 Lord Jesus, we thank You that Your desire is for us to be baptized in Your Holy Spirit, filled with the very life of God, the very life of the Trinity, to sanctify us, to give us joy, to make us one with You. We pray, Lord, that our hearts would be in a place where we could receive as much of this fullness, as much of this life as possible at any given moment. We give You permission, Lord, now and always, to have Your way in us. We welcome You, Holy Spirit, into our hearts. We welcome You, Holy Spirit, into our lives to do that which You alone can do. We praise You, Holy Spirit, for Your goodness. Mary, spouse of the Spirit, pray for us. Then as disciples of Jesus Christ, we would have lives that are rooted in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit at every moment. Pray that we would have the grace to respond to this Spirit as we pray together. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed are Thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Amen. I want to thank you for coming out and being a part of the second part of this. You know, if you were at the first session, you know, I talked about life and the Spirit. I mean, really, to seek baptism of the Spirit without seeking ongoing conversion, without seeking a life rooted in Christ, without seeking true discipleship, is to really seek something that, you know, it doesn't make any sense to me. But I know that a lot of people in the past have gravitated toward the Holy Spirit because they like the feeling. They like this idea that the Spirit gives comfort and consolation. And people like to see the Spirit manifest gifts in their lives. But truly the greatest gift that the Holy Spirit gives us himself, this Spirit of love, this awareness that we are children of God. And when we know that we're loved by God, then we have the ability to not only relish in that love and savor that love, but to share that love with one another. To give that love back to God as freely as he gives it to us. And everything else, you know, when we talk about seeking the Holy Spirit, I'm also often reminded of the words of St. Paul because this was a very Spirit-filled man who wrote very eloquently about the charismatic gifts and the gifts that the Holy Spirit brings. In the, in the first Corinthians, he says, earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, but make love your aim. And as we go through the rest of this retreat together, you let us earnestly desire that the Holy Spirit would gift us with what we need. But let's make love our aim. For truly in the end, as St. John of the Cross says, we're going to be judged by love. This life in the Spirit is to be, is the invitation to be consumed by love, to be transformed into love, to have all the impurity in our life burned away so that we can be pure and holy and love one another like Christ loves us. That's the fulfillment of life in the Spirit. Is there anyone from the Chicago area here this afternoon? Then you're, you know, if you're, if you're from Chicago, if you're a lover of history, you know that in 1871 it was the great Chicago fire that destroyed most of the city of Chicago. Interestingly enough, the, the Chicago River, which flows down from the north, back when the, the, the great Chicago fire started, it used to flow, flow down from the north and empty into Lake Michigan. And the fire actually started on the lakeside of the river and crossed over the Chicago River into the rest of the city because the river at the time was flammable. You see the Chicago River at that time was a shallow sluggish sewer for the entire city. The Union Stockyards, which were on the banks of the Chicago River, dumped all their animal waste into the river. It's where people would empty their chamber pots and other things into the river. That's where all the human waste went. If you go online, you can actually see pictures of birds landing on the water and, and not going under, like they're walking on the surface of the Chicago River. People called it the stinking river because it was, it was, it was just a big trough of waste. And, and unfortunately this trough of waste was a slow moving barge of sludge and sewage that emptied into Lake Michigan, where the city of Chicago drew most of its drinking water. And every year, through the 1880s and 1890s, at least 10,000 people in the city died of typhoid or cholera. And this went on for many years. There were talk of, of whether or not Chicago has a city would survive because the Chicago River had become so polluted and they weren't sure they could find a sustainable water source because of how badly it was, it was polluting Lake Michigan. In the 14 years after the Great Chicago Fire, another 100,000 people died from disease brought on by the Chicago River. It was that bad. But to solve the problem, one of the greatest feats of engineering took place and what the city engineers did is they dug a 28 mile long canal and they set it with very, the various locks and gates and actually reversed the flow of the Chicago River. Instead of emptying into Lake Michigan, now Lake Michigan was draining in, meeting the Chicago River and going down this canal. They moved more rock and stone creating this canal than they did when they, creating the Panama Canal. It's one of the greatest engineering feats. Many people don't know this. They, they changed the entire course of the Chicago River. It now goes down from Chicago into the Splains River, down to the Mississippi, down into, through the Illinois River and then into the Mississippi. And what happened is when they reversed the flow, all of a sudden this, it was a flood of clean water. This clean water started flowing into what was this polluted, disgusting river and immediately washed it all away. And, and historians say that this move by the, by the engineers, this reversing the flow literally saved the city of Chicago. And in the same way, God wants to do the same thing in us. I think of my life as a young man and how shallow I was, how sluggish I was, how, how diseased I was with sin. And it wasn't until I asked God to give me a fresh flow of water, His Holy Spirit, that it began to clean it out, reverse the flow of, of my life moving away from God to a life that was being led by the Holy Spirit. And, and