 I'll be the last one to give you a bit of a story in terms of what happened with COVID. Although mine is mixed, it's not just bad. I think we're going to be able to look back maybe not immediately, but in the years to come and look back and see how the Lord really blessed us during this COVID time. Even while we were kicking and screaming and didn't like what was going on. For me, my job, I'm a weird deacon in many ways, in more ways than one. I'm a full-time missionary, so I'm not even assigned at a parish. I wasn't when I was here. I had a home parish, but I was not assigned there because I was gone. I think maybe at the height of me going out, I was home maybe 10 weekends a year. It was a lot different. I'm constantly on the road, I was going out. Of course, when COVID hit, all the churches, my schedule was full pack and all of a sudden, call after call after call after call. Hey, yeah, thanks. No, thanks, we're done. We're going to wait and see, but everything came to a grinding halt. Of course, the three weeks as you know, continue to progress and the only way that I make an income is when I was out on the road. So everything came to a grinding halt and during that time, I'll be honest, I was uncomfortable. Not in like, oh my gosh, what's going to happen kind of way, but more so like, what am I going to do with myself? So I did what most other people did during COVID who aren't priests, clergy, they went to Home Depot or Lowe's, and they bought a bunch of stuff and started working on home projects. Really? I mean, one of the places that was slammed was Home Depot or Lowe's. These places were just slim. So I was working on these projects and just doing this stuff and praying like, Lord, what do you want me to do? One of the other things that he told me to do was I've been working on a small group project that he had given me a year before to work on. He says, well, I've given you the time, finish it. So from a work perspective, I dove into just doing that. But to be honest with you, I started, it's not that I felt uncomfortable like, oh my gosh, he's got going to provide because my ministry started with no money and he built it up. So that piece of the faith component for me was not really bad. But what was bad came in a little bit later. One of the benefits of it, like all of us, is we had much more time to pray, didn't we? And that could have been a good thing or a really bad thing. Because if we had more time to pray, did we actually pray? You started watching the jokes about people going and giving themselves to all the different vices. People drank more, people binged TV, watched all more. They did all kinds of things to cope with the uncertainty of the unknown. For me, I took advantage and I actually started sitting in the chair. I had this one Adirondack chair that I would sit in front of my house and I would just, that's where I would sit down and I'd spend a couple hours with the Lord. It was a glorious time. I really benefited from that. But what became difficult was that the Lord began to call me. I got up out of the chair one time thinking I was done, but he wasn't done. And in that moment, I heard really loudly the silence. Ever heard that? Ever been in a situation where the silence is so loud, you can hear it? It was, yes, deafening. It freaked me out. Literally. I'm like, and it just sensed that the Lord was saying, Ralph, come. Come to the silence. I'm going to be totally honest with you guys. I said, no, I was afraid. And as I tried to look and see what the silence was, what is this? What did it try to understand? What's going on? And what are you doing, Lord? I didn't know it, but the enemy had just kind of made the silence appear in my mind's eye like this just huge empty chasm, a huge abyss. And so I was afraid. And the Lord kept calling me back at different times in prayer. Come, come to the silence. Come to the silence. And I'm like, no, no, no. I was in outright disobedience. I knew what he wanted me to do, but I didn't want to go. I was afraid. Why should I be afraid? It's Jesus. And yet, I think if we're honest, there are times in our lives when Jesus calls, we're afraid. We're afraid of what He's going to ask of us, what He's going to lead us, who we're going to have to talk to, what kind of uncomfortable situation we're going to be put in. Because we said yes. Please tell me I'm not the only one that has that experience. Praise God. So I'm sitting there. And I've got my projects in the backyard. I've got stuff in my office. So I go into my office one day. This is how I remember the day clearly. It's a Monday. I don't remember what the day was, but it was a Monday. I went to the office clearly. And I start crunching out some of the stuff. And everything in the office stops working. Computers are down. Printers down. Internet is out. I mean, it just stops. I'm like, expletive? So I said, well, I'm going to go on to backyard and work on this project. So I go on to the backyard and start working on a project. And sure enough, that breaks down. Nothing is working. And now I know. You know. Another expletive, bleep, Lord Ralph, out of frustration. I finally gave up saying no. And I just got up. And I walked to the front of the house. And I sat in a chair in a shade. It was an ice breeze blowing. And I sat down in the chair. And I was scared. I sat down. And I just prayed. And I said, Mama Mary, you know the truth. I don't want to go there. I don't even know how to go to the silence. So you're going to have to