Michael Cheng of South Pasadena, Calif., Milagros Betances and Alicia Castro of Norwalk, Conn., and Evelyn Pacheco of Tamarac, Fla., talk June 8 at the start of the National Catholic Singles Conference in Bloomington, Minn. (CNS photo/Dave Hrbacek, The Catholic Spirit)

Catholic singles encouraged to make gift of self at national conference

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BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (CNS) — International Catholic speaker Hudson Byblow kicked off his presentation at the National Catholic Singles Conference in Bloomington with a little Star Wars Jedi wit.

He told the story of a woman who had been promised a Toyota at her job. Byblow showed on a big screen what she really got — a toy Yoda.

“Because of her expectations, she was quite disappointed,” Byblow said.

Expectations like that can lead to seeking fulfillment in the wrong places, he added.

Byblow shared a testimony of his struggles in the single life, including viewing pornography and experiencing same-sex attraction and gender identity questions. But eventually, he found purpose in Jesus Christ. Byblow, 37 and single, said he now sees his identity in making a gift of himself by being a spiritual father, in a lay sense, to others.

“Pursuing the will of God, I realized, is not about what I want. It’s about what God desires of me and how I can best serve him at this present point in my life,” Byblow told an audience of 400 gathered in the ballroom of the Hilton Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport Mall of America hotel in Bloomington.

His address was part of the 18th National Catholic Singles Conference held June 8-9. The gathering provides an opportunity for singles to engage in the faith together through presentations, prayer, the sacraments and fellowship.

Byblow, who spoke June 9, and several other speakers delivered presentations on the call to holiness for Catholics who are single.

Archbishop Bernard A. Hebda and Auxiliary Bishop Andrew H. Cozzens of St. Paul and Minneapolis presided at Masses, and adoration and confession were available throughout the weekend. Social activities preceded and followed the conference.

“For me, it’s knowing that I’m going to be around just faith- and fun-filled people, and (I’m) going to come away inspired and edified,” said Theresa Grobecker, a parishioner of St. Joseph in Troy, New York, who has been to multiple Catholic singles conferences.

“It’s a balance of fun, but yet being able to find opportunities of prayer and reflection,” she told The Catholic Spirit, the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocesan newspaper.

Inspired by the theology of the body, a collection of papal audiences by St. John Paul II, the conference began in 2005 in Denver, and various sites throughout the U.S. have hosted it since. It was held in Minnesota for the first time this year.

Anastasia Northrop founded the National Catholic Singles Conference at the request of fellow Catholic single friends.

“We need to know who we are as sons and daughters of God, and that’s really how we’re going to be able to live our singleness well,” Northrop said.

Jen Messing, the host site co-chair and a parishioner of St. Charles Borromeo in St. Anthony, Minnesota, said the conference is really about helping attendees become formed in the single life to make a gift of self in their current life stage.

“It’s kind of a unique reality of this day and age having a large population of people that are not in their (vowed) vocations and … there is not a set formula for how to work with single people,” said Messing, who runs a retreat ministry based on the theology of the body, Into the Deep.

“It became kind of an opportunity to evangelize and form singles because a lot of things in the church will often gear toward families or parenting or marriage or religious life,” she said.

Messing, who had attended multiple conferences before assuming her host role this year, said the appeal of potentially meeting another Catholic of the opposite sex offers initial appeal for attendees. However, she said it’s not a “meat market,” but rather a place for people to find deep, faith-filled friendships and grow in their faith.

Salvatore Vermiglio, 51, who has attended the conference nine times, said initially, he did expect to find his future wife across the room at the gathering.

“I’ve learned that you tamp down that expectation,” said Vermiglio, a parishioner of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles. “The expectation that you do have is that you’re going to meet friends, you’re in contact with other fellow Catholics, and if things happen, it happens.”

Once in a while, the connections lead to romantic relationships. Northrop said there have been 15 marriages between people who have met through the conference, which has drawn more than 4,000 Catholics in 13 years.

Byblow urged attendees to focus on how they can serve God now. Byblow said he realized focusing on spiritual fatherhood will prepare him to be a stronger physical father, too. He also said that women are likewise called to spiritual motherhood, and neither is “second place,” nor means marriage or another vowed vocation isn’t possible down the road, he said.

