 I think of all the blessings I've received in my life, I think that one idea, that one identity that was bestowed upon me in power that day to that I'm a son of God and loved by the Father has made more of a difference in my life than anything else to remember that. And it's waned and gone up and down in my life. It's not been like, oh God came into my life and I just been on this trajectory of like, oh, every day just gets better and better. I am a very flawed human. My wife is actually here this morning so she can fill you in on the real me. She'll let you know. She knows my flaws, but that singular reality has continued to guide me even when I get in those down places out of them. You know, not to stay there because there's something better. There's always something better with God. He's always leading us. And the first thing that the Lord wants to do for each one of us in our being modeled, conformed to the image of Christ is confirm in each one of us our identity as a child of God. Because if that's not there, everything else can become misdirected, disordered, even our spiritual life and the ways we approach God become, become disordered when we forget that we're a beloved child of God and God is pleased with us. You know, when we stop believing that God is pleased with us and that he's angry with us all the time, you know, St. John said God is love, period. He's not God is love and disappointment. It's not God is love and frustration with you. God is love, period. He's always perfect love for each one of us. And when we open our hearts to his love and receive that love, he's even more pleased because it's coming to fruition. All that he had to do, Jesus had to do on the cross to tear down that wall has come to fruition in each one of us. Little did I know that when I prayed that prayer that night that two months later, I would be in St. Paul, Minnesota in training to be a missionary for that mission, you know, for net ministries, right? God completely took me off this path. At the time at 18 when I went on the retreat, I'd been accepted at college. I was going to go to Central Michigan University. I was going to study pre-med. I was going to be a doctor because I wanted to have a big house, a fancy car, a hot wife, all the things that the world has to offer. I did get the hot wife. Okay. It's true. True story. But the Lord had something more for me. I went to net training as green and raw as a disciple could be. But in that furnace, this intense outpouring of the spirit, I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit. I started growing in my understanding of God, but still had no idea what ministry was. I mean, I knew I wanted to serve God. I knew I wanted to please God. In my first year of traveling with net, I was leading this retreat in northern Minnesota with our team. On every retreat, we have small groups. And I had a group of about seven guys in my small group, one which wasn't saying a word. The entire time was just kind of closed off. And we would go around the circle. We'd be talking about our faith. I'd be asking questions about a talk they just heard. And everyone to be sharing this guy just had nothing to say. At the end of every one of these retreats, we pray with each person for an outpouring of God's love in their life. And it came time for me to pray with this young man. And he was like a closed book to me. I had no idea what to pray for because he hadn't talked about anything going on in his life. So we sat down and I'm just like, okay, God, how does this work? I'd put my hand on his shoulder and I said, come Holy Spirit, guide this prayer. And immediately I saw in my mind a cornfield with an old, like one of these old fashioned railroad crossing signs there in some railroad tracks. I'm like, okay, God, I'm daydreaming again. You know, I'm kind of like that. You know, so like I push the side and say, God, just how can I pray for this young man? And immediately I saw the exact same thing, railroad tracks in the middle of this field. I'm like, okay, God, let me pray. I'm trying to pray for this guy. Do you understand? I want to know how to pray. Started saying, come Holy Spirit, there was one last time. So I gave up. I said, okay, God, you're saying something. So I stopped the prayer. I opened my eyes. I looked at him. I said, every time I want to start praying for you, all I see is this image of a railroad crossing. Does it mean anything to you? And he immediately starts bawling. Three weeks before the retreat, his father was killed at a railroad crossing. He was wounded, angry, frustrated, closed off, grieving all the things that you experience, especially as a young man who's just lost his father. All this pain, all of a sudden came flooding up and he was bawling in front of me. But God used that in that moment to unlock his heart. And I prayed with him. We prayed for healing. We prayed for his father. We prayed for his family. We prayed for his mom. We prayed for everybody. And I prayed for him especially. And God was able to break through. And that's when I realized that being on mission for God and trusting in the Holy Spirit was much bigger and much more amazing than I had ever thought it could ever be. Like, oh my gosh, the Lord actually speaks to us. We always say, prayer is talking to God. But when he speaks to us, we're kind of like, well, you're kind of crazy. God doesn't really do that. But he does. And that's for each one of us. That's one of my points today. I tell this story because I didn't know anything. I was just a young kid who had had this encounter with Jesus and I wanted to please him. The Catechism says, for us to serve the Lord well, to become everything he created us to be, there's only two things that are necessary. First, the desire to become like him. Not just to do the things that he did, but to become like him, to be conformed to this image, to be empty, to empty ourselves, to give ourselves to God completely the way Jesus gave himself completely to the Father. Jesus did what he did because he loved his Father and he wanted to