Confirmation Youth Day in Oklahoma
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February 2, 2022I arrived in Madill, OK on December 6 to take the place of a pastor for seven weeks while he visits his family in Nigeria. During my first weeks here, we celebrated the feasts of Immaculate Conception and Our Lady of Guadalupe, followed by the Posadas and Christmas celebrations. The parishes of Madill and Marietta are predominantly made up of Hispanic parishioners. This is “little Mexico Oklahoma.”
The Confirmation retreat planned for the candidates will probably be cancelled due to the COVID situation. I was asked to offer a half-day of recollection for the youth. Despite more COVID reports that disrupted school events during the week of our planned event, I decided to still offer a gathering with an emphasis on keeping distance and wearing masks. My theme was “A Heritage of Faith.”
We celebrated Hispanic Catholic heritage and Oklahoma Catholic heritage. This is a very interesting diocese, as it celebrates the first declared American martyr for the faith, Blessed Stanley Rother. The people of Oklahoma most commonly describe his life as “ordinary.”
He was an ordinary farm child, an ordinary student, an ordinary seminarian, an ordinary priest, an ordinary missionary and an ordinary martyr. After 13 years on mission in Guatemala, when the persecution of the Church by government officials threatened him, he frequently said, “The shepherd cannot run at the first sign of danger.”
My message to the youth of Madill was that they were blessed to have a saint from Oklahoma as a role model. The highlight of the Youth Day was giving them a medallion of Blessed Stanley Rother. Youth Day was an optional activity for the 106 Confirmation candidates, but I also invited youth who were not in the class.
More than 130 young people gathered on Saturday morning, January 15. No one took pictures, and only about half of the participants remained when someone asked that we take a picture. Until then, we did a pretty good job of keeping distances. Note that most wore masks. It was a blessed day.
(Courtesy of DenverLink.)