‘Change the World by Changing Hearts,’ Bishop Caggiano Says in Keynote Address
Young and old, clergy and religious, cradle Catholics and new converts, married couples, teens and children – they all came together as one family of faith for the Diocese’s BEHOLD! conference on Saturday, October 18, an inaugural endeavor to invite generations of faithful into a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.
Among keynote presentations, service projects, food trucks, yard games, an outdoor concert, Adoration and Mass, attendees made connections at the intergenerational event, held at Holy Name of Jesus Parish in Harrisburg. Themes of the day focused on goodness, hope, community, vocation and holiness – woven throughout the presentations, prayer times, music and camaraderie that encapsulated the day.
“We want this to be a memorable moment in the lives of our Diocesan community; a moment where the faithful pause to listen for the whisper of Christ in their hearts and hold on to that sense of God among them,” said Melissa Maleski, Diocesan Director of Laity and Family.
Keynote speaker Bishop Frank Caggiano of the Diocese of Bridgeport opened the daylong event with his presentation, “What Does Goodness Have to Do with It?”
“Goodness is essential to who we are as followers of our Savior and Redeemer, but it’s also what we are made for,” he said.
The bishop, host of the podcast “Let Me Be Frank,” said goodness is more than following the directive to “Be good, or else” – one that his father often employed when the current bishop was a child growing up in Brooklyn.
“Goodness was clear: do what I was told by my teachers, by my principal, by my coaches, by my neighbors, by my aunts and uncles, by the priests of the parish. They knew how I was to live, and my job was to do what I was told,” he said.
“But we eventually began to realize that being good because our parents told us to was not sufficient. We began to realize that goodness needed to be chosen freely to be able to not be simply compelled but to be impelled to do what we knew and learned was good and true, and what we knew in our hearts our Lord was asking of us – not out of fear, but something more than that,” he said.
“Goodness is choosing to do the things demanded by our faith in Jesus Christ, demanded out of love, not out of fear. It is to make our faith real,” he said.
Our acts of goodness are uniquely Christian because we do them for Jesus, the bishop said.
“When we do acts of goodness for our neighbor, we are doing them for Jesus Christ. What makes our acts of goodness uniquely Christian is why we do them. We do them for the love of Jesus Christ. We do them all for Him. The rest of the world may do it for another reason, but we stand differently,” he remarked.
“If we’re not willing to be good, to act in goodness, to love freely, to stand for the truth, to have our hearts burn with desire for the things that matter – ultimately Jesus Himself – if we’re not willing to pay the price, then our faith is morbid. But we are called to life,” Bishop Caggiano said.
He spoke of the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, telling the congregation they are “the guardrails of a Christian life.”
“With them, we can accept the grace of the Holy Spirit, faith in Jesus Christ, the knowledge of the truth He has given us through right reason, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the passion and fire of our hearts to go out and do what the Lord asks. With faith, hope and love, we change the world by changing hearts one at a time,” Bishop Caggiano said.
Spirituality, Resilience and Hope
Concurrent break-out sessions for men, women, married couples, teens and children were offered at BEHOLD! to give each group workshops and presentations geared toward their stage and vocation in life.
Damon and Melanie Owens, founders of Joyful Ever After, a Catholic ministry that renews and transforms marriages, presented two workshops for married couples, with talks on “Getting the Marriage You Want from the Marriage You Have” and “Forging Deeper Family Bonds.”
Their first break-out delved into the four temperaments – sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic – and how they reveal strategies for couples to grow in holiness and intimacy.
“The real key to unlocking intimacy is discovering the temperament of your spouse,” said Damon, the first executive director of the Theology of the Body Institute. “Each of those temperaments in relation to one another have to be first understood, then they need to honored. Reframing your differences will make a difference for one another in your marriage.”
“When you start to understand your natural disposition to react to stimuli or situations, you start to change the way that you grace yourself. The foundation of temperance is being able to recognize your natural strengths and your natural weakness in terms of virtue. As you grow in the virtues, you’ll see the immediate impact it has on yourself, your marriage and your spouse,” Damon said. He and his wife encouraged couples to visit their website to take the temperaments assessment.