come take me. And I just sat there in a breeze blue. And it was beautifully calm and calm outside and peaceful outside. But inside of me, I was just a hot mess. I was just, man, my eyes are closed. I'm just in prayer. And I see Mama Mary come up, walk up to me, kind of go, OK, let's go. She takes me by the hand. And we walk over. And as we start walking over it with my eyes closed in prayer and posture in a chair, we walk over right to the place where Jesus is now coming into focus. And behind him is this huge abyss. Mama holds my hand, takes me up to Jesus. Jesus looks at Mom and says, thanks, Mom. Sure, let's go with my hand. And Jesus looks at me and goes, thanks for coming. And I'm like, you kidding? You knew I didn't want to be here. You knew I didn't want to come. So why are you saying thanks? Because I wanted you to come. I want you to come in. But before you can come in, pointing behind him, I have a question for you. And I'm going to give you this question, and I don't want you to give me an answer now. Because we both know that the answer to this question is not going to be right. Don't you hate it when he does that? He knows everything. It's disgusting sometimes, really. So anyway, in that moment, he says, what I'd like you to do is go to the backyard and work on that project. And don't worry, all this stuff is going to start working. But the spirit is going to come to you. And he's going to ask you, he's going to show you some things. And I just want you to, as he shows you these things, I want you to apply the question that I need you to answer for me. I'm like, well, OK, what's the question? Am I enough? Am I enough? Go on. And I leave. I get up out of the chair. I go to the backyard. And the machinery is not working. I'm doing as he, and one of the things he says, I don't want you to put earbuds on. I don't want you to listen to Christian music or talk radio or a audio book or anything. I just want you to listen to what the spirit is going to. And the spirit began as I'm working on this. You know, like mowing the lawn is a mindless task. You just follow the machine. It was that kind of stuff. And the spirit started showing me parts of my life. Am I enough here? Am I enough here? Am I enough here? In some of the places, I could say yes. But again, to be brutally honest, I couldn't say yes to all of them. So at different times, I heard the Lord call, and I again continued to avoid. Spirit would come, am I enough? See, because the problem was that while I say I believe in God, and I believe that Jesus is my all in all, and I know the things to say. The truth is that in my life, I still give myself to other things. I'm still looking to other things to give life to my existence. And I didn't want to face Jesus and tell him no. So I kept avoiding, like duh, he doesn't know the truth. But I didn't want to look out of many eyes and say no. So this period lasted for about a month and a half. Am I enough for this? Am I enough for that? Am I enough in this situation? And the Lord called a couple more times, and he patiently waited. I avoided, like I did before. And again, I'm sitting in my chair during my prayer time, my two hours of my controlled time of prayer. You know what I mean by that, yes? When we come and we say, OK, Lord, here I am. I'm going to be dutiful and do what I promise. But I'm going to do the prayer. I'm going to punch the list. I'm going to fulfill my obligation all the while of avoiding the encounter. So finally, one day, I knew I needed to go. I'd just been telling him no too much. And he called again, and I said, mama, she showed up, took me by the hand, took me back to him. Hey, hi. Got an answer? What would you know I do? What is it? I don't want to say it. I need you to say it. And with great compassion, he said, thank you. Thank you for proclaiming the truth. Now you can enter. And when he said now you could enter, the fear that Satan had put up behind all of that stuff was just his divine, loving presence. Come on in. And I just followed him in. And I experienced this amazing peace and love, even though I told him no. He knew it was no. And so since that time, he's been calling me back to the peace. And it's still really loud. But the more I keep going back to that peace, that presence, the more he keeps doing what feels like interior surgery. And this week has been a major part of that too. Kind of, I wouldn't say culmination because we all got work to do, right? The Lord has a lot more work to do in us. But if you got nothing else out of this conference, I'm sorry, but I sure as heck did. In this retreat, I really needed this retreat. I really needed to encounter the Lord in the way the Lord came to me. That's why I'm so thankful and why I love to be a part of this. Because a lot of times in our dioceses, we don't get this kind of stuff. No bashing here. But when I went through and I started thinking through of all that we went through, again, just kind of taking our minds back at the beginning, some highlights that really struck me. Monday night, Father Dave said, we need to go back to the basics. It's just about Jesus and me. No activity, no earning his love, no serving to pay Jesus back for saving you. And the Lord said, come to the silence. Tuesday, Peter Herbeck, the Lord wants to revive our faith. He wants to give us the vision of his kingdom so that we witness to what we have seen to the silence. Tuesday afternoon, Dr. John Bergzema spoke of Adam as priest and the failure of man's priestly