By John Rohlf, The Message assistant editor
During the Source + Summit retreat weekend April 4-6, about 475 youth participants in the Diocese of Evansville heard from multiple speakers, including diocesan priests Father Garrett Braun and Father Andrew Thomas.
Father Garrett Braun’s talk with participants was titled “The Eucharist.” Father Braun, parochial vicar of St. Francis Xavier Parish in Vincennes and St. Philip Neri Parish in Bicknell and part-time campus minister at Vincennes University, said every time we fall back into sin or especially when we fall into mortal sin, we turn ourselves away from him. Through sin, through the fall and through our own sharing in that sin, mankind separates, Father Braun said.
“We separate ourselves from God like a piece of cartilage that is floating in a place where it’s not supposed to be,” he said. “So we need someone to come and heal this wound. This severed relationship that’s been damaged. And so that’s Jesus Christ who is sent by the Father and who is perfectly obedient to the Father’s will. And who comes into our world to heal this relationship that we had originally in the garden that was ours.”
Father Andrew Thomas, pastor of St. James Parish and Sts. Peter and Paul Parish in Haubstadt, said because God loves us and desires to be with us forever, and because we have an eternal destiny, God sent his son into the world. When he sent his son into the world, he proved that he desired to be with us by his death and resurrection, Father Thomas said.
Jesus walked with us in this world for 33 years, teaching and preaching and learning what it meant to live in this fallen world, Father Thomas said.
“In that moment, he created a bridge between God and us,” Father Andrew said. “God became man so that we might become God as he had always desired in all things. And now he calls us to respond to his commandment. Restore the face of the earth through his grace, through his sacraments and through his church.”
Father Braun said Jesus Christ comes into our woundedness and rebellion and enters that space not by rebelling himself, but by taking the effects of our sin upon himself in perfect obedience, love and trust of the Father’s will.
“You know the story. He takes that fall, those consequences upon himself and he enters into death for us,” Father Braun said. “Laying down his life for us. Your theme for this weekend. This is my body, which is given for you. Of course he says that, but he also does it. He also actually gives his body fully, in perfect love, in perfect trust of what the Father had planned for him and what the Father would bring about through the Holy Spirit.”
In his talk before the April 6 closing Mass, which was titled “Evangelization and Living a Life in Christ,” Father Thomas focused on the need to have a heart for God. The heart of God is simply that he will pour himself out totally and forever so that we might have eternal life. This takes courage, which is every single day taking up our cross, asking God what his will is and then practicing courage, Father Thomas said.
“Here’s what we really need to do,” Father Thomas said. “We need to love the world so much that all we can imagine for it is that it gets to heaven. We have to love our friends so much that all we can do is imagine we will be with it for eternity. This is what it means to have a heart like God. We see the world not in frustrations or in agony, but instead, a thing that needs to be loved.”
Father Thomas said we know evil exists and it impacts all of us. The one thing evil has no response to is sacrificial love, he said. If we want to have a heart like God, then we must in every instance confront evil and indifference with sacrificial love. To have a heart like God, we need to sacrifice day in and day out, and pour ourselves out for the salvation of our parishes, parents and community, he told those in attendance.
“If there is someone in your life that maybe you don’t like or don’t really love or you’re struggling desperately to forgive, then the remedy (is) sacrificial love. Because there is no response from evil to it,” Father Thomas said.
Father Braun told those in attendance that if we are to be raised up, we have to let ourselves be attached to his body. We need to be grafted onto his resurrected and glorified body so that we are attached to him so that when his body is raised up in the resurrection, “we’re kind of along for the ride,” Father Braun said.
“That’s why he gave us the Eucharist. To always renew that within us,” he said. “And so knowing how great a gift we’ve been given, we’ll be encouraged to bring others into that as well … Like so many people who encouraged their friends to get back to Confession, to go to Mass, to go to adoration. That’s his invitation for us.”