This past weekend, I chaperoned the Confirmation Retreat for St. Rose of Lima Parish. In one word it can only be described as amazing! We had more than 30 young men and women who are preparing for confirmation. They were wonderful! Equally impressive was the group of adults and young adults who I was privileged to work with. We have been planning for this since November and it was a roaring sucess.

Our theme was “Meant to be a Saint.” A number of the confirmandi were having a tough time figuring out a patron saint. So to hep them overcome this need, we decided to make that a prominent part of the retreat. Over the course of the weekend many of the adults and young adults shared about either our patron saints or our favorite saints. I did a short skit on the life and death of St. Maximillan Kolbe, OFM Conv. I thought it was ok, but it was well received. Afterward, 2 young men told me they decided to take Max as their saint!

A number of the young adults also did witness talks on the gifts of the Spirit (WWUCKRR) and they were powerful, including one young woman who shared about being homeless as a little girl.

I was excited that one of our friar priests drove up to the retreat center to have mass for us on Saturday afternoon. We had a potential disaster that we averted, because we forgot a sacramentary for mass! We eventually got the Eucharistic prayer off of an Iphone and we wrote it out by hand! It was so monastic of us. Fr. Brad’s homily was great and well received. He spoke about the uniqueness of our calls from God and that we respond to God in a unique way and share our experiences in uniqueness. The young people and the adults referred to it a number of times afterward!

It was one of the better weekends of ministry that I have experienced and been blessed to participate in. It was amazing to learn from so many people who are so gifted in youth ministry. Please pray for these young people as they prepare for confirmation because I know I will be praying for them!

peace and good,
friar Matt