Phil’s Notes & Tidbits

Perhaps you’ll forgive me for writing about our Confirmation candidates for a 3^rd straight week.  The young people continue to inspire and it certainly seems appropriate to celebrate the strength and beauty of their faith.  As I mentioned last week, the students took an exam to help demonstrate their readiness for confirmation.  One part of the exam asks why they want to be confirmed and if they are ready. Here is what one young lady wrote: 

“I want to be confirmed in the Catholic Church because I want to receive the Holy Spirit.  I don’t want the pool of the church and our faith to be something I just dip my feet in.  I want it to be something I walk up to blindfolded in trust and dive into, head first….I will be the Church’s disciple and witness by Not being afraid to let others know my faith, by spreading the faith, and by loving the faith, because the faith isn’t just part of me, it can’t be, because MY FAITH IS WHO I AM.”  

            Isn’t that amazing?  In the first class I have with the candidates, we talk about being “open to the Holy Spirit and God.”  In other words, what is their disposition?  Every year I watch the young people be confirmed by the bishop.  As I watch the students’ faces, some literally shed tears of joy at this encounter with God, while others appear to be doing little more than going through the motions.  Indeed, all of them are confirmed, but some are more affected then others.  As I tell the students, “God will fill you to the extent that you allow yourself to be filled.”  If your heart is wide open to the Holy Spirit, He will completely fill you.  If your heart is only a little open, well He will fill you up only a little bit.  God is Love and love cannot be forced or compelled.  God gives His love, but we must then receive and accept it.  The more open the students are, the more they will be affected and changed.  Throughout their preparation, they’ve been encouraged to pray for just this openness to the Holy Spirit in their daily prayers. 

            From what I’ve observed, including the young woman’s words above, these young people have taken that counsel to heart!

Finally, I just finished correcting their exams, the average exam score for the students was a robust 92%.  May God continue to bless and guide these precious young people!

                        God bless you!

                        Phil Lawson

                        Director of Catechesis & Evangelization

Phil’s Notes & Tidbits

                         “A very special group of young people” 

             That’s what I wrote in my letter to Bishop Callahan as I mailed the Confirmation Candidates letters to him last week.  Of course, I’m guilty of saying such things every year about our young people, nonetheless it’s true.  J  I am regularly touched by the goodness, sincerity and earnestness with which our young people prepare for Confirmation; and this year’s group in particular.  Allow me to share a few examples of what I mean.  A good number of the young people took it upon themselves to spend time in Eucharistic Adoration, asking the Lord to open their hearts to receive the Holy Spirit.  In fact, two of our young ladies took the 5:00AM shift on Thursday mornings with their Mom and Grandma over the summer!  Amazingly, of our 10 boys being confirmed, 7 are altar servers.   And another one is an usher on Sunday mornings. 

            The Confirmation candidates are asked to do a service project that demonstrates their love of God and neighbor.  The projects ranged from helping at the parish picnic, to helping with Vacation Bible School, to spending time at the area nursing homes, volunteering with Operation Bootstrap, to helping elderly neighbors.  As one of the students wrote, “volunteering a lot now will become a habit for me so when I get older and get to make decisions I’ll make the decision to help in any way I can.” 

            The candidates for Confirmation select a saint name as well.  They are asked to pray about and research which saint to choose.  In particular, they look for a saint they can identify with.  The saints after all are our role models or heroes.  They’ve made it through this life and are now where we hope to someday be, Heaven.  In addition, we know the saints are praying for us.  Two of our young men chose St. Thomas Aquinas for his wisdom, but also identifying with his shy and quiet nature.  One young lady chose a saint I had never heard of before, St. Osanna Andreasi, who lived in Italy in the 1400’s.  She stated that she wants to be as dedicated to a life of prayer and faith as Saint Andreasi was.  One young man chose St. Maximilian Kolbe, both for his remarkable faith, but also because Kolbe went to the same concentration camp as this boy’s grandfather.  I wish all of you could read the stories behind our young people’s saint name choices.  They are that impressive.