responsibility. What did he do as priest when the threat of the serpent came into the garden? He remained silent. How many times have I remained silent? Come to the silence. Tuesday night, Sister Miriam asked a question. How did you get here? Mentally, emotionally, spiritually? Do you not see that your life poured out for others is an incredibly beautiful thing. Wednesday morning, she continued on, said Christianity is not sin management. It's transformational glory. The Spirit came to me and revealed to me that if I'm not experiencing ongoing transformation in the Lord, then I either don't want to change or I'm stuck. Either way, I need the Spirit to break through. Come to the silence. Wednesday evening, Peter reminded us that every one of us is a prophet and the Spirit is restoring and renewing our role as prophets. He challenged me to evaluate if I fear man more than I fear God. This morning, John Boliu shared, what hope is really all about? We tend to place our hope in a desired outcome as if we're telling God, how is the best way to go? How it should be, we must place our hope in the living God who is. Other statements that just kind of nailed me was, you know, if Jesus Christ is the anchor of life, then prayer is the chain that connects us to the anchor. Come to the silence. And then he gave that image of concrete and forming, right? And that struck me really in the eyes. I mean, like in the eyes struck me because I've seen certain places where construction workers are working on a piece of a highway and they're forming a pillar and the form ruptures. It's not strong enough. It's not hard enough to hold the pressure that's inside and it ruptures and makes a bloody mess and goes all over the place. And it struck me too that I went back to Peter Herbeck and he was challenging us about the words that we say in our preaching and how we need to go to the Holy Spirit and say, I need your help to help me become a preacher who's going to give the full gospel. And for me, the form, you see, like, you know, if we're gonna take clay or something and form, right? We're supposed to conform to the image of Christ. And that means that we've gotta take us and shove it into something that's incredibly hard. And then when we're done, we're peeled out and we take on that image. Brothers, is not the form that we have been given that conforms us to Christ? Is it that not His word? Yes or no? It's incredibly hard. What happens if, for example, how would you feel if you, I came to your church and as a deacon, I did a baptism for you and you're standing on the wings and I'm doing a baptism and I begin the right and I say the child's name, John, I baptize you in my name, how would you feel? Or how about if you go on vacation, you go to Mass and you see another brother priest, my brother priest, and they go through the right of the consecration but they don't say the words of consecration and they just move past it and skip it all together, choosing to just leave it out. Been there, seen that. Is that good or bad? Why? The form has been given to us so that we can conform to Christ. If we don't keep the form intact and give them the entire form, we make something other than what they were created to be. Amen? And therefore we're called to give the entire message. The fullness of the message of Jesus Christ, good and bad. I was struck by Peter when he said that. He said, but look at what he did to the woman at the well. He went up to her, he, as we've all preached, I'm sure we've heard that phrase because it's a great phrase to preach in a homily. He thirsted for her soul. But before he could bring her to conversion, he had to confront her with her truth. You're not married and the last five guys you've not been married to either. You think at that point the girl would have turned around and walked away, I don't need you. But it was the truth that brought her back. I don't know about you, but for me, I got incredibly convicted that I need to do more. I need to say more. I'm tired of, you know, we all are in parishes to say, Father, keep it to seven, eight minutes, okay? But while we're dumbing down and shrinking the amount of time we're talking with the absence of content, the people are getting less and less of the form. So why are we upset with them when they don't do and they don't act and they don't be the things we want them to be when we're not the ones who are keeping the form in place? That's our job. But the truth is sometimes we get afraid. I know. Or the even harder truth is that, you know, the only time pastors and priests get phone calls from the dioceses is when you screw up. Or when you don't make your assessment. Isn't that true? And so therefore that puts a pressure on you and then you put it on deacons if you have deacons because I don't want you doing this. I've had pastors come to me and go, Ralph, you need to tone it down, bro. Because he was afraid that if I would upset their people, the people wouldn't donate the money and then the collections go down and then you get your phone call. Isn't that just right where the nastiness of the rubber meets the road? The reality of parish ministry life? I mean, isn't that it from a institutional component? Yes or no? But this is the body of Christ, the bride of Christ and our people are giving themselves to all kinds of stuff and we're letting them and we're claiming it in silence. By our silence, we say okay. By our silence, we just look the other way. I was convicted, brothers, because the truth