren't coming to us the way ahead of us and then we're embarrassed and have to catch up. I said, you are right. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. We want a year. You got a year. So in our disciples on the way, we're delaying it a little bit because the priest and the pastor leader said, we want a year. Okay. So we've been through a discipleship seminar and they've been meeting once a month to pray together and to get to know the Lord better. One of our priests at the discipleship seminar got up and said, man in his fifties, you know, I'm, I think I'm fairly accomplished. He said, I'm well educated. I think I'm a good pastor. I try to lead my flock well and have a good staff, et cetera. But he said, one day I was praying about all this and I realized, I really don't know Jesus, what courage that took for him to say that in front of his brothers and me, I really did not know Jesus. And now I'm getting to know him as my friend. I have a deeper relationship with him. He's living to me. He's not just my savior. He's my friend, not a dryer in the house. All these old, tough, codger priests, some of them. Some of the, some of the young ones who know better than the rest of us about everything, they were crying. We were all crying. I was crying. I was crying. You know, so isn't it beautiful? The Holy Spirit is really moving as we strive to come to know and love Jesus better by the power of the Holy Spirit. What is the new evangelization? Through the cross, to the resurrection. Evangelization cannot be new in its content. Since it's very theme is always the one gospel given in Jesus Christ. John Paul too said that in the task of the, task of the Latin America Bishops 1983, Jesus Christ himself is the content of the new evangelization. So if you're introducing other people to Jesus, you're accompanying them in their life to get to know him better, to get their knowledge base better, to get their moral life better, to learn to be a person of virtue and to walk the way of Christ. You are doing the new evangelization because you're drawing people closer to Jesus. And some of that is, by the way, if you're a catechist and you're not helping your disciples to know and love Jesus Christ, I'm not sure you're doing catechesis. You're doing very good teaching. You're imparting doctrine. You're teaching the faith. You're teaching all the things we need to know about the faith. You're the incredible gift of the magisterial teaching of the church, which is inexhaustible. The catechesis is all about renewing that relationship with our Lord, that living relationship with the Lord that is proclaimed in the charismatic preaching and teaching and catechetical efforts. So you know, when I say things like that, people sometimes go, or I say, you know, it wouldn't hurt if you just go and knock on the door of your neighbor and just get to know him. That could be, that could be your mission field. People in my neighborhood, you mean you want me to talk to the people in my neighborhood? They look at me like, you got to be kidding. I can write them on social media or something, or maybe call them. But you want me to go talk to them, well, that's like the Jehovah's do, or that's like these other people do, or these Mormons, whoever, that's what the kind of stuff they do. Well, you know, maybe they got something. At least they know their neighbors, they know their mission field, and they're out there doing it. So I won't tell you, you have to do it, like I could tell you, but you won't do it anyway. You'll do it when your heart gets on fire, and when you want others to know this beautiful Savior we have, this Lord who has given us the church, the beautiful sacramental life of the church, the teaching of the church to keep us from harm and danger, the more everything moral that we could possibly need in order to live a good and holy and fulfilled life. Once you get on fire with this, there's no stopping you. There's no stopping you. The audience, the already baptized, already talked about the diamonds in our own backyard. Often active Catholics who need to discover or rediscover their relationship with Jesus. Now, some of you may have had an experience with Jesus and he seems very distant. That happened to me for years, by the way, and I'm a bishop, I was a priest. Happened to me for years. That happened to me for years. I just couldn't seem to get close to him. I'd keep trying, trying, trying, working on it, working on it. Didn't feel a thing. But I knew he was with me. I knew he was watching out for me. By the way, I really felt consoled when Mother Teresa said she had no consolations in prayer for over 40 years. Oh, he didn't make me wait that long. So isn't that incredible? So because you don't feel a relationship to Christ, you're not on fire with some kind of beautiful gifts of consolation, could mean that you're being asked to deepen your love affair with the Lord and to grow in that mystical way through the dark night. You know, the caramelites are so good in showing us all of this. So that doesn't mean I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about