please God in all things. And he emptied himself on the cross. He took on our form, became like us always except for our sin so that he could be the perfect sacrifice. And so we need to pursue holiness. We need to be like Jesus. We need to make our lives not about ourselves. Jesus did not live one minute of his life for himself. He continually made himself a gift to his Father and a gift to us. Do we desire that? Is that our driving force is to be like Jesus? The second it says in the Catechism, we need a humble and trusting heart. And this is why Jesus says, come to me and learn. I'll teach you how to be humble. I'll teach you how to be gentle. I will enable you to turn and become like a child before me. When we have a desire for God and a humble and trusting heart, there's absolutely nothing, nothing that God cannot do in us and through us. Too often we pray in such a way that we treat the Holy Spirit like he's a therapeutic. Oh Lord, I'm hurting. Come give me comfort. You know, I don't have a headache. I have a heartache. Jesus, come touch my heart. Make me feel better for a little bit. You know what Jesus is saying? I want to give you a new heart. I want to give you a new heart. I want to make you new. I don't want to just put a bandaid on you. I don't want to gloss over something in you that's wounded or broken. I want to give you a new heart and I want to send you forth with a word. I want you to share in my life. I want to make you new. I make all things new. I can make you new and I can send you forth in a new way. Everything becomes new with the Lord. If we're not willing to let the Lord make everything new in our lives, continually seeking a new outpouring of His grace. You know, we can't keep going back to, oh, I remember when the Lord worked this way 30 years ago. I want to recapture that. I want to recapture that. That's gone. What is the new that the Lord wants to do in you and through you today? You know, what needs to be made new in your life? Because we're never done. I am far from being the person God wants me to be. But I hope every day at least take a baby step, at least a baby step a day closer to God becoming more who he wants us to be. You know, when we think about our confirmation, confirmation is where we are really called to mission, right? It really confirms in us our identity as a child of God and equips us. It says in the Catechism that confirmation is an anointing. And what it signifies and imprints upon us is a spiritual seal. The seal of the Holy Spirit marks our total belonging to Christ, our enrollment and service forever, as well as the promise of divine protection in the great eschatological trial. Peter spoke about that last night. War is coming. You can deny it, but it's been prophesied. Our blessed mother has been telling us for years, war is coming. In Fatima, the last battleground will be the family. Well, wake up. We're in the middle of that war. But what the seal of the Holy Spirit marks in us, our confirmation marks in us is those three things. Let me repeat them, our total belonging to Christ. You are not your own. You don't live for yourself. You don't belong to yourself. If we totally have given ourselves to Jesus, we will give ourselves totally to Jesus. We will stop saying, well, God, I've given you 75% of my life. I'm better than most. That's pretty good, right? I mean, I look around and at least I'm here and I care. And so we kind of hit these plateaus and we get comfortable. We get a little complacent when God is saying I want everything. You totally belong to Christ. We need to totally give ourselves to Jesus. It says the second thing is our enrollment in his service forever. When do you retire from service of the Lord? When your pulse stops. I spent 15 years as a youth minister and I said these words a lot to the young people I serve because it's from Timothy, St. Paul encouraging Timothy. Don't let them tell you that you're too young. Don't let them tell you that you're too young, but show them. Now I want to say something. Don't let them tell you that you're too old. You're not done. God's got something new for each one of you. This is your time. For some of you, you have more time to give to the Lord than you've ever had in your life. You have more freedom to give yourself to God in a way that maybe when you were busy with your family, your children, your career, you weren't maybe as free as you are now. There is no limit to what God can do in you today. But I know you're not. You're not. You're right where God wants you to be. And if we continue to give ourselves to him and trust in the power of his Holy Spirit with that humble and trusting heart, he will do miracles in you and through you. But we have to say yes. We have to desire that God use me, take me, all of me. I surrender it all. Show me. Jesus himself said this in John chapter six. He says, do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for internal life, which the Son of man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal. When Jesus was anointed, he was sealed with the Holy Spirit. When we were baptized and confirmed, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit. The only difference between the way Jesus is living and the way we're living is Jesus gave himself completely to the Father, surrendered his entire will, his entire life to God, and maybe we're not there yet. But the more we surrender our will, every part of our lives to Christ, the more He'll use us. It says in the catechism, it says the church's mission is not an addition to that of Christ and the Holy Spirit, but it's sacrament. Think about that. When we go on mission, we're not adding to Christ and the Holy Spirit because when we talk about the great co-mission to go forth and make disciples, that's a co-mission between us and the Spirit and Jesus. We're on mission with them, and we become the small s sacrament of the life of Jesus in this world. That is our mission, to be a small s sacrament, to be another Christ to this world at every opportunity we can, especially in the way that we proclaim