is that it's only gonna get harder and darker. The passage that comes to my mind is when Elijah has, he's the last prophet left, right? And he confronts the prophets of Baal, right? Remember, we all know this is a great passage. It's an awesome passage. He's the last one left. And you go through the whole story, you know what happens at the story. But Elijah tells the people, Elijah then came near to the people and said, how long will you go limping with two different opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him. If the Lord is God, then recall to follow. If the Lord is the truth, then why do we live as if the kingdom of God can only be experienced after we die? Tell me that. Didn't Jesus say it's at hand? Yes or no? Didn't he bring the kingdom of God to us? Aren't we praying that I will be done on earth as it is in heaven? Then why are we living as if we're waiting till after we die so that we can be filled and completed and healed? Is it just me? I mean, sometimes I'm looking at what Jesus says and what he did, and I'm like, well, that's what he says, but we're not living it. That's what he says, but we're not teaching that. Peter was just telling us, look guys, he tells us all these warnings about what's gonna happen to our people because they're in sin. Boy, when he said, when's the last time you warned your people? I don't know about you, but I started squirming on my seat a little bit. The truth, the truth is that every one of us in this room is totally capable of doing that, warning our people. The truth is that all of us in this room, I don't care what your personality style is, every single one of us has the ability to call out what is sin in the world. The truth, brothers, is it's much easier not to. Who are we taking care of? Me first, or my people. And this isn't an indictment, please understand me. We're all in the boat. We're all experiencing this pressure, but I believe our Lord is now coming to us and saying, now is the time. I believe one of the major things about COVID is this is the time when the church should be shining brighter than ever before. This is the time when we're supposed to be standing up and saying, look, is Jesus Christ not the Lord of heaven and earth and of life and death? Then why does everybody think that COVID is stronger than Jesus? Because everyone started looking at their mortality, including our priesthood and deacons and bishops, but 65% of the presbyterite are 65, we'll be in retirement age within seven years. They're in that age bracket that was most susceptible. And I think our Lord is coming and he's pulling us close. Come, come to the silence. Let me affirm you, because I called you. Your ordination is not an accident. It is a call, a holy duty, but you're never meant to do it alone. You're meant to hold on to me and in fact, let me do it through you, but you will never get to that place until you come to the silence. I loved you before you heard your call to orders. I loved the little boy that was broken in you. While you were trying to figure out how to just run away and protect yourself, I love that little guy. And while you still look back at that little boy and don't understand anything, I see you completed in my form. This is what you have to give me. This is what you have to offer. Me, but am I with you always? Or Ralph, are you giving yourself to other things? Still, when you hurt Ralph, where do you go? When you get frustrated and angry, Ralph, where do you go? When someone calls you and says, dude, you totally blew that, where do you go? When your wife confronts you and calls you out. Can I have an amen? You know, my brother priest, there's one thing us deacons can really relate to is when the bride calls you out. We know it sucks, particularly when it's true. I think our Lord is saying the days are coming and things are gonna get really hard, but I will be with you always. If you would but come to the silence and let me fill you, let me heal you, let me restore you, go out, take the hits like my son said, you would get. If you preach the truth, they will hate you because of me, but what you will be doing is shining a bright light for everyone to see the way, the truth and the life. Our people are hurting really bad. You know, sin really is just the pursuit of happiness. They've just been deceived to believe that doing all this stuff and this new way of thinking and a gazillion genders and everything else is the way to happiness. And yet John, one of the things he shared is this litany of how many things are exploding in our culture. I asked John to send that to me because I wanna do some more research on that because when I go out and start preaching and I'm gonna wait, I'm not gonna preach on that stuff, I'm gonna hold it in my back pocket. And then when someone comes and starts confronting me about confronting them with the truth, why are you saying this? That's so hateful, I'm gonna say because the increase of suicide has started by such and such percent because, ta-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, because, ta-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, why am I doing this? Why am I preaching the truth? Because God made you in his image and he knows what's best for you. And you're never gonna be happy until you find him, but you don't want him right now. You wanna do your own freedom. The Lord's already telling me, here it comes because if I'm really gonna put myself out there, you know, and I have a little bit of an easier