when you think of this, you might, like I am often drawn to, you know, the scripture from the 47th chapter of Ezekiel, where the Lord is speaking to the Ezekiel saying, he says, son of man, have you seen this? Then he led me back to the bank of the river and he said to me, the water flows towards the eastern region and goes down to Ereba. And when it enters the stagnant waters of the sea, the water will become fresh. And wherever the river goes, every living creature which swarms will live. And there will be very many fish, for this water goes there and the waters of the sea become fresh. You know, the, the, this, the Lord, you know, the vision of the temple and out from the temple of God comes this flow of water is a foreshadowing of the Pentecost that was to become for the church where out of God's heart would flow the Holy Spirit poured out on the church in abundance in a new way, in a powerful way to free us from death, to free us from sin, to, to cause new life and wherever the Spirit would go there would be life. For the Spirit is life. He is the love of the Father and it is God's desire for every one of us to receive and experience this love, this life in our life to the fullest possible extent. This is what God wants for each one of us. And this is why, you know, we, we come around the idea that baptism in the Holy Spirit, this release of grace is a gift given by God to the church that releases and strengthens the effects of both our baptism and our confirmation. It is not something new. It has been a part of the church since the church became the church. When we talk about baptism in the Spirit, we could call it personal Pentecost. We could call it a new Pentecost. We could call it stepping into the grace that's already in and asking God to release it. We could call it asking God to give us a fresh outpouring of the Holy Spirit. But baptism in the Holy Spirit is an experience that is given to the church to release this grace and to strengthen it in the lives of believers. Listen to what Jesus, you know, said himself. First from Luke chapter 12, verse 49, he says, I came to cast fire upon the earth and with that it were already kindled. So in this, he would like us the Holy Spirit to fire. And we all know that that whatever fire touches, it changes in some way. Nothing goes through fire and remains unchanged. Sometimes there's a purification that takes place through fire. Sometimes it's just a warming of what's cold. Sometimes it is a forging and a strengthening that fire does. But whatever it does, the Holy Spirit does not pass through our lives without changing us in the same way that fire doesn't touch things and changes it. And Jesus is saying, I want to cast fire upon the earth. It is my desire that you all be on fire for God. He says to his apostles in Acts chapter one, he says, while meeting with them, he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father about which you have heard me speak. For John baptized with water, but in a few days, you will be baptized in the Holy Spirit. And you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem throughout Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. It was this promise of the Father, this experience of receiving the Holy Spirit that empowered the apostles then to go forward and fulfill the great commission. And in our times, you know, as we seek to evangelize and bring people to discipleship, we must acknowledge and understand that there needs to be Pentecost preceding that, not only in our lives, but in the lives of those people that we're seeking to minister to. For it is the Holy Spirit Himself that makes true and real the teachings of the church, that convicts us not for condemnation, but for conversion, that moves our heart to want to love God, to seek God, to hunger for God. Without the Holy Spirit, we're like ships with big sails, but no wind. It is the Holy Spirit that gives us the power to move forward. And this has been affirmed by many popes, starting with John the 23rd, who started off Vatican II with the prayer, renew your wonders in our time as through a new Pentecost. People wonder why, why did this Holy Spirit fall upon the church in such power in the 70s? Because in the late 60s, our popes were praying for it. The Vatican Council, the members, our leaders of the church were praying for a new Pentecost. Those prayers were answered, and the Holy Spirit started being poured out on the church in new ways, in powerful ways. And it was so amazing and so overwhelming and so frightening. A lot of people couldn't handle it, but those who said yes to the Holy Spirit were finding their lives renewed, their faith strengthened, their love for God deepening. They were growing in virtue and holiness, and God was proving his power through signs and wonders. Both natural and supernatural gifts were being poured out on the church for its growth and its sustainability. Saint John Paul the Great wrote, the institutional and charismatic aspects are co-essential, as it were, to the church's constitution. The very life of the church, the strength of the church are wrapped up in both the institutional, the sacramental life of the church, the magisterial teaching of the church, those channels that have been ordained by God within the church to give us grace. But he also says the charismatic aspects, they're co-essential. I would like it to having lungs, one lung breathing from the grace that comes to us through the church, the other lung breathing, that grace that comes because the Holy Spirit just wills to work in a person's life in a particular way. Both lungs need to be working for the body to be healthy, and sometimes we have people who are very breathing, very deeply, of what the church is offering, aren't necessarily seeking the Holy Spirit. They're strong, but not as strong as they could be. And in the same way, we have a lot of people who are out there, you know, okay, I want to go to a prayer meeting. I want to be a part of this, and this happened a lot. People were breaking away from their parishes, maybe becoming less involved in their parish life and more involved in their community life. And that's not what God wants. He wants both of those lungs to be active. And this is what St. John Paul the Great wrote. He