the good news. It says in article 739 in the catechism, it says, because the Holy Spirit is the anointing of Christ, it is Christ who pours out the Spirit among his members to nourish, heal, and to give them life. How many people got nourished this weekend in their souls through the Holy Spirit? How many people received a healing of some kind? Great, awesome. How many experienced the new life of Christ, more of His grace in your life? Okay, those three things are great. He sends His Spirit to nourish, heal, and give them life. The final thing it says that the Spirit does, it sends them to bear witness. We are leaving here today for the sole purpose of bearing witness to the goodness of God, to proclaim Jesus Christ to this world. It says in article 905 of the catechism, it says, late people fulfill the prophetic mission by evangelization, that is the proclamation of Christ by word and the testimony of life. Everyone is called to do this. No one gets a pass. Your job is to evangelize. That is how you, you know, Peter talked about the priestly prophetic and kingly marks of baptism. We fulfill and live out the prophetic mark that we received, the seal that we received in baptism confirmation by the proclamation of the gospel. St. Paul VI, St. Pope Paul VI wrote in Evangelion and Tandy, here lies the test of truth, the touchstone of evangelization. It is unthinkable. It is unthinkable that a person should accept the word and give himself to the kingdom without becoming a person who bears witness to it and proclaims it in his turn. Unthinkable that we would receive so much from God and not proclaim it to the world, that we would be touched by such a great of love and hog it to ourselves. I said this yesterday in my life in the spirit workshops. When we stand before God, we better have a bunch of people behind us when we stand there saying, I'm here because this person helped me get here. I owe so much to this person, Jesus. I mean, like if we stand before God and God says, I loved you, I anointed you, I healed you, I fed you, I nourished you, how many people did you lead? How many people did you bring? How many people did you help get to heaven? How many people did you share this awesome gift and we have no one? What hurt, what shame would we would feel to stand before God and say, God, you blessed me so much and I did nothing for you? And it's not too late to start. I don't, you know what I mean? At any point, we can turn our hearts to God and give him everything that we are. We need to do that every day anyway. That should be the first thing we do in the morning is wake up and give ourselves completely to God and the mission that he has for us and say, God, what is it that you want me to do today? That's what, you know, part of prayer is, is listening to God and letting him lead us. But the Holy Spirit's role in this is absolutely vital. And Chris just talked about this. Like, it is possible to say Jesus is Lord without the Holy Spirit. It's even more impossible to proclaim the word of God without the Holy Spirit. Father, Rene Roconto La Mesa, he's cardinal now. Amazing. He's been the papal preacher since St. Pope John Paul II. He says, you cannot, you cannot proclaim Jesus effectively except through the power of the Holy Spirit. He talks, he describes it like this is like, when we are filled with the spirit and living a spirit filled life, we are in the grip of grace. And when we proclaim the Lord from the grip of grace, we make God not just a concept, but we bring forth his existence. We make him manifest to the people in front of him because our words are going forth with power. When we are outside of the grip of grace, we may be able to proclaim doctrine and pass on knowledge, but we will not make God real to the people we're proclaiming to because only the Holy Spirit can manifest the grace of God to another person, can make Jesus alive and real to another person. I mean, words are pretty, pretty amazing, right? I'm up here I'm up here thinking of thoughts. Maybe they're inspired by the Holy Spirit. I don't know. But I'm thinking about thoughts in my brain, right? Maybe in my will, the deepest part of me is like, he say this. So it goes to my brain and my brain starts firing a little electronic impulses and nerves start firing and they're speaking to my tongue and my lungs and they're saying, breathe and pronounce and enunciate. And I'm saying words and these words are coming out of my mouth as what? Sound waves, moving air molecules. They don't have to go very far before they hit this microphone. Boom. And it goes into the microphone, my little words. I think they come out the other end. I'm not sure how it works. And it goes to this little thing over here that collects these little electronic impulses that this made and sends these electrical impulses to the speakers that are hanging everywhere in this building. And they cause the speakers to vibrate a certain way and send out sound waves, more moving air, moving air, moving air and these air, these moving sound waves are hitting your ears, right? As physical atoms of and are vibrating and they hit your ear in a particular way and your inner ear is taking what these vibrations are doing and translating it back into electrical impulses and sending these electrical impulses to your brain where your brain is kind of, how would you say, transcribing them into thoughts and words for yourself. So this happens instantaneously. I move air molecules and almost instantaneously you hear words. Now, my wife can tell you, I like to talk. People who I work with can tell you I like to talk. I've moved a lot of air molecules in my life, but I have never been able to move a human heart to do anything. Because if I'm just up here using my voice proclaiming even the most beautiful truth under my power, under my authority, with my will and my objectives, then it's all for not. But when I come up here and I start preaching in the grip of grace under the authority and power of the Holy Spirit with the desired effect for you to come to know the love of Jesus that