situation because I'm the guy that comes in, stirs up the hornet's nest and I leave. Right? I come in, I say the stuff and then I go and leave you to pick up the pieces. But it creates plenty of opportunity for conversation and self-evaluation. But I know, I still get slammed. I leave, you know, at the end of mass, people come out and they do the drive-by slapping the face. That really was a horrible homily. Thank you, Deacon, bye. And I try to engage in a conversation. They don't wanna talk to me. They just wanna slap me in the face and walk out. You know what I'm talking about. We've all gotten that. But none of that's the point. The point is that at the end of the day, when we come back to the silence and we encounter the Lord, as the scriptures say, when you come to encounter the Lord, do not let your own heart convict you. You know what I think is one of our greatest problems? And I think it's collective. I think it's easy to believe in God from our perspective. What I think is really challenging for us is to believe that God believes in us. You know what I've been sensing all week? A spirit of resignation. We just resign ourselves to say, this is the way it has to be. This is the way it's always been. This is the way it's gonna be. That we really can't go back and make a difference. I'm just a hobbit, Deacon. I'm not even assigned to a church. What could I do? But I think God looks at us and he says, when you entrust your entire ministry to me and stop trying to earn my love, but just receive it and open up that heart and let my spirit go, you will be a very strong weapon in the transformation process of my kingdom. I want to use you to move mountains in the lives of people. And that requires you to bear witness, bear witness. In my apostle, one of the things that I have, the pleasure of doing is going out and doing like staff retreats and things like that. And sometimes when I'm preaching a mission or something, I'll challenge the people as the Lord calls me to and I'll say, you know, you people, you want me to buy into your Jesus, right? And they all go, yeah. I mean, you believe in Jesus, right? Yes, you want me to, you want me to buy in Jesus. Let's say I'm the guy that lives across the street from your church, which none of you have ever come to my house before to visit because we only minister to falling away athletes. Why? Churches are closing down, you know why? Cause we see our churches much more instead of seeing it as a beach head where we're gaining territory, we're seeing it as the exit point because we're getting our butts kicked. So I'm sitting here with the crowd and I'm like, so let's just say I'm the guy across the street and you want to come and you're lit up on fire, you've been trained in evangelization and you want to come share the gospel of Jesus Christ with me and you want to make this happen and so you come and you knock on my door and you say, hey, have you ever heard about Jesus Christ? Now I'll say, yeah, I've heard of him. Well, we think you should open up your hearts and let him in. You want me to buy into your Jesus? Yes, that's why we're here. Well, let me ask you just one question. Why should I buy into your Jesus when you don't? Cause you look just like me. You dress just like me. You watch the same television programs just like me. You worry about money just like me. What makes you different from me besides the fact you get up on Sunday morning, I don't, I sleep in because I was up Saturday night. It's not much of a difference. That's why the world doesn't want to knock on our doors to find out what we have. I mean, do we really believe that in Christ we have everything we need? Do we really believe? Do we really believe? Do we really be living that in Christ we have all we need? And here's the spirit whispering saying, come to the silence. I'm encountering people who are starving for truth. But you know what they want? They want to know the why. From an evangelist standpoint, hence my job an evangelist, the number one question that is confronting the church today from the world is how do you know Jesus is real? Because those people can't see Jesus in the Tabernacle. Heck, 70% of our people don't see Jesus in the Tabernacle. Why? Because they don't know that he's real. They can't see the Lord in the blessed sacrament when they can't encounter the Lord in their hearts. So are we putting that vision out in front of the people? Are we showing them beginning to say that disciples of Jesus Christ, real people, Catholics, are people who have a viable relationship with Jesus Christ such that their hearts are on fire because they encounter the love of God. That's the question I asked in all my missions. And you know, the weekend masses that you preach before to kind of give people a taste. I said, give yourself your own test. If you're sitting here today, do you have a love for God in your heart? If the answer is no, then ask the other question. In your heart, do you experience a love from God? If the answer is no, then I'm here to tell you you're missing the very best part of being Catholic. You're missing God. And we're meant to have God. Do you think Jesus came and he did that so that we would have to come to church every Sunday, obligatory, and have a mediocre experience of the faith because we don't understand what's going on? Or could it possibly be that maybe we're just missing something or more accurately, someone. You know, when Elijah the prophet finished that, he ran away because his life