people that are infected with the world so that they don't even care. Those are the ones we need to help wake up and to reach them. However we can, however we can do that. It's also new in the way we proclaim Jesus and the mystery of our salvation with new strength and confidence and enthusiasm. So that's what Pope John Paul pushed to it with new confidence, new ardor, with new enthusiasm. Isn't this a cool picture? You don't see John Paul like that too often, you know? I've got my eyes on you. Beautiful, isn't it? You know, when he went to see Aliyadka, I heard that afterwards that's the man that shot him. And he had a good sense of humor. The press asked him, well, Holy Father, did you forgive your assailant? Did you forgive him? He looked at them and he says, of course I did. I'm a good little pope, you know. It's true. He said that. He said that. Incredible. So the content is the same. Jesus Christ evangelization can be new in its ardor, its methods and its expression. Now, by the way, that doesn't mean you're going to go out as an evangelical preacher, probably. But it means that you start to view the world in a different way. Since I've been learning about evangelization, it's like a new eyeglasses, new way of looking at the world. It's a new vision of everything we have. We're not going to lose a thing. But we're going to lose it if we don't really recover a sense of that missionary spirit of the early church. That's where we're at. Petrarch, do you agree with that? We've got to renew this missionary spirit of the early church. And we're going to do it together, brothers and sisters. The bishops can't do this alone. What good is a hierarchy if the people don't follow? But what good are the people if they have no one to lead them and to shepherd them? Same thing, right? So we have a lot of people in the number two there. First of all, the mission field, the audience, is ourselves. That's why I asked you at Mass, how are you doing with Jesus? How was your relationship with Jesus? I hope during these days you have some time just to go off by yourself and say, Jesus, we need, as they say in New York, we need to talk. Can we talk? Can we talk? Let's have a little conversation. I feel really distant from you. Or I realize I've really messed up. I've got to get my life in order. Or things are going great, Jesus. Thank you. Praise you. Praise your holy name. Whatever it is, it's okay. It's where you are. And that's where Jesus is, right where you are. Isn't that great news? Can you believe it? That's good news. That's the gospel. That's Eumangelion. Second, those who have heard the basic gospel message but believe that it has nothing to offer. Oh, hum. And our dear millennials, I love the millennials, but we got to really catch there. Hey, let's give a hand to the millennials here now. But I'm saying to my young adults, the millennials back home at Green Bay, I need you to help me to reach your generation with the gospel. Please, please help us to reach your generation. I love you, but I don't understand you. I don't get you. I'm an old horse. I'm a dinosaur now. But you do, and you understand your generation. And what they're telling me is, Bishop, we need some healing. We got a lot going on in our families. There's a lot of brokenness. We need healing. OK, well, that's the next thing we're going to talk about. How can we help our young people to heal and to fully engage in the life of the church? Those who have never heard the basic message about the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, a lot of people, more and more people are in the generations that just think it's something that's around, it's like the neighborhood gas station, the local church or something. No relevance to them, not even enough for gas. And so, really, we really, this is pretty desperate, brothers and sisters, pretty desperate. I don't want to be, you know, a naysayer or a discouragement, or given to discouragement, but we really have to let the Holy Spirit shake us up so we don't lose this wonderful treasure we've been given. The New Evangelization is about, this is, Cardinal Wurl said this, or something like it in one of our meetings. Restoring confidence in the power of the gospel and in the life, the person, and the mission of Jesus Christ. How often do we say, I'll pray for you, but we don't really mean it. We don't really believe it. That Jesus can heal someone through the sacraments or through our prayers. We have no confidence. We've lost our confidence in Jesus himself. Well, what the heck are we doing? If we don't have confidence, you're the good folks, you're the engaged folks, what are they doing out there that aren't engaged? So we have to restore our confidence in Christ Jesus to be the Lord and the Savior and to win the battle and to win the victory. To win the victory, we gotta restore our confidence and our faith in Christ Jesus. You believe that? Say amen. Amen. Oh, that was good, that's good. That's what we're talking about. All right. So who is Jesus and why is he important to us today? We cannot engage this, this