            Finally, as St. Peter says, we must “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope.” (1 Peter 3:15).  The young people take an examination so that they can show they know the faith they are about to embrace at Confirmation.  If they don’t know it, they won’t keep it when they’re older or be able to share it with others.  That exam took place during this past Wednesday’s class. Based on the deep faith they’ve demonstrated already, I’m confident they all did very well.  

                        God bless you!

                        Phil Lawson

                        Director of Catechesis & Evangelization

“I felt real

The Retreat concludes with Adoration, Confessions & Mass

peace”

This was written by one of our Confirmation candidates at the end of last weekend’s retreat.  We have the young people anonymously write down their comments to give us a sense of their reactions to the retreat as well as helping us to improve it from year to year.

The Confirmation retreat begins Friday evening and concludes Saturday night. It’s held at the Rosholt Lions Camp.  The retreat includes a mix of prayer, presentations, and both physical activity and fun.  This year, having been blessed with beautiful weather, we spent a lot of time outdoors.  In fact, the boys took a late night Rosary walk Friday evening.   A big focus of the retreat is what it means to be a Man or Woman of God. How does this faith that they are claiming manifest itself as they become adults?   Toward that end, we were once again blessed with some amazing retreat leaders, specifically Jeff Leslie, Forrest Schey, Patrick Burkhart and myself for the boys and Angel Gebeau, Mary Roe, Elizabeth Glodowski, Emily Gollmer, and Kris Zdroik for the girls.

As the young people are preparing to receive the Holy Spirit, we also talk about vocations and how one discerns where God is calling them, be it priesthood, religious life, marriage, or the single life.   I regularly draw some our retreat leaders from our college-age DTS group, as these faithful young men and women are in the process of discerning where God is calling them.  Not being that much older than our Confirmation candidates, they make great role models and witnesses.

Finally, the retreat ends with Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, confession and Mass Saturday night.

I’ll close with one of the other evaluation comments:

“I definitely feel closer to God.  This retreat made my relationship with God really grow. It was a great experience.” Please keep these precious young men and women in your prayers as they prepare to be confirmed Oct. 30^th!

God bless you!

Phil Lawson

Director of Catechesis & Evangelization

Phil’s Notes & Tidbits

            My students are quite familiar with my “tidbits”, little news items about the faith that I come across and use as teaching tools.  There’s a news organization called Zenit www.zenit.org which serves as a type of clearing house of Catholic news, especially from the Vatican.  They translate and publish all the Pope’s messages and addresses.  This is then sent out as a free daily email. 

            Some news of interest lately:

-Pope Benedict recently sent birthday greetings to Sister Teresita, a 104 year old Spanish Cistercian on Sept. 16^th.   Sister Teresita has been a cloistered religious for 85 years, the longest recorded in history.  In fact, she has only left the convent twice, once during the tragic events of the Spanish Civil War, and the second when Pope Benedict came to Madrid this summer for World Youth Day and made a point of visiting her.  In his birthday card to her, the Pope recalled their meeting this past summer and encouraged her to, “continue firm in the Heart of Christ, being an ardent lamp of faith, hope and charity, and thus show the world that the fullness of life consists in joyfully fulfilling the will of God.”  Amen to that! 

-Ahead of Pope Benedict’s recent visit to Germany, two publishers sought to collect all the formal material he’d written in his life.  The exhibit came to 600 Volumes of the various language editions that Pope Benedict and previously Joseph Ratzinger had written.  Benedict stated “I am moved and slightly astounded to see the amount of books I have created.  My hope is that the words they contain may not just come and go, but that they help men and women to find their way.”

-And finally, a grim reminder of the persecutions that continue against Christians and the Church.  In mid-September, Fr. Gualberto Arrieta was killed in Columbia.  Father was known for his service to the poor. He is the 6^th priest to be killed in Columbia this year.  Fr. Arrieta was 34 years old and had been ordained only 2 years.  Unfortunately, violence against the Church is not unusual in Columbia.  Since 1984, 2 bishops, 79 priests, 8 religious, and 3 seminarians have been killed in Columbia.   