was threatened, right? The Lord asked him several times, why are you here? Lord, I'm your last prophet. I'm the last one. They've killed all the rest and they want my life now. So he's hiding in a cave, right? Brothers, it might very well be that you are the last prophet in your town. You are the last prophet. But you know what the Lord told him afterwards while he was hiding, he says, go back. And he gave him a list of a couple of things to do. Anoint this guy king, anoint that guy king. Make Alicia your replacement. Tell me, who's your Alicia? Who's your Alicia? Every one of us should be working on one. Who's your Alicia? Who's the one that's gonna take over? Who's the one that you're pouring yourself into? Who's the one that you're allowing the anointing of the living God to flow through you and begin to start resting on them? We need to start living that model, brothers. It's a model Jesus gave us, amen. We need to be doing it. I was at a church and I asked the staff and I said, how many of you are disciples of Jesus Christ? They all raised their hands. I said, great, you're disciples? Wonderful, tell me, who are your disciples? Who are the people you are training up to follow Christ? And the DRE, she's one of those kind of people that just kind of speaks her mind. She goes, are you kidding me? I don't have time to make disciples, I'm the DRE. And I heard that and I just, I was stunned by what she just said and then I started to smile and then everyone, you know, it's like a pregnant pause and everyone busted out laughing. But she really did illustrate a very critical point. Sometimes we're so busy running programs and we have no time to make disciples. A couple of closing thoughts, brothers. Because I'm sure you're tired of listening to me. When Joshua stood before the Israelites after they conquered the land of Canaan, just like Moses had done before. Remember, when Moses came to the people, it kind of is a grand goodbye. He stands before them. He says, I set before you life and death. Blessing and curse, right? Joshua does the same thing. After they go into the land of Canaan and they conquer Canaan, he gathers the people. I'm looking at Joshua 24, starting in verse 14, and he says this. Now therefore, revere the Lord and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness. Put away the gods of your ancestor, your ancestors, that your ancestors served beyond the river and in Egypt. Serve the Lord. Now, if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve. Whether the gods of your ancestors, that your ancestors served in the region beyond the river or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are now living. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. You know, a lot of us are asking, well, what do I do now? Where do I go from here? And how can I even get close to starting to do this? Because I'm still fighting my spirit of resignation. And yet I think the Lord has been showing us pretty clearly this week that Satan seeks to rob us of our identity as sons of God. And just even in our priesthood, in our horrors, in our diaconate and in seminary. Because we focus on what we do instead of who we are. Brothers, are you a son of the living God? Do you treat yourself as a son of the living God? I've been kind of chewing on that a long time, wondering how would I behave differently if I really did treat myself as a son of God as Jesus has always done? Would I lose hope so quickly? Would I doubt so quickly? I don't know about you, but I'm convicted. The truth is not meant, is not just meant to be known but lived. And we're living in a world where we like plastic Christianity. Everything's in place, everything looks good, everything is right. And yet I think the spirit's coming and he's stirring. Didn't he do that in you this week? Stirred up, went to the spot. So you knew you were trying to tuck away and keeping the junk closet of your heart. And he went in there, opened up the door and says, man, is it stinking here or what? And he's going in and he's causing chaos and you're like, what is going on? And the one thing we begin to realize is that we're not in control. You realize every time that we try to attain control, we step out of God's will. Every time we lose our peace, we step out of God's will. Cause in him there is nothing but peace. Now can we still feel fear because we're confronting our parishes with the truth of God? Yes, but we are created if the higher function of our soul is operating properly and the lower. We experience emotions in the lower and in the higher function of our souls, we sense the fruits of the spirit. It's God's way of communicating to us through the spirit of how we are called to follow him, but Satan has trained us all to pay attention to the emotions, the fear, the anxiousness, the resignation, whatever else is going on in us. God calls us to embrace him and encounter him in the silence in the spirit to move where he moves us, to allow him to flow and have access to every part of our humanity. Can we sit here today and say that Jesus, that the spirit has access to every part of our humanity? Or are there still things in our lives that we're holding on to? Our false gods that we believe give us life, that we go to because they, whether it's enjoyment or whatever. My brothers, if we're really gonna leave here and go and evangelize, first couple of questions. Do you know how? Sounds like a stupid question. I'm talking a bunch of priests and deacons, but I've talked to plenty