Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Article on 2018 FOCUS Conference

Over the past couple months, I had posted some interviews with people I had met at the FOCUS SLS 2018 Conference in Chicago. Recently published in Christ Is Our Hope Magazine was my overview of the entire event. Again, this conference was awesome, and I only wish I had had the opportunity to attend something like this when I was in college.

In any case, you can read the digital copy of the magazine here, which includes a slightly edited version of my original essay, or you can read the full version of my essay below.

Jim Caviezel at the FOCUS 2018 Conference
Disneyland is often called “The Happiest Place on Earth”. There are numerous attractions and events, lots of popular characters and famous people walking around, and probably the best part, everyone inside the park is typically extremely happy and genuinely excited to be taking in all the sights and sounds. But earlier this year, I went somewhere else much more exciting. I went somewhere where I experienced true joy and happiness, and so did 8,000 other young people who descended upon McCormick Place in downtown Chicago during the first week of January for the Fellowship of Catholic University Students’ (FOCUS) Student Leadership Summit. As the week progressed, I began to think of this place as a “Catholic Disneyland”. Obviously, that means this “version” of Disneyland was way better than the one out in California.

I use the home of Mickey Mouse to refer to this event for several reasons. First, instead of seeing people dressed up as various characters walking around, you get to see various men and women dressed in cassocks and habits. That’s not a reference to some strange Halloween party, but to all the priests, monks, and nuns seen walking around. Some of them were recognizable from TV or social media, such as Fr. Mike Schmitz from Ascension Presents, or Sister Bethany Madonna, radio personality Fr. Larry Richards, or Fr. Francis Mary from EWTN. Second, everyone who was attending this event was sincerely glad to be there. You know how certain people can infect you with their upbeat demeanor, and the positivity becomes contagious? Times that by about a thousand. The love for Jesus Christ throughout McCormick Place was palpable, and it honestly reminded me of being in a theme park as a child. But while the feeling was somewhat similar to that, it was also different. It was an encounter with the transcendent. As far as “attractions” go, the sacrament of confession was available basically on demand. Hundreds of priests, and quite a few bishops, were in attendance. Lines for confession were long and numerous, something most people wouldn’t expect from a bunch of twenty-somethings. It’s as if these young people were just naturally drawn to God’s grace, and to the spiritual healing found in the confessional.

Speaking of grace acting as a magnet, one of the most popular places at the conference was the Eucharistic Adoration chapel. The makeshift chapel was open 24/7 throughout the week, and hundreds of attendees flooded the room at any given time. Many kneeled on the uncomfortable floor as they took their petitions to our Lord. Some even lay prostrate before Him. What was really a sight to behold, and to be a part of, was when the reserved Blessed Sacrament was transferred from the Adoration Chapel to the main altar in another part of the conference center. As I was walking to where Mass would be held, I heard bells ringing below me by the escalator. I then saw many people dropping to their knees. Three servers were walking in front of a priest with the humeral veil draped over him, and the Blessed Sacrament protected inside it. The chattering around me stopped as the small procession made its way up the escalator. The acts of piety that I witnessed proved to me that there are still a number of my peers in this country that have a love for Jesus at the center of their lives.
Blessed Sacrament Procession,  Charlotte, North Carolina

And nowhere else did that love for Jesus manifest itself more than during the source and summit of our Christian life: the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Try to imagine thousands of reverent young people crowded into an arena sized room, all singing, chanting, and praying in one thunderous voice. It was inspiring. During the first Mass on Tuesday, the priests ran out of Hosts due to the demand! That is, the demand to receive the King of Kings; and on a weekday, no less! The schola at the Masses sang in an absolutely gorgeous fashion, and it was exhilarating to join in with them for the various parts of the Ordinary of the Mass. After all these Masses, the Salve Regina was chanted in Latin with the voices of thousands of millennials and Gen Z’ers joining together in unison. The experience literally gave me goosebumps. For an older generation that may have expected the youth to not cherish the traditions and liturgical language of the Latin Rite, they were clearly shown otherwise. As one of the speakers at the event, Bishop James Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln, noted, “The younger generation is open to [these traditions].” And that’s not all that these younger generations were open too.