said, it is from this providential rediscovering of the church's charismatic dimension that before and after the council, a remarkable pattern of growth has been established for ecclesial movements and new communities. So I love how he says this. It wasn't something new. It was a providential rediscovery. The early church gathered together under the authority of the early apostles to learn to celebrate together. God was forming the church, but also it talks about how people were meeting in homes to pray. And St. Paul is, you know, like greet one another, pray together, sing songs and spiritual songs in your hearts with one another. They were meeting in their homes and sharing this life from the spirit, praying together. Acts chapter two happens. Pentecost happens. St. Peter gets up, he preaches, 3,000 people enter the church. You fast forward two chapters. Peter is in prison and they're threatening him. And he says, go ahead and do whatever you want. I will preach Jesus. St. Peter is not the same man he was before the day of Pentecost. He is now solid, a living stone in the temple of God's love. And when he's released from prison, he goes back and acts chapter four. And he meets together with the rest of the apostles and those that were gathered to pray. And they start praising God so much and saying, look, Holy Spirit come and fall upon us. Do signs and wonders. And it says that the room that they were praying in started to shake. Now that sets the bar pretty high for a prayer meeting, right? The room starts to shake. But I would be perfectly content if tomorrow night when we're in Christ the King praying and worshiping, that the whole thing starts to shake. Even if it collapses, that's a good thing. Because then we can build this new church we've been, a new chapel on campus, you know, that we've been wanting to build for years. So let's make it happen, okay? Can we just agree that we're going to do something that's going to cause them to have to, you know, tear down the place and rebuild? But this, we see like Acts chapter two, there's Pentecost, Acts chapter four, they're praying once again for another Pentecost. There's a pattern of life in the church where they are repeatedly calling upon the Holy Spirit, repeatedly asking the Holy Spirit to anoint their work, to anoint their preaching, to give them the ability to do signs and wonders so that they can confirm in the eyes of the world that their words are true. And now I believe more than ever in a world that's full of doubt and skepticism and looks at the church and its leaderships, you know, looking at the leaders of our church with great doubt and disbelief and distrust, that we need to confirm in the eyes of the church the power of God in His Word. Relativism is a very powerful, easy thing to buy into. It's like nothing matters, every choice is good. We have just young people who are being formed by this. Like there's no room in their heart for truth, even if you preach the truth to them, where would the truth land in a heart that doesn't believe in truth? If you went to your average Catholic high school class, a religion class, and asked how many of you believe that there's absolute truth, truth that applies to all people at all times in all situations, I would probably say probably less than 10% of the young people would say that that's a true statement. The culture has just taught young people to reject, reject, be skeptical. No one can be an authority. No one has all the answers, and yet we believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life, and that if they would just give their hearts to Jesus, you know, that they would come and taste and see how good the Lord is, they would want to throw their lives completely into His arms. Yet we need to be preaching in the power of the Spirit, loving in the power of the Holy Spirit. You know, the signs and wonders, I could talk about God wanting to do miraculous, God just wants to be incarnate in us, and that only happens when the Spirit is alive in us. But I do believe, I do believe that God wants to pour more grace into the church, miraculous grace. I think once the church starts to look more like the church of the new, of the Acts of the Apostles, we're going to see the kind of transformation in the culture of our church and in our parishes that we long to see, where we have a combination of people gathering together to praise God and celebrate Eucharist, and we also have people going forth to their homes, where they're praying together and praying over one another. I was just, I mean, I just, I love what I do because I get to sit here and see you men praying over one another, sharing this kind of fellowship and love. The world can't offer that, the world can't give that. And yet we have so many people out there, that's the deepest desire of their heart, is to experience that kind of unconditional love that only comes to us through Jesus Christ, but not just to sit alone in that, but to have a community to share that in. And so we need to have, not just our people gathering on Sunday to worship and receive Eucharist, we need to have people praying over one another in their homes, giving people that support. Every Catholic disciple should have somebody they can turn to and say, can you pray with me? And that other person says, yes, I am comfortable, willing and ready to pray for you and pray over you at any time, to pray for a release of the Holy Spirit and His grace in our lives. Who doesn't need that? More than ever now, with all the temptation and distractions that our world offers, we should be able to turn to one another in the body of Christ and say, I want you to pray that I get baptized in the Holy Spirit right now, that the Holy Spirit just falls upon me in a new way because I'm struggling here, I need grace here, I need wisdom here, and we're able to do that for one another and with one another. Because in that sharing of the love and grace of Christ is fulfillment, fulfillment in two ways. Number one, receiving God's love is a beautiful thing, but we are blessed by that so that we can share it with another human being. And the most satisfying aspect of receiving God's love is when we can give it to another person. But it also is fulfilling because it fulfills Christ's