Advertisement
Diocesan renewal makes strong move into second year
Family life is one of the cornerstones of Calgary’s diocesan renewal, which Mary Rose Bacani Valenti, here with her husband Richard and daughters, spoke on.
Photo courtesy Diocese of Calgary
December 20, 2024
Share this article:
Offering spiritual nourishment to Calgary Catholics leading up to Christmas was just one of the key aims of the diocesan Advent retreats hosted early in December.
Another objective was providing inspiration heading into 2025, the second full year of the diocesan renewal launched during Thanksgiving weekend 2023.
Each in-person retreat from Dec. 3-5, featuring guest presenters who appeared via video conference, centred around a pillar of the renewal: forming missionary disciples in Christ, being a Church of encounter and witness and strengthening family life.
Dr. Brett Powell, Archbishop Michael Miller’s delegate of development and ministries for the Archdiocese of Vancouver, steered the presentation about discipleship.
The father of eight children told The Catholic Register in advance of his seminar the aim is to encourage attendees to rededicate themselves to the foundational precepts of the faith.
“I would suggest going back to the basics of the early Church, which is a Church animated with hope and conviction that the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ is still relevant in our world,” said Powell. “And that the Church has the antidote for all of humanity's problems and ills. It’s in the transmission of this grace we find our mission.”
During his PowerPoint slide presentation, Powell sought to illuminate the current reality of the Canadian Catholic community amid a mainstream culture embracing rampant secularization and propose a roadmap to help the country re-embrace a sacramental and Biblical worldview.
Powell said while various groups and organizations are “hacking away at some of the branches of what's wrong with humanity,” only the Church is capable of striking at the root. What is wrong in humanity is what's wrong in the human heart. It's sin, it's our fallen nature.”
Formerly a long-time executive leader with Catholic Christian Outreach, including eight years as national director from 2002 to 2010, Powell implored attendees to emulate Jesus, their “seeking Saviour.”
“He wants to have a seeking Church and He wants us to go out of our comfortable climate-controlled environments and to engage with the world and to reach those on the periphery,” said Powell.
Ryan Schmidt, a parishioner of Sacred Heart Parish in Strathmore who spent two years with the Companions of the Cross in the early 2000s, wrote a piece for the diocese’s Faithfully newsletter previewing the presentation of Bishop Scott McCaig, Canada's Military Ordinariate. McCaig led the Dec. 4 presentation about creating churches of encounter and witness.
Schmidt praised the former lumberjack’s fervent passion for God.
“Not only can Bishop Scott spin a tale, but he is a passionate preacher utterly in love with the Lord,” said Schmidt. “Although I never did become a priest, in my two years with the Companions, going to Mass each day, I heard him give countless homilies. You would think that you would tire of hearing the same person preach over and over — but this was never the case with Bishop Scott.”
Mary Rose Bacani Valenti, a long-time producer for Salt + Light TV, spoke Dec. 5 on strengthening family life. A mother of four girls ages 13, 10, 8 and 5 with her husband Richard, Bacani Valenti said she used Matthew 14:22-23, which chronicled Jesus walking on water, as the cornerstone of her presentation.
What Bacani Valenti said “touched her heart” about this passage is that Jesus led His disciples knowingly into a storm.
“It’s a beautiful message (of) let’s not look for storms to disappear,” said Bacani Valenti. “(Instead), listen to the call of Jesus, come towards Him and keep on focusing and gazing on Him inside the storm, even the deepest part of our storms.”
Even though the task of walking on water toward Jesus is seen as an impossibility, an act Christ called on Peter to do, Bacani Valenti said Catholic families are at their strongest when parents work to teach their offspring to steadfastly trust in and seek the Lord amid any kind of turbulence.
A 2003 St. Thomas Aquinas College graduate in New York State, Bacani Valenti said both mental discipline and endurance are required to be resolutely trusting in God, not an easy feat considering the world is increasingly riddled with distractions.
Drawing on her family’s passion for The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, she said the human and elves’ stand against the orcs of Mordor in the prologue of Fellowship of the Ring is a cinematic exhibition of patiently waiting on God’s time.
“The orcs look frightening, and you have the humans and elves waiting to fire,” said Bacani Valenti. “You see that the orcs are moving forward, and you are sweating and thinking ‘they’re going to get us if we don’t shoot now,’ but you are asked to hold.
“In a way, that is what Jesus asks us to do,” she continued. “In the spiritual life, all He needs is for us to remain and to hold and He will take care of everything. It is in His hands. It might not look like it because it seems the orcs are going to win the day. But 'fire' is said at a certain time. There is a plan and it's in God's wisdom. Our job is to just endure and hold, even if it looks like it's falling apart.”
Bacani Valenti advocated that the admirable traits that help us navigate, with God’s grace, through the storms can be more easily summoned during prayer “if we are living lives of simplicity.”
Learn more about the Diocese of Calgary pastoral renewal at https://www.catholicyyc.ca/renewal.html.
(Amundson is an associate editor and writer for The Catholic Register.)
A version of this story appeared in the December 22, 2024, issue of The Catholic Registerwith the headline "Discipleship, encounter, family life top Calgary agenda".
Share this article:
Join the conversation and have your say: submit a letter to the Editor. Letters should be brief and must include full name, address and phone number (street and phone number will not be published). Letters may be edited for length and clarity.