They are also open to the truth. In one of his presentations, Dr. Jonathon Reyes, who serves as Executive Director of the Department of Justice, Peace and Human Development at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, made the following observation:
“Young people want the truth. Some may walk away from it when they hear it, but they want to make the decision. We owe them the truth in justice. The Gospel has always been hard to hear. But we continue to issue it with courage, clarity and confidence. We can’t trick them with Christianity. Compassion penetrates.”
To paraphrase one priest I know, the Gospel is composed of parts that “taste” like ice cream, and some parts like green beans. Everyone wants the ice cream, but not so much the green beans. Dr. Reyes reminds us that we if we withhold the less palatable parts of the Gospel from those young people that are seeking the truth, then we are doing them a disservice. We’re “tricking” them with only the palatable parts, and that is no way to preach the Good News. The Gospel message of Jesus must be transmitted whole and entire. Clearly, the young people at the FOCUS Conference were hungry for He Who is the Truth, the Way and the Life, and those who organized and spoke at the conference were there to equip these young men and women with the tools necessary to evangelize their peers who are so hungry for that truth.

Some of the students within FOCUS are called to go to foreign lands to do missionary work, but others are called to stay here in the United States, because let’s be honest– there’s a lot of conversion that needs to take place here in our country, and if anybody can get the ball rolling, it’s the students and young people who were gathered there in Chicago.

The urgent need to get that ball rolling was made exceptionally clear by arguably the best speaker of the entire conference, actor Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Jesus Christ in “The Passion of the Christ” and St. Luke in the upcoming movie “Paul, Apostle of Christ”. Caviezel surprised the audience during the Wednesday night keynote sessions, and had a powerful message for the young people there, letting them know that their mission (and the mission of every Catholic Christian) was vital:
“Set yourselves apart from this corrupt generation. Be saints. You weren’t made to fit in. You were born to stand out... I want you to go out to this pagan world. I want you to have the courage to step into this pagan world and shamelessly express your faith in public. The world needs proud warriors, animated by their faith. Warriors like St. Paul, and St. Luke, who risked their names, their reputations, to take their faith, their love for Jesus into the world. God is calling each one of us – each one of you – to do great things. But how often we fail to respond, dismissing it as some mental blurp. It is time for our generation now to accept that call. The call of God urging all of us to give ourselves entirely to Him. To see that gentle hand, guiding your path. But you first must make the commitment to start praying, to fast, to meditate on the Holy Scriptures, and to take the holy Sacraments seriously.”
St. Luke Painting the Madonna- Jan Gossaert
I am confident that if there was anyone in that room who was unsure of their objective, to lead souls to Christ, then Caviezel’s rousing words surely helped put the goal concretely before them. Caviezel is so right, though. He echoes the words of Jesus, that both prayer and fasting are needed at times in the life of the Christian (cf. Mk. 9:29; Mt. 17:20-21). And with the Catholic Church being mystically united to Christ, we certainly need to make time to receive the sacraments that Jesus has given to His Church to dispense. Without them, especially the Eucharist, we cannot live. By doing all those things that Caviezel mentioned, we’ll see God’s hand guiding us in our lives, and often times that hand is guiding us towards our friends and families, so that we may be the ones that lead them to encounter Christ just as the Apostles led others to encounter Him.

After leaving the FOCUS Conference, I feel like I have a new wind now. I feel emboldened to go forth and “shamelessly express” my faith in Jesus and in His Church. It’s not that I didn’t feel this way before, but the conference served as a pep talk on steroids so to speak. It was like a general gathering his troops before a battle. And that’s because we are engaged in a battle, a spiritual one. When the students and other young people left to go back to their respective homes, I’m sure that they felt better equipped to live out the Gospel. I’m also sure that they felt supported by their brothers and sisters in Christ. For many young people today, that camaraderie in the Catholic faith can be hard to come by. But if the conference proved anything, it’s that that solidarity between brothers and sisters has been made clear. It’s encouraging to know that you have many friends praying for you, and that they have your back. I know in my personal case, seeing all these young men and women at the conference made me feel like I’m not alone in this. United by our common baptism, and strengthened by each other’s prayer and sacrifice, we can certainly have the courage to go forth and do what Jesus commanded us to do: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

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