commands to love one another as I have loved you. We need to have fulfilling community love established in our churches and in our parishes, and that's a work of the Spirit. There's not a program, there's not an out-of-the-box system that you can just throw into a parish and say, this is what's going to build a culture of love, because the Holy Spirit is love. And it's only through releasing the Holy Spirit and praying for the Holy Spirit to fall afresh on our parishioners, on your parishioners and the people in your church that you will really change the culture, to introduce them to the Holy Spirit, the source of all love. Pope Benedict XVI said on May 11th, 2008, and he's Regina Chaley on the Great Feast of Pentecost. He said, in effect, Jesus' whole mission was aimed at giving the Spirit of God to men and baptizing them in the bath of regeneration. And I love this because when you think of the steps of God completing the work of saving mankind, you know, you have Adam and Eve the fall, you have God trying to establish these covenants throughout the Old Testament. And part of it was God doing his part. The other side of every covenant was man had to do his part, but no matter how hard he tried, man could never obey the covenants he made with God. They failed every time. So finally, in God's good time, he sent his son, Jesus Christ, to become one of us, to take on our nature and all things except for sin, and to become the sacrificial lamb whose blood would ratify the everlasting covenant. So Jesus comes down here. He becomes, as it says in Colossians, the visible face of the invisible God. We see manifested in Jesus Christ, the Father's love for each one of us. And this love as John says, who loved us to the very end, taking upon himself the punishment that should be ours for the sins that we've committed, for the wages of sin, as we know, our death. But Jesus takes that death upon him in his flesh and he dies. He becomes the perfect sacrifice that atones for every sin. And only the perfect sacrifice of Christ could have the power to undo the breaking of the perfect love that God had poured out on Adam and Eve. But Christ becomes the solution the veil is torn into, the gap that separates man and God is filled with the love of Christ. He ascends back into heaven, taking in his flesh every one of us. He's the first born of the new creation, but just like us, he takes every one of us and reinserts us into the Godhead through his ascension. And the last thing he does to bring full communion back to man and God is on the day of Pentecost, pours out the Holy Spirit, the living presence of the love between the Father and the Son, the spirit of love, the power of God, the same spirit that rose Jesus Christ from the grave is poured out upon the church in abundance and now God dwells in us in a superbundant permanent way. The Old Testament talked about God's spirit resting upon people. It also talked about the spirit being withdrawn from people, but now in the fulfillment of the new covenant, the spirit comes to dwell within us and he does not depart. He is always here. He is the abiding love of God that is always with us. We can have this perfect communion with God to the extent that we are open to it. He is present to us, this Holy Spirit. Pope Benedict the 16th went on to say on this day, he goes, today I would like to extend the invitation to all. Let us rediscover, dear brothers and sisters, the beauty of being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Let us recover our awareness of our baptism and our confirmation. Pope Francis himself says, you the charismatic renewal have received a great gift from the Lord. Your movement's birth was willed by the Holy Spirit to be a current of grace in the church and for the church. And what is the very first gift of the Holy Spirit? It is the gift of himself, the one who is love and who makes us fall in love with Jesus. And this love changes our lives. This is why we speak of being born again in the spirit. When we allow the Holy Spirit to become our interior master, the life force, our personal life coach, the one who will guide us and release. And you know, like Romans five five, my favorite verse, you know, we have hope and it doesn't disappoint because the Father's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who's been given to us freely. This experience of receiving God's love into our lives, life takes on a whole brand new sense. It is truly being born again. So I will just want to say it is a current of grace. It's an experience that's been given to the church to awaken, to stir into flames. This spark that was given to us in baptism and confirmation. Some would say, is it a necessary experience? I think it could take on very different forms, but I think definitely everyone has to have the spirit awakened in them. And for some people, it's a one time event that kind of starts it all. It's kind of dramatic. You know, this release of grace can be very powerful, but for many people it's just this slow. Like Neil and Matt have talked about, this ongoing movement of grace where we more and more day to day at different moments, God takes us another step up the mountain of holiness, up the path to the kingdom of God where the Holy Spirit more and more each day becomes more alive and more real in our lives. And the catechism says in paragraph 1302, it is evident from its celebration that the effect of the sacrament of confirmation is the special outpouring of the Holy Spirit as one's granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost. Now how many confirmation celebrations have you been to that look anything like the church did on the day of Pentecost? Not many. And I'm not saying that they're not effective in what they accomplished. The grace is there. The grace is there. But I oftentimes think that, you know, we need to do a better job of preparing our young people to truly understand what it means to receive the Holy Spirit. It says in the next paragraph 1303, this is what confirmation is supposed to do. It brings an increase in deep of the baptismal grace. It roots us more deeply in the defined affiliation which makes us cry Abba Father. Yet how many people do you know live their lives as spiritual orphans? Baptized Catholics