is Cardinal Dolan, great quote. Cannot engage this culture unless we let him first engage us. We cannot dialogue with others unless we first dialogue with him. And we cannot challenge ourselves unless we first allow him to challenge us. Cool, huh? So we gotta do our homework personally in our relationship with our Lord. I'm so pleased that there's more and more priests getting trained in spiritual direction through the IPF and more people are studying the spiritual life of the church and helping one another. You know, you don't have to have a degree in spiritual theology to be a companion on someone else's spiritual journey. Please do that. They know that you don't have a degree and may not give exactly the right advice. But pray to the Holy Spirit. What is that wisdom, that gift forgiven? I just let the cat out of the back. Wisdom, counsel, call on counsel. When somebody comes to you and says, hey, I need some advice. I got this problem, this problem. Don't just spread out something from the top of your head. Pray a little bit under your breath if they're believing person, pray with them. Then ask the Holy Spirit for counsel so you can help that person answer some of their questions. You know, we really need to witness ourselves. What is Jesus? What does he mean to you? Who is he to you? I'm gonna keep barreling down into this. The good news proclaimed by the witness of life sooner or later has to be proclaimed by the word of life. There's no true evangelization unless the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are proclaimed. So underneath your breath, say the name of Jesus constantly on people. Just give them a blessing. Lord, bless you, Jesus, may Jesus be with you, may Jesus heal you. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you. He loves you. You're precious to him. He loves you. Are you getting that now? Good, open yourself to that grace. That grace is right here right now. He loves you. Yeah, I mean, he loves you. He loves you. You're precious to him. So there's no evangelization unless the name, the teaching, the life, the promises, the kingdom and the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God are proclaimed. So we have to proclaim that. Speak it out. The word is powerful, but you have to speak it. You have to proclaim it. Quote the scriptures. Use the name of Jesus. Whatever you can think of at the time to help you to proclaim and witness to the power of the name. Now, you know, probably a lot of you are my generation and we were told, you know, don't show your spirituality on your shirt sleeve. That's not good. It looks like you're kind of proud and all that sort of thing. You know, I think we got to let go of that. Everybody's telling their experiences about everything these days anyway. So why not tell them about your love affair with our Lord? The Bible is the greatest love story ever. Greatest love story ever. Let's tell our story. It's okay to witness. It's good. It's good. Please do it. People need to hear it. They need to hear what he means to you because I think it was Paul the sixth said, first, and then the other popes have quoted him, the people will believe a witness before they believe a teacher. See, that's why a catechist is both a witness and a teacher. Catechists, that's your vocation. To be witness and teacher. You're not just a teacher. You're not just a witness. You're a witness and a teacher. But people will tend to believe a witness first before they believe a teacher, especially today. That's the kind of way we're wired these days, huh? Just seems that's in the water. Jesus is the only gospel. We have nothing further to say or any other witness to bear. Now there's Pope Francis. He makes these very declarative statements. We've got nothing else to say. He's making a point. This is all about the person, the work, the name, the accomplishment, the salvation, one for us in Christ Jesus. If you don't mind for just a minute, I'd like to share with you an experience I had that was a liminal experience, a threshold experience in my life from the time I was a young boy in seminary high school. You know, we used to have seminary high schools and I started when I was 13. Left home, it was kind of traumatic to leave home, especially for my mom, but for me too. But that's what they told us in those days. If you want to be a priest, go away to high school. So I said, okay, go, that's it. I knew I was being called. So I had that blessing. I was very sure I was called. You only really know when the church lays hands on you but your ordination, but I was pretty sure I was called. But I'd like to share with you a story of faith that happened to me in high school. And this was in Victoria, Kansas where I went to seminary high school run by the Capuchin Fathers. Now they're from Pittsburgh and Herman, Pennsylvania. It's where that order's from. But they had a mission out in Kansas near Hayes, Kansas where they had a military academy. And Victoria was the seminary, high school seminary that they ran. They had this wonderful booklet. It was a student book, kind of like a comic