“Perhaps being where you are right now is not second place as long as holiness is your first pursuit,” Byblow said. “And just imagine how many more people might be touched by your love if you stepped into that role of spiritual fatherhood and motherhood a little more from right where we are right now, open to what God can author.”

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VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Poor people from the Amazon have shown that God's creation must be treated "not as a resource to be exploited but as a home to be preserved, with trust in God," Pope Francis said. He celebrated Mass Oct. 27 to mark the end of the Synod of Bishops for the Amazon, which brought together bishops, priests and religious, and lay men and women, including indigenous people, from the nine Amazonian countries. Synod participants, some wearing their native dress and feathered headdresses, led the procession into St. Peter's Basilica. During the offertory, an indigenous woman presented the pope with a plant. Their presence was a reminder of the pope's rebuke to a bishop who had made a derogatory comment about an indigenous man wearing his headdress at the synod's opening Mass on Oct. 6. Instead of using a crosier made of precious metals, the pope carried a carved wooden crosier that the Vatican said was a gift from the synod. During the assembly, participants described the environmental devastation and social problems caused by mining in the Amazon. Pope Francis' homily about the Gospel parable of the self-righteous Pharisee and the tax collector drew parallels to the situation in the Amazon. It also appeared to address critics who have called the synod heretical. The Pharisee was "the most pious and devout figure of the time, and the tax collector, the public sinner par excellence," Pope Francis said. But in Jesus' eyes, "the one who is good but presumptuous fails; the one who is a disaster but humble is exalted by God." The Pharisee "stands in the temple of God, but he practices another religion, the religion of 'I,' and many popular groups, Christian and Catholic, follow this path," Pope Francis said. "The drama of this man is that he is without love." In contrast, the tax collector's prayer for mercy "is born from the heart," the pope said. "To pray is to stand before God’s eyes, without illusions, excuses or justifications." Everyone is both Pharisee and tax collector, the pope said. "We are a bit tax collectors because we are sinners, and a bit Pharisees because we are … masters of the art of self-justification." The Pharisee's attitude is apparent in "those who are prominent" considering others to be "backward and of little worth, despise their traditions, erase their history, occupy their lands, and usurp their goods," he added. The pope's words echoed the accounts of indigenous observers at the synod, who described a history of plundering of timber, rubber, minerals and other natural resources in the Amazon. That rapaciousness has displaced people from their land and spurred violence, including human trafficking and the murder of people who try to defend their territories. "In this synod we have had the grace of listening to the voices of the poor and reflecting on the precariousness of their lives," Pope Francis said. The "scarred face of the Amazon region," he said, shows that past experience has not been enough "to stop the plundering of other persons and the inflicting of wounds on our brothers and sisters and on our sister earth." The pope's language throughout the synod has echoed the words of his namesake, St. Francis, who praised God through his brothers, wind and air, and his sister, Mother Earth. Nevertheless, the gathering was sharply criticized by some Catholic groups that claimed it was heretical. The critics, who were active on social media during the synod, also claimed that a carved image of a pregnant indigenous woman that was used during some prayer services was a pagan idol. Pope Francis urged his listeners to reflect on "whether we, too, may think that someone is inferior and can be tossed aside, even if only in our words." "Self-worship carries on hypocritically with its rites and 'prayers,'" the pope said, adding that many people who fall into self-worship "profess to be Catholics, but have forgotten to be Christians and human beings, forgetting the true worship of God, which is always expressed in love of one's neighbor." Calling the poor "the gatekeepers of heaven," he said, "they were not considered bosses in this life. They did not put themselves ahead of others. They had their wealth in God alone. These persons are living icons of Christian prophecy." The pope paused during his homily to acknowledge the presence of "the poorest people of our most developed societies, the sick from the L'Arche Community," who were seated in the front rows in the basilica. He encouraged his listeners to "associate with the poor, to remind ourselves that we are poor, to remind ourselves that the salvation of God operates only in an atmosphere of interior poverty." "Let us pray for the grace to be able to listen to the cry of the poor," Pope Francis said. "This is the cry of hope of the church."

Christians must shun self-worship, pope says at synod’s final Mass

Posted by - November 2, 2019 0
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Poor people from the Amazon have shown that God’s creation must be treated “not as a…