that you know and are trying to minister to that are living their lives as spiritual orphans truly don't know their father's love. It says it unites us more firmly to Christ. But how many people do we know who can't even express in one sentence how Jesus Christ has touched their lives on a personal way? It increases the gifts of the Holy Spirit in us. But how many people do we know that are walking in confusion, in fear, full of anxiety, not knowing who they are, not knowing what God might want from them when all the wisdom, knowledge, understanding, and courage are freely given to us in the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit. Yet for so many people they're absent in their lives. It renders our bond with the church more perfect. Yet we have more and more unaffiliated, fallen away Catholics than ever before. And finally it says it gives us a special strength of the Holy Spirit to spread and defend the faith by word and action as true witnesses of Christ to confess the name of Christ boldly and never be ashamed of the cross. The sad reality is 85% of the young people confirmed this year will not be a part of the church within seven years. We need to do a better job of not just catacysing young people as to who the Holy Spirit is, but praying for a true Pentecost for each one of the young people and the adults. Everyone needs it. I spent 20 plus years ministering to young people. I have a passion for young people, but this grace is necessary for parents. It's necessary for catacys, not just to pass on knowledge for information's sake, but to pass on Christ and the Holy Spirit for transformation's sake. We need to become more Pentecostal as a church knowing that not only do they need to receive the sacraments, they need to have this experience of the Holy Spirit that bonds them to these sacraments and makes them alive in Christ. And we know why we have this crisis. We know that there's two sides to every sacrament. It says in paragraph 1127, it says, celebrated worthily in faith, the sacraments confer the grace that they signify. As fire transforms itself into everything it touches, so the Holy Spirit transforms into the divine life, whatever is subjected to his power. There's a lot in that sentence. Celebrated worthily in faith. Are our people celebrating the sacraments worthily in faith? How come the line to the Eucharist is so long and the line to confessional is so short? Are they really receiving in a state of grace? Do they understand what they're receiving? They said the Holy Spirit transforms into the divine life, whatever is subjected to his power. I mean, I would hope that part of the fruit that we would have coming out of a retreat like this is that we would go back and we would empower disciples at our parishes to then reach out and pray with people and evangelize them on how to subject their life to the power of God. How to come under the authority of God in the Holy Spirit in their lives. It says in the next paragraph 1128, it says, from the moment that a sacrament is celebrated in accordance with the intention of the church, the power of Christ and his spirit acts in and through it. Nevertheless, the fruits of the sacraments also depend on the disposition of the one who receives them. And this is where we need to be praying with people outside of the sacramental experience for their faith to come alive, for them to experience Christ in a personal way. Every sacrament is Christ and his grace. Everything the church teaches at the heart of everything we believe is a person. His name is Jesus Christ. And he's passionately in love with people yet how many people are so distant from that. We know that the opus operantum operantum is God's part in a sacrament. The opus operantis is our part, our response. Every sacrament has a response. But are we teaching the church a daily response to the grace of baptism? It's not just a day when they're a little baby and had water sprinkled upon them or poured over their head. That was the initiation. But life in the spirit is teaching people how to pray, how to serve, and how to activate the grace that was poured into their heart on that day every day. And every day it requires a response. Every day. Our Protestant brothers would say, if you accept Jesus Christ and make him the Lord of your life, you're going to heaven. And once you have prayed and asked Jesus to be your savior, you're always saved. You can't lose it. Our church would teach Christ's grace is sufficient to save us. That we are in the process of being saved and we will be saved. But it requires a daily commitment of our life to Jesus Christ. A daily surrender of who we are to Jesus Christ. A daily response to the grace given to us in baptism. And that opus operantis for our baptism and confirmation is faith. It's receptivity. It's true repentance for our sins. It's our total desire for all that God wants to give us. And it is surrender and that is the hardest part. When you pray, come Holy Spirit and you pray that in faith, you're surrendering your will. You're saying what the spirit wants, what the spirit wills is what I want and what I will. I love the fact that we've been doing so much renunciation. You know, our church teaches us two things. It teaches us what to love. It also teaches us what to hate. What to reject. And that's all part of our conversion. It's all part of a necessary growth in the spirit is to reject those things that would pull us away from Jesus. That would block the work of the spirit. The church has given us everything that we need to be holy. And the question is, are we willing to respond? For me in my life, this release of grace of the Holy Spirit happened in the confessional. I was 18 years old and I was on this retreat. I was on this retreat because I was basically asked to go by somebody who I will be eternally grateful for, who saw something in me I could not see in myself and just said, you need to come. You need to be a part of this. And at the time I was seeking something more in life, but I was also very much as Neil and Matt referred to as entangled in the world. When I was in junior high school, my grandfather was killed in a car accident. And as a result, my grandmother became an alcoholic. It tore my family apart. It caused just