Festival of Faith demonstrates unity

By Michelle Martin
Staff writer

Chicago-area Catholics got a chance to see just how universal and all-encompassing their faith is at the second Catholic Festival of Faith.

The Feb. 16-18 event, hosted by the archdiocesan Department of Evangelization, Catechesis and Worship, offered people from all corners of the archdiocese and beyond an opportunity to come together to worship, learn and maybe have a little fun at the same time.

The fest brought together Catholics devoted to pro-life advocacy, those who work to promote the rights of immigrants, hundreds of teachers and catechists, and teens who had special sessions designed to appeal to them. All told, more than 6,500 people were thought to have attended some of the sessions at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont.

The themes of coming together as a people of faith and of evangelizing were evident in the opening prayer service, which included a procession of people baptized or received into full communion with the church. They carried water from the baptismal fonts of the home parishes to a single pool and mingled them together, a sign of new life for the whole church.

Among those adding water to the pool was Iryne Ng of St. Edmund Parish in Oak Park. Ng, 25, was baptized at the Easter Vigil in 2005. After the service, she said she was drawn to the pool. “I want to go touch the water,” said Ng.

“I do, too,” said Nancy DeCorrevont, a former Lutheran who was received into full communion at St. Edmund last year. “Becoming a Catholic is really a fulfillment of my faith.”

The event came on the heels of sexual abuse charges against a Chicago priest and criticism of the way Cardinal George and other archdiocesan officials handled them, but the participants maintained a celebratory tone—including a standing ovation for the cardinal.

The opening service also included a dance interpretation of the story of creation, from God creating the world to his redeeming it on the cross, Scripture readings and reflections from the Daughter of the Heart of Mary Sister Anita Baird, director of the Office for Racial Justice, and Auxiliary Bishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller.

Because evangelization means first converting the hearts of believers, Baird shared her personal conversion story, starting with childhood memories of her grandmother singing “Oh, How I Love Jesus”—and getting the congregation, including Cardinal George, to sing along. Like many people, Baird walked away from her faith as a young adult, before realizing there was something missing, she said.

“Without Jesus, I was nobody. Without Jesus, I was nothing. Without Jesus, I was the poorest of the poor,” she said. But once she let the love of God back into her life, everything changed.

“Every day, I am going to tell somebody about the Lord,” Baird said. “I’ll tell somebody that Jesus loves them.”

Bishop Garcia-Siller spoke of the symbolism of water as the grace of God, so enthusiastically that at one point his zucchetto toppled from his head. When he came to Chicago in 2003, he was moved by the beauty of Lake Michigan, he said.

“When we come into contact with water, we remember we have been chosen by God to live in his love, to die in his love and to have eternal life with him,” said the bishop.

“It is not time for only some of the people in our church to wake up. It is time for all of us to wake up. This festival of faith is for us a wake-up call. You can do this if you strive to reflect and renew. If you want to rejoice with God, wake up. Remember, God never calls the qualified. He qualifies the called.”

Once awakened, those who are called must work to get past the defenses of others, to share the love of God with them, he said.

“‘We’re beat. We can’t take it anymore.’ We have two generations saying that about the church,” he said. “The only way to get them back is to overwhelm them with our love. Our pope is speaking in that direction: God is Love. … This is our hope, this is our great scheme, and it can work. This is what will happen, because Jesus did it. … Now you know what I mean by overwhelming love.”

In a workshop session on “Evangelization: Creating Something New,” Cardinal George also spoke of love.

“The reason for this festival is to deepen our unity in Christ,” he said. “The bond of unity is love, and its fruit is peace.”

The cardinal reminded those who attended that even Jesus was not always successful in his attempts to evangelize, recalling the story of the rich young man who walked away. But like Jesus, the church must always be clear that its mission is to save souls, not simply render services.

“We got used to a church that provides services. That’s our downfall,” the cardinal said, noting that the reason the church feeds the hungry, cares for the ill, educates children and advocates for the voiceless is that Jesus commanded his believers to do so—for the good of their souls as well as the good of those they serve. “You must show publicly that you are served by Christ before you serve anyone else in his name. … The mission of the church is in the hands of the baptized.”

Father Thomas Franzman, director of the Department of Evangelization, Catechesis and Worship, carried the theme through a workshop called “Evangelization: WWJD-What Would Jesus Do?”

The most important thing for Catholics to realize is that evangelization is not a program of the church; it is simply what the church does. The hard part is to get people to realize that.

“It takes time to see everything we do as evangelizing,” Franzman said. “It is the work of the church to evangelize. It is the most important thing the church can do. The most eloquent sermons are the ones delivered by your lives. You are the only Bibles some people will ever know.”

That means Catholics must use their lives to invite people to come to know Jesus through the Catholic Church. That’s a new thought to many, Franzman acknowledged.

“For a long time, Catholics thought, ‘If they had any brains, they would join us,’” he said.

While most adult participants attended such talks—and others, on everything from navigating the archdiocesan e-mail system to how to prepare children for the sacraments of reconciliation and Communion—teenagers moved to the beat set by Father Stan Fortuna in keynote presentations Feb. 17 and 18.

Anne Fijalkiewicz, a Carmel High School sophomore from Island Lake, volunteered to attend Feb. 17. A friend was coming along and was pleasantly surprised.

“It’s actually pretty fun,” she said, checking out the exhibit hall after a morning presentation by Fortuna, who uses music and video to communicate his message. “He did rapping. I don’t like to listen to rap much, but it was a way to speak to kids.”

Fortuna also got good reviews from Barbara Imberger and Melissa Gonzalez, both freshmen at Resurrection High School in Chicago. The girls were checking out the exhibit hall, collecting free candy, pens and samples.

“It’s good to see everybody here,” Gonzalez said.

The booths featured everything from Catholic themed T-shirts (“It’s cool to be Catholic”) to books and Bibles in English, Spanish and Polish, to caskets, cemetery plots, and liturgical vestments and vessels.

Joan Czerlanis, the business manager at St. Thecla Parish in Chicago, took a break from browsing at The Catholic New World booth. She said she appreciated the level of organization at the festival.

“I’m glad we have this opportunity to come together,” she said.