D-Y-C 2011 iSeek

"What on earth does ‘D-Y-C 2011 iSeek’ mean?" I asked Sr. Mary Brigid, but she shrugged her shoulders. Whatever "it" was, we were on our way there. It was some sort of youth conference in Grand Rapids Catholic Central High School’s gym on the last snowy Saturday in February. Our van was full of pamphlets, pictures, scapulars, rosaries, holy cards of our Mother Foundress and of course, Caramel candies. Sometime in between parking the car, making trips back and forth with our bags and the tri-fold, and piling boxes unto our little luggage cart and maneuvering the precarious towers around mounds of snow and ice into the building to our assigned table we figured out what “DYC” was supposed to mean.

"Oh," I said, slightly embarrassed, "Diocesan Youth Conference." "Of course," Sr. Mary Brigid added, "why didn’t I think of that?" Now that we knew what exactly we were participating in, we rolled up our sleeves and went to work. There were several tables of displays from exhibitors. Some Franciscan sisters were there, the Redemptorist fathers were there, the Vincentian fathers, some Catholic colleges, and the Pregnancy Resource Center was there. They all had tables.

I looked around at the other tables. All had abundant literature; some had very stylish displays. The Redemptorist fathers had a big picture of Our Mother of Perpetual Help with a candle burning under it. Then I looked at our table and started to laugh, "Sr. Mary Brigid, anyone could tell that two women set up our table." "Correction," she smiled, "two very young women." Our little montage of photos was set off by flowers, and we had put our rosaries, candy and scapulars in pretty little baskets. As a finishing touch we scattered relics of our Mother Foundress, edged by colorful crochet, all over the table. We smiled again. How feminine and home-made our stuff looked.

The kids were from all over the diocese; some youth groups came from quite far away. In between conferences and during their lunch time, they would come over and look at the tables, usually as an excuse to talk to us. Almost the first people we met were a mother and daughter, both looked very serious, and they soon told us the reason. "Her father died this year, unexpectedly. Oddly enough, our family has only been Catholic a short time." What an incredible story! Later in the day came another tragic story, and in between many encounters with teens who trusted us, just because we were sisters. We didn’t say much; we listened; we prayed.

That day was a day of listening and praying, more than anything else. It is strange, because usually such events are noisy because of the loud music and demand much talking and activity. The music was there, and the activity too, but somehow the two of us spent the day in deep recollection. Afterward, we discussed it, both having had the same experience. I remember a priest once referring to places where grace is felt as “thin places” meaning that heaven feels particularly close to earth, that the veil in between them is very "thin." Well, for us, that gymnasium was a "thin" place on that wintry Saturday.

The events of the day were most interesting. Our dear Bishop Hurley led the morning prayers, and the teens processed in with candles. It was a beautiful ceremony. The keynote speaker was also the musician and did a beautiful job not only entertaining the kids, but encouraging them to love, and seek God. That was the big theme. The end of the day included Holy Mass, and it was a marvelous one. It seemed that so much happened on that day, so many confidences, so many friends were made. We also realized that aside from being there for the youth and answering their questions about spiritual journey, vocation and life, we also realized some answers to questions that we had in our spiritual journey. It was like a day retreat for both of us; despite of all the activity going on we were open enough to hear God’s word through others in their simple stories or just in little pieces of wisdom. At the end of the day, as we stopped the car in front of the cathedral to take a photo of the snow scintillating as it fell past the spire in the night sky, we breathed, "beautiful, beautiful." A "Thin" place indeed.