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BY BETTY SCHOENBAECHLER
Special To The Bulletin
ATLANTA--In preparation for the Great Jubilee, nearly 10,000 members of the
Legionaries of Christ and the Regnum Christi movement from Europe, North and
South America gathered for the first International Youth and Family Conference
Oct. 29-31 at the Georgia World Congress Center.
The gathering consisted of a myriad of activities ranging from the
International Friendship Games held Oct. 25-29, consisting of athletic and
academic competitions, to children’s activities, spiritual renewal and
sacramental celebrations.
Two high points of the conference were a keynote address from
Legionaries’ founder, Father Marcial Maciel, LC, and a bilingual
eucharistic celebration with Archbishop John F. Donoghue as the chief
celebrant.
The theme of the conference, “Let Your Light Shine,” was taken
from Pope John Paul II’s message to youth in St. Louis last January:
“The time for action is now. He wants you--all of you--to be the light of
the world, as only young people can be light. It is time to let your light
shine.”
Father Maciel founded the Legionaries of Christ in 1941 when he was a
20-year-old seminarian in Mexico City. He was only 16 when he first
heard God’s call to form a congregation of priests committed to building
the kingdom of Jesus Christ. In 1946, Father Maciel moved to Spain with a group
of young men and received the blessing of Pope Pius XII. Two years later, the
group gained the status of a congregation.
The Legionaries continued to grow and today are a congregation of 440
priests and approximately 2,300 seminarians worldwide, all deeply committed to
a Christ-centered existence. The stated mission of the Legionaries is “to
form a new type of lay person who is deeply conscious of the demands of his
baptismal commitment and ready to commit himself actively to serve the needs of
the Church and the world.”
Regnum Christi, which means “Kingdom of God,” is an apostolic
movement of the church founded by Father Maciel in 1949, and is closely tied to
the Legionaries of Christ. Its members, lay men and women and Religious, are
committed to daily prayer, regular spiritual direction and frequent reception
of the sacraments.
The movement’s spirituality is focused on a personal love for Jesus
Christ and its principal mission is to bring Christ’s saving and redeeming
message to others. The movement is dedicated to the solid formation of Catholic
families, and its members are involved in a wide range of apostolic works such
as missions, education, directing Catholic schools, and youth and family
pastoral programs.
This was the fourth conference since 1996 to take place in the United
States.
“Father Maciel had seen great fruits produced as a result of these
family encounters,” said Jay Dunlap, spokesperson for the congregation in
Hamden, Conn. “He started urging other countries to hold these as well and
thought that by having an international gathering, even greater fruits would be
revealed.”
One of the conference’s highlights for Regnum Christi members and the
Legionaries of Christ was listening to Father Maciel “through whom we
receive the charism of our vocation,” said Dunlap.
As Father Maciel spoke in Spanish, with Father Anthony Bannon, LC, the
national director, serving as translator, a hushed reverence filled the room,
broken only by the occasional cry of an infant or the rousing applause from an
appreciative audience.
Father Maciel urged members of Regnum Christi to recognize and accept their
gift of faith and to work to defend their church and change the world in
Jesus’ name. He also delivered several messages from the pope to
members of Regnum Christi. He began with a warning about groups that try to
undermine the church’s teachings, such as New Age philosophers who
encourage people to believe themselves gods. He also cautioned against
individuals or groups within the church that try to weaken its teachings about
the sanctity of life, divorce or even Christ himself, calling Him merely a
prophet, not the Son of God. Father Maciel said the pope urges them to protect
and defend their faith, their families and their children, and to live the
nature of Christ.
“Our faith is a gift God gives to us,” said Father Maciel.
“Therefore, we should take care of it. You and me, as believers, can see
the marvelous things that Jesus Christ has rewarded to us. We should try to
increase this faith every day. We should try to grow it and for this, the only
way is the way of prayer.”
“… If you ask Christ for faith humbly and faithfully without a
doubt, he will every day increase your faith in him,” he said.
Father Maciel shared the pope’s hope that all Catholics would
experience conversions during the Great Jubilee and come to answer their
baptismal call to bring the Gospel to others.
“The Holy Father doesn’t want us to continue to be the same type
of Catholics we have been up until now--the Catholicism that was unruffled. The
Holy Father tells us we can’t do that anymore. That type of Catholic has
to fade into the past.”
He said Catholics must become aware of the commission Jesus gave to his
apostles to preach the Gospel throughout the whole world.
“You can’t be Catholic if you don’t work for the faith.
Christ doesn’t ask you to do this, he tells you, ‘Go and
preach,’” he said.
Father Maciel urged those gathered to put their experiences at the
conference to work.
“… If you haven’t changed and don’t change, if you
don’t become an apostle to those around you, starting with your family,
then your time here has been sterile, meaning nothing. After having received
his divine message from a vicar of Christ, you cannot go back the way you
came.”
“… The Holy Father asks you to join together to defend your faith,
to save your families, to save your nation and to save your world.”
Father Maciel spoke forcefully of the need to protect the rights of women
who are valued by society only if they earn a paycheck or if they become sexual
objects to please men. Both distortions, he said, bring about violence against
women and harm families and society as a whole. While it is right and just for
women to be in the workforce, it must not be at the expense of their place at
the center of their family, he said.
