A eucharistic procession through the Abbey if the Hills grounds during the JPII Vocations Camp.
By Renae Kranz
In a meeting recently, I was asked to describe the people of our diocese. I thought to myself, “That’s easy: friendly, fiercely independent, family-focused, community-minded, loyal, authentic and down-to-earth.” But of all the things that came to my mind, one thing stood out most: We have a generous spirit.
We are a people who want to help our friends and neighbors, whether that’s helping a farmer in crisis get his fields planted or calving done, or it’s helping an elderly neighbor shovel their sidewalk or get to Mass, or even just stopping for a few minutes to chat and offer encouraging words to ease the loneliness and isolation of a neighbor. We are people who care about each other.
We, as Catholics, also love our parishes and priests. We want both to flourish, and we want growing numbers of Catholics and priests in our diocese, but most of us have a hard time imagining how to accomplish that. There is a proven way.
Encounter. Encounter with friends, encounter with neighbors, encounter with strangers. But most of all, encounter with the God who made and loves us all.
Jesus’ ministry was all about encounter. He met people where they were and brought into those encounters a generous spirit ready to offer whatever was needed in the moment—love, mercy, forgiveness, listening, prayer, food, salvation. He knew everything was a gift from the Father, and his life focused on pouring every gift into the people he came to save.
Jesus showed us how to be generous in our encounters with others, and he provides us with the grace to give with a generous spirit through our gifts of prayer for each other, service to our families and neighbors, and of our treasure for the good of our parishes and communities.
Two programs in our diocese focus on encountering God through each other: Lumen Christi and vocations camps. These ministry programs, supported by dollars from the Catholic Family Sharing Appeal (CFSA), are a critical part of accomplishing what we all desire: more priests and more on-fire Catholics.
Light of Christ
Lumen Christi, the diocesan missionary formation program, is one of those places of encounter. Missionaries are formed to be effective evangelists, and they share the love of Christ they experience with the people around them through outreach, events, small group discipleship and participation in the community and life of the Church.
Hector Bautista, director of mission engagement for the diocese, is involved in recruiting, training and forming Lumen Christi missionaries. He says this program helps missionaries and the people they serve grow in their prayer lives, which in turn helps them “evangelize, catechize and disciple other people.” They’re formed on a spiritual and human level, and that has wide-ranging impact.
“The impact it has on young people discerning vocations, the impact it has on other people being exposed to the Gospel for the very first time, I think the Lumen Christi missionary program is incredible,” Hector said.
Last summer, the diocese sent out 12 missionaries who encountered over 1,500 young people. Hector has seen tremendous fruits from the program, especially for the missionaries, such as knowing how to pray with and for other people and how to develop a relationship with God through holy hours and liturgy. But that isn’t all they come away with.
“They learn how to work as a team with one another, how to engage each other and work through problems,” Hector said. “They learn real-world skills like upfront presentations and communicating with parish leaders, catechetical leaders, priests, people across the diocese. I think one of the best things is just for them to realize that, as a baptized child, they have the ability to proclaim the Gospel to other people.”
Clare Dvoracek became a Lumen Christi missionary after her freshman year of college. She was at a crossroads spiritually, realizing it was now up to her whether to “take ownership” of the faith her family passed
on to her.
“It was a very easy decision,” Clare said. “I kind of saw it as ‘this is what it means for me to be an adult in the faith.’”
She had seen in other Lumen Christi missionaries qualities she hoped to have herself as an adult Catholic, qualities like a deep life of prayer. It was clear to her that she could grow in prayer if she immersed herself into an intentional community with other Catholic young people. She also knew she wanted to pass the faith to the next generation, and Lumen Christi knew how to do that.
But giving up a summer and entrusting it to the Lord was a big deal for Clare. “These two or three months I could have my own plans, but instead, I thought, ‘I’m going to give it to you, Lord, and see what fruit you want to bring out of it.’”
Clare spent a summer as a missionary and then committed to be a year-round missionary for Lumen Christi, serving St. Mary Parish and School in Dell Rapids. She ministered to families and to kids of all ages while there and was able to really invest in their spiritual journeys, which she feels was an investment well spent.
For herself, growing in prayer was the “single most important spiritual skill that I’ve acquired, and I’m so grateful for that opportunity.” But she also learned things like how to ask good questions and how to invest in people intentionally. “That’s something that I learned as a missionary that has really changed how I approach relationships, not only my relationship with God, but also my relationship with friends and family and those most important to me.”
The generosity shown by Clare in giving of her time and herself to encounter so many people changed the trajectory of her spiritual life, her personal life and her relationships, and she is so grateful.