book. And for some reason, I just got captivated about this book which was about the life of St. Francis. Beautiful drawings, illustrations, little bubble things with quotes in it. You know, I picked that up one day and I started reading that thing and I just kept reading it. We had spiritual reading every night at nine o'clock or 9.15, whatever it was. And I'd pull that out every day, read it, read it, read it. Over and over and over and over again. I was captivated by this St. Francis. I'd heard about him, but I didn't know anything about him. Started reading that and reading that. And one of the spiritual directors came by and he says, hey, you've been reading that for a long, awful long time. There's a lot to read in the Catholic Church for spirituality. He said, I love that you're reading in Francis, but why don't you try something else? Well, I tried something else, but I kept sneaking that in. At any rate, I heard this story about a young man who had died there at the seminary several years ago. His name was Marty Wassinger. Marty was a local Kansas boy not too far from Victoria. His dad was a railroader and his mom was a registered nurse, so were mine. He had an older brother, two years older and a younger sister, so do I. He was a sophomore in high school and so was I. He loved racquetball, or handball in those days, which I loved too. I thought, this is getting kind of strange. And then I went and looked in the, what's the newsletter? It was called the Kansascan. And I looked back to the year he was in the sophomore and he had the same grade point average as I did. So now I think this is getting a lot of coincidences here. What's happening? What's going on here? So I kind of got obsessed. I must say I'm a little obsessed with this fellow and finding out more about him. Well, it turns out that it was very traumatic when he died because he died of a brain tumor in his bed in the infirmary where there were 100 other young boys sleeping in this infirmary. I thought, boy, that must have been rough. Later on, I saw the Capuchin that was the rector in those days and he told me all about it. And it was captivating to hear what he had to go through when that happened. He died of a brain hemorrhage. And then I wondered, well, he died in the bed up here in the infirmary where I was staying and my other buddies up there in the seminarians. Where did he die? He died in the bed I was sleeping at. Maybe not the same mattress, but the same place. I thought, holy cow. And then I thought, my second thought was I am a goner. So I went to talk to my confessor and I said, Father, I wanna make a general confession. This is very serious, I gotta make a general confession. He said, you, you're only a sophomore in high school. What do you need a general confession for? Father, I just have to do it, I just have to do it. So I didn't tell him any of this. I didn't tell him any of this story. I said, I just have to do it. So I went through the whole thing and so he said, okay, it gave me a nice little word of encouragement, I have a solution and went on about my business. And then I found out that Marty died during the retreat. And this was the beginning of October and the retreat was in the second week of October. So I was getting really nervous. So I remember I went and sat in the front pew in the church when the church was empty, no seminarians around and I nailed down and I said, Lord, I just think I'm gonna die or something's gonna happen to me during this retreat and I just hope I'm ready to go and ready to greet you. So I was kneeling in the front pew and all of a sudden, some sort of, it's like a hologram or something. Francis came into my upper left hand vision here. Francis, St. Francis. And he said, David, come with me. So the next thing I knew, now I know this is gonna sound a little weird, but it happened and completely changed my life. So I'm gonna share it. So all of a sudden, I was up by the cross and in the chapel, this was in the chapel. It wasn't, unfortunately it wasn't the sundown meal across which would have been beautifully dramatic, but it wasn't. So Francis was up here and he was looking at me and I was kneeling down here. Some were underneath the cross and he said, David, look at him. Look at him. And so I started looking at Jesus and then there was this quiet. And he said, if you were the only person who ever lived, he still would have done all of that just for you. And I wept and I wept and I wept. And David Ricken died that day because I was preparing for my death. I didn't know what kind of death. It was the death of myself. So that was what you call the liminal experience of grace. And that's when I met Jesus because then I just gave my life to him as I was kneeling there. So you know, I bet that if you think about it, something like that has happened to you. And if it hasn't, it might yet. But if you're aware and the Holy Spirit's leading you to take the next step, to take the next step, to don't be afraid. You probably won't die physically, but you might die spiritually. You might die to yourself. And from that time on, and