great pain. Relationships fell apart. And as a young man trying to navigate these waters, I became very angry with God, very angry with my grandmother, very angry with my parents. I just had this deep hurt, felt like my dad, we had two family businesses that my grandfather was running and all of a sudden my dad was front and center running both these businesses while trying to take care of his alcoholic grandmother. I mean, his alcoholic mother, my grandmother. I hardly saw my dad. It was a rough couple years. And as this anger consumed me, I did two things. I hurt people around me. I became very negative, very sarcastic, put people down. And in response to my grandmother who became an alcoholic, I felt like she owed me big time for ruining my life. So there would be nights when she would drink herself till she would pass out on her couch. And I would be at the house with her, at her house, and then I would go into her wallet and steal like 40 bucks, go find some buddies, buy some beer, get somebody to buy a bottle of booze and go out somewhere and just get drunk. I just had a lot of anger. I had a lot of lust in my life. I didn't have a girlfriend, but I had been exposed to pornography, had a very skewed view of my own sexuality. I wanted more, but I was so entangled by this hatred, by this lust. When I was confirmed, I was a junior in high school. And on this retreat, the priest, you know, this was 1981. So I think the residual effects of the 70s was still affecting our catechesis. But he said to everybody, now I want you to take a little hike in nature and find something in nature that represents your faith. Oh my gosh, as a 16 year old dude, I was like, are you freaking kidding me? So he dismissed us. I walked down to the dock. I sat on the dock and just skipped stones and just hung out there and then he rang the bell saying it was time to come back and I had nothing. So finally, as I'm walking back, there's like a tree on the side of the path going up to the cabin where we were having this retreat. And I grabbed a piece of bark that had fallen off the tree and I walked into the room with my bark. I had no idea what I was going to say. So I'm sitting in a circle and I'm like one of the last people in the room and I'm sitting right next to the priest. And he says, now we're going to go around the circle and everyone's going to explain what you picked up. And I was like, oh God, I had bark. Well, I'm going to say about bark. I don't even know why I grabbed bark. Fortunately, he said, well, I'll start to the person on my left and I was going to be the last person I had to share. So I but then it became very awkward because like all the guys had rocks. Yeah, I got this rock because like Jesus is my rock and like I want to build my life around rock. Okay, that's why I got rock. And all the girls had flowers. I picked a flower because my faith is like a flower and I wanted to bloom for Jesus. And now all the while I'm listening, you know, I got bark. So finally it gets to be my turn and I don't know what I'm going to say. I'm starting to panic a little bit. And there's just moments of grace where your surprise, God surprises, he does something. And I opened my mouth and I came to these words. I have this bark because when bark is part of a tree, it's alive. But I found this bark on the ground had fallen off the tree. It's no longer part of something living. It's dead. And I think my faith is dead. And you know, crickets, you know, like everyone's like, Center, you know, this is like, but, but it was like, in that moment, God held up this mirror where I could see myself clearly. It was like a snapshot. Boom. Your faith is dead. You don't know why you're getting confirmed other than you don't want to have another fight with your parents. You're just going along with this. I'm nothing to you. And that didn't sit well with me. And I didn't call off the confirmation because I wasn't that holy. I just figured, okay, I'll just go through with it and hopefully God will have his way. But I do remember picking up the Bible, a Bible that I'd gotten at vacation Bible school when I was a little kid from memorizing five scriptures. And I started reading the Bible and it was hard because half of it I didn't understand. And the half that I did understand made me realize I wasn't a very good Christian. So I went on a retreat when I was a senior in high school where I heard Jesus Christ is Lord proclaimed in a way that for the first time clicked with me. I didn't give my life to Jesus. I wasn't there yet. But I knew that these people had something. So I was invited to go on this retreat up in northern Minnesota. And I lived in the upper, in upper Michigan. So I'm traveling over there. I go to St. Paul. I'm going to catch a ride from St. Paul up to this little town called McGregor in northern Minnesota. And I get there a day early before the retreat starts. And one of the leaders says, come up with us. You'll have a great time. We can hang out. We have all the fishing equipment you need. I'm like, I heard fishing. I was in. All right. So we get up there and I throw my stuff in one of the cabbages. And I'm going to go fishing. That's what I wanted to do. And I wanted to hit the lake. And one of the leaders goes, hey, John, we're going to pray for the retreat before it's today. You want to join us for prayer? And I'm like, the heck are you asking me if I want to pray? I'm going to go fishing. I can't say no to them though because, right, I'm on a retreat. And I can't say the first thing on a retreat is like, no, I don't want to pray. I'm going fishing. So I go to pray. So I walk into this little clearing. They're going to pray outside. And it's about 15 to 20 young adults who are going to be running this retreat. I was 18 at the time and just graduated from high school looking around the circle. They're all pretty cool. One of them has a guitarist starts playing a Jesus song. And I mean, like, they're just like really, really singing loudly. You know, I think one of the spiritual gifts that most Catholics can manifest is they know how to sing without moving their lips. That's probably the only spiritual gift that most of them have. But these people were like full on singing really loud. And so as I'm standing there, I