of priests and deacons who've told me they don't really know how to do it. They've just been taught how to do the priestly and deacon things. If you don't know how, then it's maybe some boning up to do. How do I share the karygma with someone? The good news, the gospel. How do I bring them to a point of proper disposition where as it says in the Catechism in 1131 that we need to bring people, the fruits of the sacraments will not come to fruition without the proper dispositions. Peter teaches us those proper dispositions. Repentance. You can't start learning to be a new identity in Christ, a disciple, until you give up trying to be God and baptism. You can't live a new life until you die from the old one. There's a place to go. We need to start boning up. Does our staff know how to do it? Do our volunteers? But here's the real key. This is what I've discovered. If we're really gonna go out to do that, then we need to answer this question. Upon what do you base your conviction of our faith? Upon what do you base your conviction of our faith? Because the people will see right through it if they don't see that we're sold out. What is your conviction based on? If it's book knowledge, it's gonna fall flat on our head. They need to see the Lord activated in our hearts. On what is our conviction of the gospel of Jesus Christ based? When we know that answer and we start preaching that answer, people are gonna start seeing something different. They're gonna start understanding. They're gonna start seeing you in the ways that you preach the gospel and sometimes you say the good love warming stuff and other times you're calling the kettle black and they're gonna see why because of the conviction. Because you have such absolute certainty that God is real. How do you know? And then you're able to give the answer. Hello, which is something that we oftentimes don't like to do. You know, it's really easy to just officiate the role of the office we've been called. We can put on the collar and we can read what it says in black and do what it says in red. And never once reveal the truth of our own humanity. But the truth is brothers, and then I'll close with this and get out of your hair. The gospel of Jesus Christ must go to the very places in people's hearts where they most desperately need hope. And if we're not prepared to talk about the ways that God has given us hope in our lives, even from this week. Because you know your staff are gonna go, how is it father? And you can just give them the one word answer. Fine. Or you can say, could we sit down for about 30 minutes, 45, let's make it an hour and open up your heart and show them. You know what that's gonna do to your staff? You show people your heart, they'll follow you. You give people your heart, they'll die for you. But if you give people your heart, you're gonna suffer because love is gonna be free to flow and they're sinners just like us. But we are not alone. You are not in your office alone. The Lord is calling us to rise brothers and go and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we're never meant to do it alone. We're always meant to do it with him. Always meant to do it with him. But to do it, we have to come to the silence. It's there in that encounter where we are going to be replenished or we're gonna be challenged or we're gonna be made uncomfortable and where we're gonna be loved. I don't know where you are today right now. I don't know what Satan has been throwing up in your face as I've been talking. Maybe trying to get you to stick with where your plan was. You know, as you started looking back to your parishes and starting to dive into your emails and stuff over the day, you know, the temptation comes and brothers, how are we going to be different when we go home? And is that difference gonna be something that we do? Or will it God do? Some people I know here still have that fear. I'm not like that. I don't do that kind of stuff, Deacon. I can't do this and that and this and that. And I've just come to recognize in my own life because as a middle school kid, if I looked at a girl in the eyes, I about peed in my pants. I was so shy. I believe that the gospel of Jesus Christ has not gone out to the four corners of the world the way it could because those of us who profess to believe in Him say we can't instead of saying, I can't, but God can't, God can't. And yeah, I might be living in a dark world in a sinful parish or all kinds of stuff going on, but the spirit is alive and well. And Jesus Christ did rise from the dead and He did conquer sin and death. And He has done all these things. And if He's done all those things, then doggone it. He can do those things in my parish. I just got to bring them there, but He wants to move through your heart's brothers. He wants to move through your hearts because once He captivates your heart and that fire starts blowing through you, it's gonna spread. That spirit, that love is gonna just flow freely, but we're the ones that keep saying no. So as we prepare to close out the night in terms of going into prayer, can we just begin to pray for each other about the things in our lives that we're afraid to do? Can we proclaim it? Ralph, I'm afraid to go back to my parish and preach the truth because say it. Don't keep it secret anymore, say it. I found tremendous freedom when the Lord made me go to Him face to face and say it. They put it out there. Let's just calm our hearts down. Be still, close your eyes. Let's go before the Lord.