you would walk away from this place today and completely forget about me but fall so in love with Jesus then great things will happen. Great things will happen. That's how evangelization takes place. We need to be people filled with the Holy Spirit because there's a lot of talk in the world, but empowered speech like Christ was able to speak in and bring forth is what's necessary. The Holy Spirit is the method. We see this in the prophet Ezekiel, son of man, do you see these dead bones you think they can live? Here's what I want you to do, prophesy into them. And as he's prophesying the Lord breathes into them and these bones start growing flesh and muscle and tissue and they become alive. That's what it means to be speaking prophetically. We're speaking the Word of God. He's speaking through us. Things are coming alive. And when Jesus says go make disciples of all nations, right? It's the same concept. We're asking people to come alive in Christ. We're asking people who are spiritually dead to find new life. We don't do that by our own power. We do that by the power of the Holy Spirit. And when we preach the spirit kicks in and the spirit is breathed into people and new life is there. God created the world out of nothing. And through his power and through the grace that he's given you, he can speak and bring new life into the hearts of people. Anyone can do this. Lazarus. Lazarus had a problem. You think you have problems? Lazarus had problems. He was dead. All right? Lazarus was dead and in the tomb. That's a problem. It really is. I mean like heartbeats and breathing are important. I mean we keep telling you to breathe because we're afraid like you might forget. The only hope for Lazarus though was what it says in that the 11th chapter of John. He was a friend of Jesus. If Jesus is your friend you've got no problems that can't be overcome. Even death isn't a problem. So Jesus goes to the tomb and he says Lazarus come forth and in that prophetic powerful speech where there was death and there's now life and Lazarus comes forth from the tomb and it says that his hands and feet were bound. So you kind of wonder like what was it like? Was it like and it says his face was wrapped, right? Like thank you Jesus. This is really cool. This is really cool Jesus but you know I'm kind of I'm not quite there yet. So what does Jesus say? He looks to Lazarus' friends and says go and bind him and let him go. Go. Go. Go. Let him go. And they go and they unwrap him. See this is what happens in our lives. We receive this new life in Christ and we become alive but a lot of us come out of the tomb with the things of death still clinging to us and we need to be unbound from those things. And that's the freedom that the Holy Spirit brings to us but when you look at the 12th chapter of John what you find out is Lazarus didn't sit there worried about all the things he brought with him from the tomb. Yes he knew he needed to be unbound but he was already ready to go and tell people that I was dead and now I'm alive because Jesus did that. He starts telling people. It says in John chapter 12 verses 9 and 11 when the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priest planned to put Lazarus to death as well since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus. Now Lazarus is preaching and witnessing to what the Lord has done in his life and people are leaving and going to follow Jesus and so what do they decide they're going to do? They're going to kill him. And I imagine Lazarus is like really? Really? Been there? Done that? Got a t-shirt? I mean like how do you threaten a guy who's come back from the dead with death? And we're going to kill you. Yeah I got a solution for that. Go ahead do your worst. You know I mean like so he becomes this powerhouse that's leading people to Christ and it's because he's encountered Jesus because Jesus was his friend and God's when Christ was there he spoke that prophetic word Lazarus come forth and with that power that went forth from the because Jesus was sealed with the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit went in and reanimated and brought him back to life. Brothers and sisters we are surrounded by people who were like probably in the movie sixth sense you remember that? I see dead people. I see them all the time they just don't realize they're dead. We have brothers and sisters that go to Mass with us every Sunday. They don't know that they're dead. They're going through the motions. They're not bad people they're just people that you know they just haven't found Jesus yet. I mean I was there I know I was a person who went to Mass for 18 years but didn't know the love of Jesus. And what our job is to no longer get caught up in just ourselves. We've been nourished. We're being healed. We're being set free but we need to be on mission. If we're not on mission it's unthinkable that we would come to a place like this receive so much from God and yet not want to go forth and proclaim the name of Jesus Christ to those who are literally stuck in tombs. That's our job. If we are Christian we are going to be conformed to the pattern of Christ. We are going to live his life and we're going to let his life be lived through us. If it's just about us we are failing. So we need to ask the Holy Spirit. We need to pray like the apostles did not in Acts chapter 2. Pentecost which we're celebrating today praise God was an awesome day. But just two chapters later in Acts chapter 4 when the persecution starts and things get difficult what do they do? They come back to the Lord and they say, Lord grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness while you stretch out your hand to heal and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your Holy Servant Jesus. Brothers and sisters let's not just go forth. Let's go forth to proclaim Jesus. How awesome he is and let's ask God to do miracles in us and through us so that we can be living witnesses in this world to the power and beauty of the gospel. Amen. Amen. Let's pray for the Holy Spirit. Stand up please.