Break-out sessions for men and for women focused on resilience, hope, spirituality and creation.
Michael Thomas Guidice, co-founder of The Catholic Land Movement, connected the vocations of marriage and fatherhood to a special responsibility to family, community and the larger social order in his presentation for men. He also spoke of the relationship between land, people and God and the responsibility to live these relationships with virtue.
Crystal Noel, Diocesan Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Schools, shared a personal testimony in “Called to Communion: Freely and Fully Yours.” In her story of resilience and growth by walking in faith, Noel shared that “life is full of support and light when you place your trust in Him.”
Afternoon sessions by Haley Stewart, editor of Word on Fire Votive, and Anne Kertz Kernion, retreat leader and founder of Cards by Anne, addressed the virtue of hope and the spirituality of happiness.
Stewart fused moral philosophy, fairy tales and poems with a personal story of loss and pain to speak about the virtue of hope.
“Hope isn’t just wishful or positive thinking…. Suffering exists, catastrophes exist. What does it mean to hope in a world where there is darkness? Hope points us down our path to our destination as pilgrims on the road to heaven. Hope moves us toward that goal,” she said.
“It’s easy to envision how things can go wrong in life, but we don’t know the miraculous ways God will untangle those knots. We don’t know the redemption that is ahead,” Stewart said. “But we do know the final chapter is not one of despair; the Resurrection follows the crucifixion.”
In a presentation on the spirituality and science of happiness, Kertz Kernion explored the activities and dimensions of happiness and how to incorporate them into daily life.
Nature walks, breathing techniques, proper nutrition and acts of kindness are ways to keep stress at bay, she said.
She pointed out that 90 percent of our unhappiness is due to stress. “When we’re under stress, we don’t always make good decisions,” she said.
Kertz Kernion spoke of the practice of gratitude, which results in happiness, strengthens our bodies, enhances our sleep and increases our resilience.
“Relationships are at the heart of happy people,” she said, remarking that serving others is one of the best ways to boost mood.
Sent on a Mission
Between sessions, people of all ages enjoyed outdoor lunch and dinner, spent time in Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and perused vendors selling faith-based items and sharing information about vocations, Scouting, music ministry and Catholic Charities.
Activities hummed along seamlessly, from the hospitable Knights of Columbus who guided attendees throughout the today and members of the Secretariat for Catholic Life and Evangelization who served lunch, to the One Voice Youth Ministry, which hosted a service project packing shirts, socks and underwear for the homeless in Lancaster.
A relic of Blessed Stanley Rother, the first American-born martyr, was venerated throughout the day. Blessed Stanley Rother was killed as a missionary priest in Guatemala in 1981. The relic, brought to the conference in collaboration with the National Shrine Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes and the Harrisburg Serra Club, was a piece of his rib.
Before the conference’s culmination with an outdoor concert by the Scally Brothers, participants re-assembled from their various break-out sessions for the celebration of Holy Mass.
In his homily, Bishop Timothy Senior encouraged the congregation to ask Jesus to deepen their faith.
“That’s what BEHOLD! is about, to reflect on deepening our faith – not alone as individuals, but as a community,” he said.
“The Word of God helps us reflect on that ongoing formation,” the bishop said. “It sends us on a mission.”
Still, we cannot be lone rangers on our faith journey; we need our brothers and sisters to hold us up and encourage us the faith, he said, reflecting on the Mass’ first reading (Exodus 17:8-13) in which Aaron and Hur hold Moses’ arms up when he tires in Israel’s fight against Amalek.
“We are all growing in our faith. We do need those people in our lives to hold us up,” Bishop Senior said.
“It is a great joy to gather as a family of faith here in the Diocese of Harrisburg,” he said, reiterating his gratitude to everyone involved in the vision, creativity and planning of the conference.
(Photos by Chris Heisey, Rachel Bryson and Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness.)
By Jen Reed, The Catholic Witness