                        God bless you!

                        Phil Lawson

                        Director of Catechesis & Evangelization

Phil’s Notes & Tidbits

            It was during my college years that I first fell in love with the Bible.  A youth minister had challenged us to read the entire Bible.  He stated that a person could read the entire Bible in a year by reading around 3 chapters a night.  Since the chapters are short, it was a commitment of around 15 min a day.  I decided to give it a shot and completed the journey in a bit over a year.  Perhaps not coincidentally, I became a Catholic in the process.   (I had been a non-denominational Christian at that time).  I, like many other converts and reverts, brought my love of the Scriptures with me and I’ve been teaching the Bible in various forums ever since.  In fact, I remember asking the priest who had received me in to the Catholic Church whether it was alright for me to lead a Bible study in the parish.  He smiled, laughed, and nodded.  Sure enough a few weeks later I was leading a Bible study after Sunday Mass. 

            The Church is calling on us to read the Bible regularly.  “The Church ‘forcefully and specifically exhorts all the Christian faithful…to learn the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, by frequent reading of the divine Scriptures.’”   (Catechism of the Catholic Church #133).  The passage goes on to quote St. Jerome who famously translated the whole Bible in the 300’s as saying, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” 

Pope Benedict, offering a reflection on an ancient writer in the Church, Origen of Alexandria, mentioned that the privileged place to encounter God is by falling in love with him, specifically through prayerful reading of Scripture.  

            We’ll be looking to do just that beginning this Tuesday evening, Oct. 4^th  at 7PM in Kolbe Hall.   All are welcome to join! 

God bless you!

                        Phil Lawson

                        Director of Catechesis & Evangelization

One of the great joys of my position at St. Peter’s is witnessing and then celebrating our parishioners’ faith.  Last week I had the privilege of writing about our newest Leader of Prayer, Shirley Wanserski, and looking forward to our deacon candidate, Ray Heitzinger’s ordination date next year.   This week, with the start of the new school year, I want to highlight the amazing group of catechists St. Peter’s has produced.  

            The new REP Year began with Mass on Sept. 7^th celebrated by Fr. Joseph.  Following Mass, the students and parents got to meet their teachers and classes. 

            This year’s group of teachers includes, Mrs. Janine Worzella teaching Grade 1, now in her 2^nd year and has two of her own children in the program.  Mrs. Worzella is assisted by Miss Evelyn Frost who is a junior at SPASH.   Grade 2 is lead by Mrs. Eve Krueger, who is beginning her 15^th year preparing the children for 1^st Holy Communion and Reconciliation.  Mrs. Krueger is assisted by Miss Echo Terry who is a sophomore at SPASH.  Grade 3 is lead by Miss Christine Sommers and Miss Linnea Nordberg both 12^th grade homeschoolers.    Grade 4 is lead by Mrs. Theresa Belsha, in her 4^th year teaching, with 2 children in the SPACS system.  Mrs. Belsha is assisted by Miss Ashly Raether who is an 11^th grader at SPASH.  Grade 5 is lead by Mrs. Orsolya Gosztony, in her 2^nd year with us.  She was a former DRE at a parish in New York before moving to Stevens Point.  Mrs. Gosztony is assisted by Mr. Eddie Bernas who is a senior at Pacelli. 

Grade 6 is lead by Mrs. Angel Gebeau, now in her 10^th year teaching.  She is assisted by Miss Ivy Engwall, an 11^th grade homeschooler.  Grade 7 is lead by Mr. Kyle Rosenthal and Mr. Forrest Schey, both longtime parishioners, altar boys and now freshman at UWSP.   Grade 8 is lead by Mrs. Colleen Buss, another former DRE, now in her 11^th year teaching at St. Peter’s.  She is assisted by Mr. Fred Simons, our longest serving catechist in his 20^th year.  The 9^th grade Confirmation class is lead by myself, Mr. Phil Lawson, with assistance from Mr. Jim Traynor, now in his 7^th year and Mr. Patrick Burkhart, our music director and director of the youth apostolate.  Special mention also goes to Mrs. Ketura Frost who runs the REP Office on Wednesday evenings.  

