Madison Diocese offer Youth 2000 retreat for young Catholics

The Youth 2000 retreat, held for the third time in the Diocese of Madison, drew a smaller group of youth and young adults than previous years, but the reaction to the weekend of Eucharistic Adoration, Mass, Reconciliation, and talks on the faith remained high.

Previous retreats had brought in several hundred youth, and the numbers this time only hit 75 youth and about 50 adults, but Lindsay Becher, coordinator of youth and young adult ministry for the Diocese of Madison Office of Evangelization and Catechesis, said that it didn’t seem to affect the personal experience of the youth.

“I heard from some of the kids that the smaller numbers made the experience different,” she acknowledged. But overall, she said, the reactions were positive and on Sunday during the closing of the retreat many of the youth stood up to share the fact that they had been to a retreat before and still had a deepening of their faith during this retreat.

continue at MadCatHerald 

photos courtesy of Kat Wagner at Smugmug

St. Peter Julian Eymard, ora pro nobis!

In the providence of God, different saints are raised up by Him in different periods of history to provide the world with solutions to the deepest problems of their age. The deepest problem of the modern age is alienation from God. Call it separation from God or indifference to God; call it unawareness of God or disinterest in God. By whatever name, in so-called developed countries of the Western world, God has been replaced by Self as the focus of attention and, I would not hesitate to say, adoration.

That is why an unlikely saint like St. Peter Julian Eymard should have arisen to alert the world that the Incarnate God is in our midst in what we may casually call the Blessed Sacrament.

 -Fr John Hardon

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St. Alphonsus Liguori, Doctor of the Church, ora pro nobis!

 "Know also that you will probably gain more by praying fifteen minutes before the Blessed Sacrament than by all the other spiritual exercises of the day. True, Our Lord hears our prayers anywhere, for He has made the promise, 'Ask, and you shall receive,' but He has revealed to His servants that those who visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament will obtain a more abundant measure of grace."

"Certainly amongst all devotions, after that of receiving the sacraments, that of adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament holds first place, is most pleasing to God, and most useful to ourselves. Do not then, O devout soul, refuse to begin this devotion; and forsaking the conversation of men, dwell each day, from this time forward, for at least half or quarter of an hour, in some church, in the presence of Jesus Christ under the sacramental species. Taste and see how sweet is the Lord."

"The sovereigns of the earth do not always grant audience readily; on the contrary, the King of Heaven, hidden under the eucharistic veils, is ready to receive anyone…"

- St. Alphonsus Liguori

It also happens to be the 8th anniversary of Bishop Morlino’s installation as 4th bishop of Madison.

PS> Is anybody else worried Bp. Morlino might go to the vacancy in Denver?