I still got a lot of problems. I still sin, still go to confession. I'm still very, very human. But something inside of me got completely redone, rebooted. I knew that I stepped out of that. I was so glad none of my fellow seminarians came in there watching me ball in the front view of the chapel. I knew when I left, I wasn't going to be the same or do anything. I'd do the same things, but in a very different way. And the priests and the seminarians noticed it and things they'd say to me. You're kind of different. What's happening? What's going on with you? They noticed it. So what I would like to do just for a few moments here, do I have a little time yet? Okay, oh, not much. All right, just give you a few moments. Just pray a little bit, connect to Jesus right now. I'm gonna shut up and just connect to Jesus a little bit and have a little conversation. If he doesn't say anything, that's okay. He might touch you when you go home. He might touch you here tonight or tomorrow. Open your heart a little bit more. Stop censoring yourself from your mind. Stop censoring yourself. Let the grace of Jesus flow. And I'm gonna pray for you while you're doing this, okay? Very quiet, very contemplative. Very beautiful way to connect with Jesus. Glory be to the Father and to the Son. Just one more little section to go through. A disciple. A disciple is the instrument of the new evangelization. A disciple is a friend and a follower of Jesus. Someone who's in love with the Lord and wants to know him better and better to love him more and more and to serve him more thoroughly. That's a disciple. So as we look quite early on, the name Catechesis was given to the totality of the church's effort to make disciples, to help men and women believe that Jesus is the Son of God so that believing they might have life in his name and to educate and instruct them in this life, thus building up the body of Christ. So you can see it's right in your DNA, your catechetical vocational DNA to be truly centered on this mission. I'd like to speak just for a moment about this intimacy. The definitive aim of Catechesis is to put people not only in touch, but in communion, in intimacy with Jesus Christ. Only he can lead us to the love of the Father and the Spirit and make us share in the life of the Holy Trinity. So that intimacy, ask him for that grace. If you feel very far away, say, Lord, warm my heart. My heart is so darn cold. I don't know what's happened to me. My heart's cold. My heart's not in it anymore. I'm just going through the motions. I don't think you want me to live my life that way, do you? Nope. So then surrender. Surrender your concerns, your worries, your anxieties, whatever they are. Just give them over one by one. Every time they keep coming up, just give them over. Hand them over, hand them over. Saint Jean Pierre de Calçade wrote a wonderful book on abandonment to divine prophets. That's what he's talking about. Surrender. The more selfishness comes up, just keep giving it to the Lord piece by piece. Keep dying to yourself, dying to your own wishes. Let God run your show. That's why it means that he's the Lord and you're the servant. He's the master. You and I are the servants of the master. Don't get that mixed up. You'll be a lot happier. Not that you're unhappy. I don't think you're unhappy. Before one can evangelize, one must be evangelized. Before one can disciple others, one must be a disciple. A disciple is a friend and a follower of Jesus who introduces others to Jesus and lives out the Holy Gospel. That's what we need. Disciples on fire with the mission, then we call them missionary disciples. People who have sit at the feet of the master and return to the feet of the master often in prayer, in adoration, and visits to the Blessed Sacrament who come to mass really well prepared, having done lexiodivina, having your mind and heart in it, ready there to give God full worship and praise and honor every Sunday morning, even if you don't feel like it, and then going out on mission as a missionary disciple to save this troubled world, person by person, one by one. Stop being so content with people going to hell. And you and I, not saying a word. Catechesis is a moment. The moment of Catechesis is that which corresponds to the period in which conversion to Jesus Christ is formalized and provides a basis for first adhering to him, that adhesion. Adesione, I think it is in Italian. That adhesion to him means you cannot imagine yourself separated from him. And that helps you reform your moral life. You say, Lord, I don't want to hurt you. And believe me, I struggle with all this stuff just like you do. I'm a sinner just like you are. It's a constant process of dying to ourselves and that stuff inside of us that's always clamoring for our attention, wanting to get us off track. Brothers and sisters, we need to help one another. Help one another. Don't sit idly by doing the politically correct thing. Meanwhile, people suffer needlessly because they won't come to the Savior. They don't even know about him. They don't know that he's real. A disciple is one