This past weekend, I helped run the Spring 2015 Men’s Christ Renews His Parish retreat weekend at my parish. Christ Renews His Parish (CRHP) is a program that is specifically meant to do what its’ name says – renew the parish. It’s a time for men (and women on a separate weekend) to come together and simply get closer to Christ and start to build a closer relationship with Him. It’s a time where we can spend some personal time with Christ, and also encounter Him through the stories and experiences of others, as well as through the community of the respective men and women we attend with. And it’s through this renewed faith and community that we do, in fact, renew the parish.
For many who attend these weekends, it has been a long time since they had sincerely spoken with Christ, and spent time with Him in prayer. For many of us, we do not know who Christ is and what our faith is all about until we attend a retreat like this. For most of us, these retreats are just the beginning – the beginning of our renewed Catholic faith and the start of a spiritual change within us. Much like with the disciples at Pentecost, these retreats can light a fire in our souls and truly transform us. This is why I love helping to lead this ministry and seeing the impact on my fellow brothers and sisters within my parish. And this past weekend was no different.
Perhaps the biggest thing I’ve ever learned from my own CRHP experience and that which I continue to experience is this one fact – I cannot do anything on my own. But I can do anything through Christ. And the way to Christ is through others – our families, our friends and our fellow parishioners.
For almost 37 years I tried to do everything on my own. I thought to myself that I need to watch out for #1 – me. No one else would watch out for me. Even though I had a great wife and son, what and who I was to be, and what I was to do, was up to me, and only me. I felt we could simply bobble from one day to the next, swatting at the flies that come our way – the distractions, trials, stresses and desires of everyday life, and that was how you get through life.
I felt that normal was in the abnormal, that life was a constant spiral, and that we just struggled to keep up. I felt that as the days and months and years went by, that this constant spiral of chaos in my life was simply how life was to be in today’s world, and the more I tried to control it, the worse it got. You could almost hear the buzzing and commotion and winds of distraction in my mind from all that was going on. But this is normal, right?
But that weekend in September 2013, I heard the record spinning in my mind screech to a halt. I realized that I could not do it on my own, that I was failing at that. And I realized the only way I could make it through life with some sense of normalcy and calm was to center my life on Christ through prayer, scripture and the sacraments. The only way I could withstand all those trials, storms and hurdles I encounter was by focusing on Christ.
For years I thought these types of retreats were for the weak. In 30 hours, I learned that I was weak, and that I needed Jesus to help me through it. Jesus says in John’s Gospel today:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for what he does, the Son will do also.”
Jesus, the Son of God, could have done anything He wanted to do. He is God. But He chose to be obedient and fully trusting of His father, and to act as His father would act. We are to act the same way, and follow Jesus as our model. Jesus was divine, but he was also one of us. Jesus was human. He set an example, and we as obedient sons and daughters need to follow His example.
We are to do this because God is so great, and He gives us things that we do not deserve, because He sent His son to fulfill the covenant that He promised us so long ago. We are to praise Him for everything. Isaiah says this today, and Psalm 145 confirms that if we call upon the Lord in true in sincerity, He is near. He is gracious and merciful.
We are nothing without God. We would not be saved were it not for Jesus. It may seem we can control our lives and that everything is in our hands, but it only seems that way. We could not be further from the truth. We may feel that spending time with Jesus in Adoration, attending daily Mass, or participating in a weekend retreat makes us weak. But you know what, we could not be closer to the truth. We are weak, it’s just most times we just don’t realize it. We think we can handle it all on our own, but we can’t. We are weak, and we need help. And we cannot live life to our fullest potential without Christ as our guide. It’s only then that we are strong.