like, I'd never seen anything like this. I'm like, wow, they really, really like to sing. And then of course, you know, like the hands start going up in the air. I'm like, okay, you guys got questions. What is this? You know, like, why are your hands in the air? I think, what is that about? You know, like I, this was all very overwhelming to me. And then they got to the end of the song. And the guy with the guitar just kept strumming away. And people just broke out in spontaneous praise. Praise you Jesus. Hallelujah. Glory to you, Lord God. Blessings to you, Lord Jesus. And I'm just like, what? Is this even Catholic? I mean, like it was, it was so weird. And then I'm like, very uncomfortable. And then the person next to me, I don't know what was going on. I think they made a bad decision when buying a car because he started praying like this, I should have bought a Honda. I should have bought a Honda. I should have bought a Honda. I should have bought a Honda. I'm like, what the heck? A person over here next to me was like here. I'm like, okay, this is, I'm like, okay, if I just slowly back away and disappear into the bushes, I can grab my stuff and hitch hike home and no one will know I was here ever. But then the most incredible thing happened. I'm out, you know, I'm like, I'm a hands folded eyes closed. I couldn't, I just wanted to cut myself off from it. But I opened my eyes and I looked across the circle and there was this girl a couple years older than me standing there with her with this big old smile on her face with her hands open to God saying, I love you, Jesus. I love you, Jesus. And in that moment, in that moment, I thought whatever gives her the ability to say that I want because I'm 18 years old and I had never said I love you, Jesus in my life. And if I had, I certainly never had meant it. But here was somebody who was in love with God. And you could see in the joy in her face and she was just so excited to be able to tell Jesus that she was in love with him. And I wanted that. So I just said, okay, God, I don't know what I've got myself into, but please, whatever she has, I want. And so I was hearing these talks on the Holy Spirit. I was hearing all this stuff and I was praying, but there was no movement. I mean, there was this, except for deeper hunger and yearning, but I couldn't get there. And the reason it was because I had all this sin in my life. So there was going to be a reconciliation service like on the third night and I knew I needed to go to confession. And it scared me because I'd only gone to confession twice in my life. My first confession and then I had to go to confession when I got confirmed. But I don't remember what I said either of those times, except when I was a little kid, I probably said something about being mean to my mom or being mean to my sister and stealing cookies or something. And when I got confirmed, I didn't really talk about really what was inside of me, the sin. I probably once again made just some sort of trite little, yeah, I haven't been a good person, helped me to be better. So I was, I was in the battle, like full on battle, like, okay, I need to go to confession. And just everything inside me is like, no, you shouldn't go in there. You can't tell somebody everything that you've done. All the sins, the pornography, the masturbation, the stealing, they'll think you're the worst person in the world. You can't tell somebody about all the anger and hate that's in your life. You can't tell anybody what a complete jerk you are. You can't do that. So the evening's going on, just about everyone's gone. I'm like one of the last people, okay, but I know I need to go. And so I just said a prayer, God, give me this, help me. And I almost feel like he just kind of came up behind me, lifted me up from behind and said, let's go. So I walked into the confessional and I sat down with the praise. He looked at me. I looked at him. He looked at me. I looked at him and finally said, Father, I don't know what I'm doing. I haven't made a good confession in my life. And I'm just, I got a lot. He said, well, let's just talk. What is it that you want? And I just started expressing like all around me, I see people who are alive in God and I feel so far from God and I want so much more of God and I just, no, I need it. I just, I need something. I feel so lost. He said, well, tell me, you know, what do you think is the issue? What's going on? And so I just started sharing everything. I mean, things I'd never told another person in my life that I'd been, the things that had wounded me, the ways I was broken, the sin that I was lost in. And as I'm pouring out my heart to this priest, I'm crying. Like tears of repentance and tears of release as I'm saying these sins out loud for the first time, I can feel like, like, God moving in my heart. At one point, the priest leaned forward to give me a hug, to put his hand on my shoulder and comfort me. And I'm bent over crying. And it was so embarrassing because his stole hit me in the face. And I thought he was offering me a handkerchief. So I just go, I, I hawked a loogie on the priest stole in this confession. And I, and I went like, I was devastated, but he started laughing. And it was like freeing. And finally he asked me, you got anything else? And not in an exasperated, shocked way. He was so peaceful about it. And he just communicated and incarnated Christ's love for me in that moment. I said, no, I think that's everything, Father. And he extended his hands to pray the prayer of absolution. And it was just like I was on the operating table and I had no pulse. And he put the paddles on me and said, clear. And it was like my heart came alive in that moment. Like a part of me that had been dead was resurrected, brought back to life as clearly as Lazarus heard the command of Christ to come out of the tomb, Jesus Christ called me out of the tomb of my sin and into new life in him. It was, I mean, I was dumbfounded. I mean, like, jaw hit the floor, like what just happened to me? And the Holy Spirit just come flooding into my life. And I felt and I experienced God's love for the first time in my life in such a powerful and dramatic way that I did the most ridiculous thing you could possibly do. I walked out of that confessional