Conference speakers emphasize evangelization, mission, and true joy
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
Before Baptism was a sacrament, it was just an ordinary, everyday word, says a professor of Sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
“What it simply meant was to plunge, immerse, soak, or inundate with water,” Mary Healy told about 700 young adults at the Vancouver Rise Up conference Dec. 30.
“We have a surviving recipe from ancient Greek for making pickles. This recipe tells people: you take the cucumber, you dip it in boiling water, and you baptize it in vinegar!”
It is “baptism” that changes a cucumber into a pickle. In the same way, she said, baptism by water and the Holy Spirit must thoroughly change the recipient.
The Holy Spirit “wants to plunge you anew into the very love of God that is greater than anything you can imagine,” she said.
“Who here wants to be pickled in the Holy Spirit?” she asked, as hundreds of young adults at the Westin Bayshore Hotel burst into laughter and applause.
Healy was one of several Catholic speakers at Rise Up, an annual conference by Catholic Christian Outreach Dec. 28-Jan. 1. CCO, founded on a university campus in 1988, works to encourage young adults to evangelize.
Healy urged the participants, between the ages of 18 and 35, to be receptive to the Holy Spirit and be enthusiastic about spreading the Gospel.
“Awaken the sleeping giant of the Catholic Church,” she said. To do that, one must look to the “first evangelization” of the apostles.
“What was it that made a tiny little rag-tag band of ordinary folks – tax collectors, fishermen, former prostitutes, slaves, regular people – who being subjected to violent persecution, made them turn the world upside down for Christ?” She said the answer is found in their response to the Holy Spirit.
“The apostles were so filled with the love of God that the love of God began to burn in them,” she said. “The ‘sober intoxication’ of the Spirit makes you capable of doing things you couldn’t do on your own and understand things you couldn’t understand on your own.”
Other speakers included parish evangelization co-ordinator Christy Dupuis, counsellor Jake Khym, and local priests Father Bryan Duggan and Father Mark Schwab.
“We need to rediscover the joy of evangelization,” Dupuis said in an evening address Dec. 30.
“Holiness and mission are indivisible. You cannot grow in your relationship with Christ without also growing in a desire for mission.” She urged the young adults to identify the fears, attachments, and worries that hold them back from openly talking about their faith. “It takes courage. It takes boldness to do that kind of ministry, to be willing to wear our faith on our sleeve,” she said.
Vancouver Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, and Bishops Gary Gordon of Victoria, Stephen Jensen of Prince George, and Scott McCaig of the Military Ordinariate of Canada celebrated Mass several times during the weekend conference.
“God does want us to be happy in this life, but many people make the mistake of identifying happiness with pleasure,” Archbishop Miller said during his homily at Mass on New Year’s Eve.
He told hundreds of young adults on the cusp of 2017 to look beyond superficial pleasures and seek a joy that lasts. “The happiness we are seeking, the happiness we have a right to enjoy, has a name and a face: it is Jesus of Nazareth,” he said.
“Happiness comes from God’s closeness to us, from his presence in our life. We must desire that closeness; go forward to an encounter with Jesus, who is our joy. I urge you not to dampen the deepest desires of your yearning heart. Uncover them, and discover that your restlessness can only be calmed by the Lord himself.”