“Remember that (a) woman is the greatest of God’s creations,”
he said. “The good woman has the mission given by God to be the source of
life--to form her children and to help her husband to follow the proper path to
get to God. (A) woman is made for love.”
The last point the pope wished to relay, Father Maciel said, was to
“work to form young people.”
“Teach them the Gospel and preach to them the culture of love,” he
said. “Let them know about God, teach them about Christ. They are the
future of the church.”
During the celebration of the Eucharist earlier Oct. 30, concelebrants
Bishop Louis Gelineau, retired bishop of Providence, R.I., and Bishop
Desiderius Rwoma of Tanzania joined Archbishop Donoghue on the altar. A choir
comprised of Legionaries of Christ seminarians participated in the Mass along
with a large contingent of priests who belong to the order.
In his homily, the archbishop spoke about humility. “Our Lord speaks in
today’s Gospel about one of the most difficult of all things that we are
supposed to try and be during our lives,” he said. “He speaks of
humility--of being humble--of not automatically putting yourself at the head of
the line, or of presuming that at this particular thing, you are the
best.”
Archbishop Donoghue talked about the effect of advertising slogans, such as
‘Be all that you can be,’ which put one’s self before others.
“But when Jesus says those words, ‘Love your neighbor as you love
yourselves,’ He does not mean to first treat yourself good and then
everyone else falls into place afterwards. The Lord means that you should love
your own soul--your own soul--so much, that you would never do anything to harm
the soul of another person, which is the easiest way of doing harm to your own
soul.”
Archbishop Donoghue added that people think best of themselves when they are
concentrating on doing what is best for other people.
“This is the basic attitude that Jesus Christ, the Lord whom we follow
and to whom we pledge our love and loyalty, says that we must adopt, if we are
to be like Him, and if like Him, we are to return someday to the heaven He has
planned and made for us.”
Archbishop Donoghue called Regnum Christi a vital movement within the
church. He prayed that the members would continue to grow in their love for
Christ and the church.
“May that strength, that grace which is poured into your souls by the
Father, through prayer and the Sacraments, bring to you and to your families,
every fulfillment of God’s will for you.”
Among those attending the week of sports, music, meetings and celebrations
were Regnum Christi members from Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Canada, the
United States, Italy, Spain and a representative from Uganda.
“I received a tremendous amount of strength in my faith as I witnessed
all the many people from different countries at the same Mass,” said metro
Atlanta Regnum Christi member Bruce Carlisle. “The conference really
brought home to me the uniqueness of our Catholic faith, and how you can be
anywhere in the world and hear the same Gospel and the same readings in
different languages. That gives me great strength and hope for the future of
the church and brings the whole concept of one faith to life. We are one body
of people worshipping within the same faith.”
Carlisle found it meaningful that the Holy Father would direct specific
words to the members of Regnum Christi. He said attending the conference
challenged him to “try to have more boldness in my faith and do as the
theme said--‘Let your light shine’--to really be bold in
communicating my faith and the love Christ has for every person.”
Father John Hopkins, LC, chaplain at The Donnellan School, called the
conference “a beautiful opportunity to experience the universality of the
church. This was all about loving the church and serving our church--to really
start to live out what Vatican II taught us about our baptismal call.
That includes being an apostle and carrying out what Pope John Paul
II calls the ‘new evangelization.’ We need to be apostles, to live,
not on the fringes, but to really delve into living our faith with much more
excitement, much more responsibility.”
At the conference, Father Hopkins participated in a talk for young adults,
along with Jeff Cavins, host of EWTN’s “Life on the Rock”
series.
“The person who was in charge of setting everything up for our meeting
came up to us after the presentation and said, ‘I need to become Catholic.
You have something that I want.’ I heard several stories like that
from this weekend.”
At a Mass on Oct. 31, more than 100 children, some from Pinecrest Academy in
Cumming, made their first Communion. Also 370 people joined the movement in a
special ceremony after Mass.
In the homily, Father Bannon reminded those attending the conference to take
with them the enthusiasm gathered over the weekend and not leave it at the
World Congress Center. They should be changed and ready to evangelize.
Marybel Carlisle likened being at the conference with Father Maciel to how
it might have felt to be in the presence of St. Ignatius or St. Benedict, other
founders of religious orders. She attended the founders meeting with 2,500
youth Saturday evening.
“(Father Maciel) spoke with such a beautiful spirit, taking us through
Christ’s suffering and dying on the cross,” she said. “When he
talked about Christ’s suffering, he said one line that I’ll never
forget, and that is ‘When I have suffered more than Christ suffered for
me, then I can lay down my cross and rest.’”
Carlisle was one of the many volunteers who worked with Kids Encounter, a
program geared to children ages 3-10 that occurred while their parents attended
their programs.
The Legionaries of Christ supports about 100 schools worldwide, with two in
the United States. There are also 25 affiliated schools in the United States
that receive spiritual direction and consultation from the Legion, including
Pinecrest Academy and The Donnellan School in Atlanta. Regnum Christi members
in the metro Atlanta area have weekly encounters where they come together in
small groups to study the Gospel for the upcoming week and to pray.
“What Regnum Christi has done for me is to give me the strength and
courage I need to go and make a difference for Christ,” said Carlisle.
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