past everybody. Everyone was like, Hey, we're going to sing some songs to Thanksgiving. I'm like, that's nice. I mean, I just, I was like a numb. And I sat on the dock under this big, beautiful starry sky up in northern Minnesota. And I said, Jesus Christ, you have just made your love real to me. I cannot deny that you love me. I cannot deny that you are real. Whatever you ask of me, I will do. I will go, I give my life to you, every part of it. I want to live for you, Jesus, and went to bed and just had the most peaceful night of sleep. So the next morning I get up and I'm just excited. This is great. I got a couple more days of retreat. I'm really excited just to be able to praise God, just fuel alive inside. I walk into the chapel, experience God's presence. At the end of the morning, Mark Bergen, who's the founder and president of net ministries comes up to me and says, I was praying last night. Yeah, God wants you to be a missionary with net this fall. Oh, yeah. Hold on. Hold on. I've been accepted to college. I have my roommate picked, my major picked. I know what fraternity I'm going to rush. I have this 10-year plan. It's undergrad and biology, medical school, be a doctor, get a big house, big nice car, hot wife, the whole 10-year plan was right out in front of me. And God, boom, said, this is where I want you to go. And I let go of it all. And I spent my first year of missionary work with net that fall. I just met Jesus Christ. And this is why I think when I share my testimony, it's such a powerful encounter with the Lord is because God was trying to make up for 18 years of conversion that should have been happening. 18 years of growth that I had stunted and cut off because of my mortal sin and my pride and my rejection of God and my running from God. He was helping to me make up lost time, lost ground because he was preparing me for a mission. Since then, you know, I can say that this baptism in Greek baptism means to die something, to soak it up, not just a surface wash. God has been using the Holy Spirit to go deep in within me. This continual renewal that I've experienced in my life is what I believe God wants everyone to have. Sometimes the most powerful encounters I have with the Holy Spirit now is when I'm praying my rosary and meditating on the day of Pentecost or meditating on the life of Mary and praying, Lord Jesus, I want to be as docile to the Holy Spirit as Mary was. I want to be as trusting as a teenager who is going to be, who is asked to be the mother of God without explanation other than the Holy Spirit would come upon you. I want to be that trusting that I can say yes to you God when all you promise me is your Holy Spirit. And I can feel the Spirit moving in me as I'm praying this prayer, preparing me. And all the things that I shared yesterday with my wife and my mom dying and my son almost, it's the fruit of how that has all come out has been because every day I ask the Holy Spirit to take me deeper and deeper into trust and to love of Jesus. It doesn't take, it doesn't take anything but faith and belief. If you've never asked the Holy Spirit to fall upon you in a powerful way, when we gather tomorrow night, we're going to pray over one another. We're going to be praying for this. And even if you've done this before, there's more, there's more from God at every step. He has never done transforming us with his Holy Spirit. When I look at the church, I know that the solution for what is aching and is broken in our church is one thing and one thing alone. It's the Holy Spirit at work in us and through us to accomplish that which he alone can do, which is the transformation of a heart, the transformation of our hearts, our ability to communicate the love of God. Everything is contingent upon the one protagonist that our church has and that's the Holy Spirit. And then as we continue to surrender our lives to the Holy Spirit, ask God to just have your way in us. Once again, it's the principle of overflow. We can't give what we don't have, but when we ask God to pour His grace into our hearts and we do not hold anything of ourselves back from God, then we will become the beacons, that font of living water from which we'll flow the grace that will be needed to renew our parishes, the people that we serve. It comes from God. We are simply the reservoirs from which it needs to overflow. Amen. So let's just pray a prayer of surrender, a prayer of anticipation. Saint Bonavitra says the Holy Spirit comes where he's invited, expected, welcomed, and loved. So as we move in through the rest of this retreat, even if I know that spirit's been working very powerfully in each one of your lives, he's not done. He is not done, and I think the best is yet to come. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Good and gracious God, we thank you that you love us so much, that you hold nothing back, that you desire more than anything to pour your very life and love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, we want you. Holy Spirit, we welcome you. Holy Spirit, we expect you to come and do great things. We invite you to bless us, to transform us, to fill us with the gifts, the graces that we need, to be living witnesses, incarnations of Christ's love to the world, living sacrifices offered up for the glory of God and for the salvation of souls within our state of life, whether we're priest, deacon, still in preparation for the priesthood, or married, whatever our state and life, Lord, is, we give that to you and offer ourselves as living sacrifices. Holy Spirit, come upon us, work in our hearts, have your way in us. And once again, Blessed Mother, you are the spouse of the Spirit, and you always guide us to where we need to be, so lead us. Help us to be free. Help us to be open the same way that you were open and docile to whatever the Holy Spirit wanted for you. Pray for us, Blessed Mother, as we go through this evening and through the rest of this retreat, that at every moment we would be able to receive the fullness of God's love through the power of the Holy Spirit as we pray. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen. In the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you, gentlemen. Enjoy your dinner. We'll see you back here in a little bit.