“It means a lot to me that the diocese invested in me in a time in my life where I was at a spiritual crossroads,” Clare said. “And I hope that the diocese continues to do this for other young adults. It shows that the diocese is truly backing Bishop’s vision to promote the growth of missionary disciples.”
Hector says that when the people of the diocese choose to give to CFSA, they’re saying “yes” to what the Lord is doing. “The Lord is on the move, and he is going after the hearts of our young people. We want to be running with God, pursuing those hearts so that people can come to know and love God, to respond to what he has for them, so that their hearts can receive those graces that are being freely poured out into them.”
Encountering God at camp
Seminarian for the diocese Ben Ulin began to say “yes” to the Lord during a JPII Camp he attended while in junior high. His mother asked him if he wanted to go, and although he didn’t know what the camp would be like, he did have a desire to invest more in his faith and meet other young men like himself. Besides having fun with the activities, he discovered something quite unexpected there: priests are also regular guys.
“I remember seeing Father Haggerty and Father Hartman just hanging out together, and they just seemed like two pals,” Ben said. “And I’m like, ‘Wait, these are normal people?’ I just thought that the priest was this guy that lived by himself all alone. He came out and he said Mass, talked to some ladies, and that was pretty much his life. But no, these were vibrant men. This was something I’d never seen before. These are regular dudes.”
During camp, Ben realized he didn’t know how to pray well, so he tried different methods as he learned them there. Some worked for him, some didn’t. In one of the talks during camp, Father Michael Kapperman told them to talk to Jesus like a trusted friend and tell him everything. Even though the Lord knows everything about your life, he wants to hear it from you.
So Ben sat in a pew during a holy hour, looked up at the Blessed Sacrament, and experienced something new. “I remember seeing the incense wrapping around the monstrance … and I remember looking up at the Blessed Sacrament and being like, ‘Lord, I don’t know if this works. I don’t know really, honestly, if you’re there or not, but if you are, here I am and I’m going to give this a try.’ And so I literally just started talking to him about my day.
“Suddenly I felt this presence in my heart,” Ben continued, “this peace and this joy and this love that entered into my heart that I never experienced before. And in that moment, I realized that the Lord was real, and he was right there in front of me and that the Lord did love me. He was looking upon me, and I started to cry, and I had no idea what to do with it. I had no idea what was going on, but in that moment, my faith, which I had known and learned about in religion class and serving and that I just knew up in my head, was a person I could come to know in my heart.”
That experience at JPII Camp changed Ben’s life. He continued to grow and explore his faith and is now a seminarian for the diocese, discerning a call to the priesthood. He has come to understand and deeply appreciate that he’s doing this for a place and for people who care about and support him.
“Having the support financially but also spiritually through prayers is just so powerful for us,” Ben said. “And specifically for me, just knowing that these people back home that I love so much are helping me and giving me the space that I need to continue to discern the Lord’s call for me.”
Father Tony Klein, vocations advocate and chaplain for Bishop O’Gorman High School, said since the JPII Vocations Camp was brought back by Father Shawn Haggerty about 10 years ago, they’ve seen many fruits. He said the 12- to 16-year-old window is a good time to plant the seeds of vocations because those kids are asking a lot of questions about why they’re here and what the purpose of life is.
Father Klein says it’s a chance “to be able to enter in and just guide them in the basics of discernment and posing the question to them that maybe God actually has a real beautiful plan for their lives.”
A couple years ago, several of the first young men from those camps entered seminary, including Ben. Now the diocese has started a camp for girls, Camp Goretti, so they can also explore what God may be calling them to, including a possible call to religious life. These camps are crucial as they offer a chance for boys and girls to experience the lives of religious sisters and priests. As Father Klein pointed out, “It’s hard to discern what you don’t know.”
One of the keys to discerning a vocation is relationships and encounters with others. “God works through prayer, through the sacraments, but he also works through people,” Father Klein said. “I think a lot of boys have been inspired by priests, and I think lots of girls that have become religious have been inspired by religious that they’ve seen living their vocations joyfully and well. To have the witness of joyful priests, joyful religious present to them just helps make what God might be calling them to as a joyful potential, not just they drew the short end of the stick.”
Provide the encounter
You can help provide the opportunities Catholics in our diocese need to encounter God, either through worship or through each other in various ministries. If you are able, give generously to the Catholic Family Sharing Appeal. If you are unable to give, pray generously for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our diocese and for the success of CFSA. May the Lord bless us with many vocations and Catholics on fire with God’s love.
Renae Kranz is the editor for the Bishop’s Bulletin and director of communications for the diocese.
