VANCOUVER—”Remember you are loved,” speaker Martha Fernandez-Sardina told more than 1,000 people on St. Valentine’s Day.
The enthusiastic “love messenger” was one of four speakers at the archdiocesan One Conference, an annual event that gathers and encourages local volunteers and ministry workers, Feb. 14.
“We need to become lovers, or what Pope Francis calls ‘missionaries of God’s tenderness,'” she continued. She said the phrase, “Remember you are loved,” heals and has evangelizing potential.
Fernandez-Sardina, who started an outreach project with that phrase as its name, challenged everyone to show love to everyone who passes them in the street as their brothers and sisters. You can even hand out wristbands with the message, she said; she does.
Prison ministry volunteer Germaine Solaiman knows all about reaching strangers with a message of love.
“Everybody fumbles in life,” she said. “Like the speaker said, they are still loved. They are still our brothers and sisters.”
Prison ministry provides Mass, Alpha courses, and RCIA classes for inmates and sets up community support groups for them once they are freed. Solaiman has been involved for six years.
On her first day, “I was very nervous. Coming from a very sheltered background, it was that place that your parents warned you not to step into.”
She said fear is the top reason people avoid volunteering in prison, but that feeling “fizzles away. It’s so wonderful to share God’s love. I get a lot more out of it than I give.”
Prison ministry was one of 62 exhibitors at the One Conference. Also manning a booth was Father William Comerford, CSsR, with Courage, a ministry for people with same-sex attraction.
“We teach what the Catholic Church teaches about sex,” he explained. “The Church is not in any way condemning people with same-sex attraction.”
Courage is an apostolate started in 1980 that helps those struggling with that attraction. He also works with Encourage, a ministry that reaches out to their families. “It’s not all about sex. The fact that we are children of God is.”
A few tables down, Faith and Light member Elaine Devlin described how a local group reaches out to people with intellectual disabilities.
“We don’t want to shun them like people used to years ago,” she explained. Faith and Light, an international association founded by Jean Vanier, has a community in Surrey and hosts monthly Masses and fellowship events.
Its sister ministry, L’Arche, traces its roots to the same founder. “We care for each other,” said L’Arche member Annette Kuhn. She felt strengthened by Robert Wicks, a psychologist from Maryland, who had spoken earlier in the day.
“He spoke on how to care without burning out. It’s a very relevant topic,” she said. The One Conference leaves her “nourished and inspired.”
Other speakers included Archbishop J. Michael Miller, CSB, who gave a presentation on the event’s theme, Start Joy in Your World, and Keith Strohm, a Chicago director of evangelization who talked about making disciples.
“There is no vocation crisis in the Church. God is still calling people. The crisis is of discipleship,” he said.