who follows Jesus, loves him, wants to learn from him, to be with him and share him with others. A disciple is one who is baptized. Soon as you're baptized, you're a disciple. Confirmed and who practices the faith joyfully, disciples are friends and followers of Jesus. A disciple is a baptized member of the church that wants to keep growing and deepening his or her walk with Jesus and his body, the church. Another way at it, being a disciple means being constantly ready to bring the love of Jesus to others. And this can happen unexpectedly and in any place, on the street, in a city square, during work, on a journey, keep your eyes peeled. Lord, send somebody to my life that needs to hear about you. Pray for it. Send somebody to my life that needs to hear about you. And when they come, pray for the grace to recognize them and say, yep, I get to pull in another one. I get to pull in another one for Jesus and his body, the church. I get to pull in another one and make it a little competition. Get some friends. Get some friends. Okay. I just want to share one or two more little things with you and then we'll bring it to closure here. You know, I mentioned these disciples on the way, our plan, it's really a mission map with an itinerary. Already we're having to extend the itinerary a couple more years probably. But we're finding this is so rich and, you know, conversions, not quick. It's hard work. And I'm asking my staff to go through conversion. Sometimes they love me. Sometimes they probably hate me. But I don't care. I really don't care because I love them. And some of them will choose to leave and some of them won't. Some of them stay on. God bless them. God bless them. But if you're going to be with us, we're taking this journey. We're going to do it. We're going to do it. We're going to do it because this is what our Lord wants. Now how much more authority do you need? Four popes? Isn't that enough authority to say, maybe we better do this? Four popes? Four popes. Finally, it takes us about 40 years to get it, doesn't it? Paul the Six wrote that in 1975. I think that was a post to not elapsed like exhortation. Was it, sister? Yeah. So that was the bishops who had come together to address this way back in 1975. They knew they were prophetic in this. Then all of a sudden it didn't seem to be that important. So, you know, we all get distracted. All kinds of things come up. Life is messy. It's a constant thing. But this is so central. You know, we're not going to go wrong if we follow this. This is living the gospel. So we have four modules in our discipleship, pedagogy. This is not perfect by any means, but we're just striving to get some ways to, how do we teach people about this? How do we bring people into this new way of living and existing in the church? Discover Jesus, follow Jesus, worship Jesus, share Jesus. I said, let's make it simple. People, encounters a beautiful word, accompaniments a beautiful word. I love them theologically, but the average person doesn't get that. They understand, discover Jesus. They understand following Jesus. They understand worship Jesus, even though they might not want to do it. And they understand share Jesus. That's not too hard to understand, is it? So, you know, let's take away the excuses and say, well, we'll talk to you in language you can understand. I have no problem with that. And as long as we know there's all this theological background behind it, you can keep growing, keep discovering. Okay, so discipleship and discovering, rediscovering Jesus. It's all about renewing our personal encounter with our Lord and learning to journey in life and faith with Him each day, closely, for the rest of our lives. You want some scripture? Matthew 10, Mark 10, I mean Mark 10, Mark 10, 46 to 52. If he speaks to someone, he looks into their eyes with deep love and concern. Jesus, looking upon him, loved him. We saw how accessible he is. He draws near the blind man. Jesus is always getting the smell of the sheep on him, as Pope Francis says. He eats and drinks with sinners. For heaven's sake. Without worrying about being a glutton or thought a glutton or a drunkard. We see his sensitivity in allowing a sinful woman to anoint his feet, Luke 7. And in receiving Nicodemus by night, John 3. Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is nothing else than the culmination of the way he lived his entire life. That's from Pope Francis. So, first things first. You know what they always tell you on the plane? You know, if you're with a child and the oxygen mask comes down, put the oxygen mask on yourself first, then on the child. And I must say, I first thought, well, that is selfish. Take care of that child first. But you know, if you're not there to put it on the child, then there's going to be two dead people. So, you know, and I know we've gotten too obsessed with all this self-care stuff. There's probably too much of that. But what I'm talking about here is, you need to be in touch with Jesus. He needs to be real for you. Jesus, this is what the resurrection means. He's alive. He's well. He's right