Something New

This past week I've spent in Boston at a youth ministry training conference. I had the chance to take a step back from my day-to-day grind, from the demands of leadership, and relax while networking, pooling resources, and gaining some new insights for the youth ministry at my parish. More than any of those things, the past few days have been a radical experience for me on a personal level, and I want to share some of that.

I had what you might call my 'conversion' at a Steubenville Youth Conference in 2000 the summer before starting high school. Something really radical happened in my heart that night. Not only did I have a crazy-intense experience of Jesus for what seemed like the first time in my life (at least the first time I was aware of it), but I truly believe that I received an infusion of the theological virtue of faith. From that night forward, my heart resonated with everything about the Catholic Faith. Reading the Catechism, learning about what our Church teaches, was like having my soul struck like a tuning fork, resounding. There has never been a single iota of doctrine that my heart has struggled at all to believe is true. I can attest to this from my years at Franciscan University studying theology and catechetics - when I passed the Catechism Exam without studying, another friend in the program rolled his eyes and said, "Of course you did, you ARE the Catechism!". Ha ha.

So the last nine years of my life have been diving about into that, learning as much as I can about how to articulate the Catholic faith and explore its infinite caverns. I came to know the love of Christ and believe it, following Him even to Franciscan University and (now) into the field of youth ministry. But I have a confession to make: it has not been enough. In spite of that gift, I have been really struggling the past few years with expecting too little from God. In the depths of my heart, at a level that I'm not sure I've ever been able to translate into words, I had accepted the idea that although Jesus forgave me and loved me, that the things I struggled with, my past hurts, were just my burden to bear and suffer with forever. I was living like God wasn't going to do anything new for me, that although this vision of life's meaning was the most beautiful truth I'd ever encountered, that it's promises just weren't going to be true for me.

Maybe some of your can relate to this: having gone to so many conferences, retreats, classes, on top of a lifetime of Mass attendance, it can start to feel like you've heard it all, like there's nothing new? What I've experienced in the past few days I really believe is an entirely new phase of my life beginning, a deeper conversion to the Lord than I've ever known before (I cannot even begin to convey how much joy it brings to my heart to be able to say that!) Even when the content is great, so often I have gotten to the end of a homily, a talk, a healing service, and been disapointed because it seemed like none of it had been for me. In the past couple of days though, there's been a crazy outpouring of messages and moments where I've just been wrecked with the knowledge that it was a gift just for me, words meant for me! Jesus broke dramatically into me saying, "Behold, I am doing something new!" and really transforming, changing, HEALING me. The closest way I can come to capturing it is that I now have a radical infusion of the theological virtue of hope, to such a degree that I think it may even take another decade to unpack all of it.

Praise the One who makes all things new!