February 26, 2010
Source and Summit 2010
Participants reminded ‘everything comes from the Mass’
Erica Seibert, above holding microphone, leads a decade of the rosary during the 2010 Source and Summit weekend. This year’s speakers reminded the 600 young adults and chaperones that “everything comes from the Mass,” said Gail Shetler, director of the weekend. (Message photo by Mary Ann Hughes) Click for a larger version.
By MARY ANN HUGHES (Message staff writer)
“Every Mass is a gate into heaven,” said Gail Shetler as she talked about the central message at this year’s Source and Summit weekend.
She’s the director of the weekend, and this year’s speakers reminded the 600 young adults and chaperones that “everything comes from the Mass.”
The weekend included Sunday Mass with Bishop Gerald A. Gettelfinger, rosaries, Eucharistic adoration, the Chaplet of the Divine Mercy, talks, music, time for Confession, a Eucharistic prayer service — and games for the young adults.
Eucharistic Adoration has traditionally been a major part of the Source and Summit weekends. This year, the participants were reminded that “we have Adoration to thank God for Mass.”
There was also ample time for confession, and the response was “overwhelming” Shetler said. A Franciscan friar told her that he had “never seen a response like this one.”
The weekend had an “intense focus on the Mass,” she said, “explaining that the Mass is our doorway to heaven, that the Eucharist isn’t just a symbol and the Mass a stage to remember an event that is passed, but the sacred ground that Calvary won for us to be with God, our loved ones and the Body of Christ.”
During the weekend, a letter was read from Carmelite Sister Mary Benedicta of the Eucharist Engelland. She reminded the participants that “at the Holy Mass, the one event of Calvary is made present. There is only one Mass, and it transcends time and space, uniting us with the angels and saints in heaven, as well as our loved ones and all our brothers and sisters in Christ who may be physically far away.
“As the priest prays in Eucharistic Prayer III, ‘Father, unite all your children, wherever they may be.’” She said one of her friends “says to her mother when they part, ‘See you at Mass!’ because it is the same Mass no matter where you are.
“Another friend and I tell each other, ‘See you at Adoration!’ It is the same Jesus wherever you may be!”
That awareness of the connection to the Communion of Saints was especially eye-opening for one young participant who said she hadn’t talked with her sister in a long time. “We thought she meant a feud, and then she said her sister had died two years ago. She realized the actual connection with the Communion of Saints during Mass.”
Barb Brown, a parishioner at Our Lady of Hope Church in Washington, said the weekend offered a “renewed awareness of Christ’s presence,” and a focus on “entering into the Mass and participating in it.”
She thought it was “wonderful” that so many young adults from all around the Diocese of Evansville “want to spend this time with God.”
She compared the experience to the Gospel story of the woman who touched the cloak of Jesus and was healed. “That’s the experience here. It helps all the participants to open their hearts and minds and listen to God.”
During the weekend, a letter was also read from Sister John Mary Read, a Passionist nun originally from Elberfeld now living in the Diocese of Owensboro.
She wrote, “When I was in high school I was clueless abut the meaning of the Mass or that Jesus was really and truly present in the Eucharist.”
That changed when she turned 18 and the “grace and mercy of God touched me in a profound way. I learned that Jesus Christ was really present in the Eucharist and was in a perpetual state of self-donating love. I couldn’t spend enough time with him! I began to go to daily Mass and would also try to spend quiet time before the Eucharist daily.
“Jesus was calling me to a deep relationship with Himself. I just wanted to know Jesus, study Jesus, serve Jesus in whatever way He wanted me to serve him.”
She wrote, “I was open to a religious vocation or marriage. I just wanted to do God’s will. But I never thought God would call me to be a cloistered nun. Well, He did call me to be a cloistered nun — what joy!”
She reminded the participants that they were “in the Presence of the All Holy God,” and asked, “How are you going to respond to his radical love?”
During the weekend, there were also programs for the parents of the participants. Christ the King parishioner Kathy Hubert said those programs “allowed me to put on the brakes and spend all my time with Christ. During the week, I spend a few minutes here and a few minutes there, which don’t total up at all.”
The weekend made her feel “like we are basking in the S-O-N. The speakers are the rays of light, they are the rays of the S-O-N. They are as warm as the sunshine.”
She added, “I didn’t want my kids to go through this — hours and hours of being exposed to Christ — and me as a mother not be there to share it with them.”
Now, as a family “we can say ‘remember when?’”