inside of you. He's all around you, and he wants to work through you to save others. Get it? Okay. He's here. He's that's what the resurrection means for heaven's sake. That's what the power of the Holy Spirit means. And we just need to surrender to the Holy Spirit more and more and use the guidance of the church that's been out this for over 2,000 years. The church knows an awful lot. That's why we spend all these years studying theology, et cetera. But you know, to be right honest, we haven't quite connected enough, and I think the people on the faculty here agree with me on this, with that first module, that encounter with Jesus, that encounter with Christ, discovering Christ. And can you imagine, if all the Catholics that are coming to church right now fall in love with Jesus Christ, the whole thing is over, and we're heading to Jesus. Can you imagine that? As hard as Catholics work at everything? If they really get this, if we really get this, it's going to change our country, going to change our world to a very positive level. The personal love Jesus Christ has for you is infinite. Look at this incredible woman. You're special to God. He's waiting for you to come to him in prayer. He's waiting for you. He's waiting for you. He's in the Tabernacle. Go buy and pay a visit for heaven's sake. You have your Bible at home. Pick it up and do some Lectio Divina. He's in the people all around you. He's in nature. We heard Petruch talk about his mama last night. What a great story. We heard Dr. Scott talk about holding his own baby and what a father he felt like. Jesus is all over, the presence of God is all over the place. We just have to have the eyes of faith to see him. He's special to, you are special to God. He's waiting for you to come to him in prayer. He wants to auto you with his presence. Look at this. Jesus loves you tenderly. You are precious to him. Turn to Jesus with great trust. Allow yourself to be loved by him. Now I know some of you are wondering, he misspelled Calcutta. I think that's the spelling in India, isn't it? Calcutta? Yeah, so anyway, you can forget about that. You know it's teacher types who gets it. What did he do that for? So Jesus loves you tenderly. You are precious to him. Turn to Jesus with great trust. Allow yourself to be loved by him. Let's just take, if I could, can I have about three, two or three more minutes? Okay, thank you. I just have a couple reflection questions. One we already covered. But how does this relationship with Jesus affect my life, my prayer, and my catechetical ministry, pastoral ministry, catechetical ministry? You know, why don't you think about this a little, and then after you've had some time, why don't you turn to the person to your right and left and just share one or two things maybe about how Jesus is for you now? How is your relationship going? And if that frightens you or something, well talk about how great the weather is. No, use this as an opportunity to really share your faith a little bit with one another. And then how, what can you do differently than you're doing now? Just one thing, to help your disciples, your students, to know Jesus and love Jesus better. Just one thing, one thing. Just think about that right now. And you know, I've always said, if I go to one workshop, if I go to a workshop and I get one thing that I can take home that I actually do and works, voila, it's been worth it. So it's up to you now. I've given you quite a bit and you've heard fantastic lectures, way better than mine, this whole week. So, but from this one, what one thing do you want to take home to your catechetical ministry to help you introduce your children to Jesus? Pause for a few moments and then visit and then we'll close it up. Okay, whenever you're ready, just turn to the person you're right or left, whichever, and share a little bit. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. God bless you. God bless you. Wish we had a lot more time. Thank you so much. Let's um, thank you. Thank you so much. God bless you. Whenever you feel like you're going to be drowning, think of this beautiful image of Peter reaching up to Jesus. He took his eyes off of Jesus and he started to sink. But as long as he kept his eyes focused on the Lord, the Lord picked him up out of terrible danger. Lord, we thank you for being with us this afternoon, this evening, this whole time together. What a gift to the church this, this beautiful week is. Thank you, Father, for sending and arranging through this wonderful university and this Catechetical Institute to take care of these wonderful people who are offering their lives and service to you and the church. Our hearts over to you. You are the source of everything we are, everything we have. May we never take you for granted. May our relationship with you grow day by day into the deeper and deeper caverns of divine love and intimacy. Help us to not hold back. Help us to surrender those things that we become aware of into your hands. Let go of it. Let go of it. Help us to have the courage to let go and endate it with the power of your Holy Spirit.