            As you can see, we have a tremendous group of catechists, who come from a delightful cross-section of the parish.  Our parish children are incredibly blessed to have such dedicated and faithful models of Christian living!  And it’s something the whole parish can take great pride in. 

God bless you!

                        Phil Lawson

                        Director of Catechesis & Evangelization

            Phil’s Notes & Tidbits

            Congratulations to our own Shirley Wanserski, who was commissioned as a Leader of Prayer for the Diocese of LaCrosse by Bishop Callahan on September 17^th in LaCrosse.  The Diocesan Leader of Prayer Program was created so that lay persons are prepared and commissioned to serve their parishes by bringing Holy Communion to the sick; conducting a Liturgy of the Word, possibly with distribution of Communion, on weekdays when a priest is unavailable (or on Sunday in an emergency); and by leading parishioners in prayer at times of illness or death.  Previously, Shirley completed the 2 year Lay Formation Institute for the Diocese and felt called to continue on to this next step.  Shirley joins, Gary Glodoski, Ray Heitzinger, Phil Lawson, Lorraine Studinski and Bill Maher as Leaders of Prayer at St. Peter’s.   Congratulations again Shirley and thank you for responding to God’s promptings! 

            In other exciting news, our own Ray Heitzinger has a tentative date for his ordination to the diaconate next year!  His ordination by Bishop Callahan is scheduled for October 27^th, 2012.  Please keep him in your prayers as he completes his 5^th and final year of formation—which God-willing will lead to his ordination next fall! 

            Finally, I had mentioned in passing that I’m teaching a Survey & Theology of the Bible course to our junior high and high school students.  A number of requests quickly popped up from adults (and our college DTS group) seeking the same thing.  So beginning Tuesday, Oct. 4^th, I’ll be offering a weekly parish Bible Study in Kolbe Hall at 7PM.   We’ll do a survey of the entire Bible over the course of the year.  This will be my 3^rd time leading this course and it’s something I certainly enjoy!  And whether we have 10 participants or 50 it’s always fruitful to spend time in the Word of God!  If you have any questions, feel free to call or send me an email. 

God bless you!

                        Phil Lawson

                        Director of Catechesis & Evangelization

“I want to be a teaching sister like Sr. Rose Anthony.” This was the comment from 8 year old Chloe after spending some time with my sister-in-law, Sr. Rose Anthony, OP at the summer open house our family hosted with her. Another young girl, about 6 years old went up to Sr. Rose Anthony and informed her that she had already chosen a religious name for when she eventually entered the convent! She had been exposed to the Nashville Dominicans before her family moved to Stevens Point, and wanted to be just like those sisters. Some 30 people stopped by that day to spend a little time visiting with Sister, including a fair number of young ladies.
I came across this great reflection from a Cleveland priest and seminary professor, Fr. Damian Ference:

“The inspiration to consider a vocation rarely comes from vocation literature; it comes from real people living out their vocations in the real world. In order to know what it means to be a good family, a good priest, a good religious, and a good Catholic, one needs to have living, breathing examples of each. I would have never considered the priesthood if I had not known some great priests as I was growing up; the seminarians I teach continue to tell the same story about their call. Disciples beget disciples – good marriages beget good marriages, good religious beget good religious, good priests beget good priests, and good Catholics beget good Catholics. When discipleship is modeled well, it becomes an invitation for others to become disciples themselves.”

We thank God for the joy-filled sisters (including our own Sr. Michelle!) we have encountered, the holy priests who have touched our lives, and the faith-filled marriages present in our parish—all of the above living there discipleship in Christ fully. And when our young people are exposed to these examples, no doubt the vocations will follow and flourish.
God bless you!
Phil Lawson
Director of Catechesis & Evangelization