Blessed Sacrament Church

This year’s diocesan women’s conference, keynoted by well-known Catholic media personality and former presidential speechwriter Colleen Carroll Campbell, was the biggest yet. Organizers say that the Feb. 27 event, held at Marshall School in Duluth, drew perhaps 475 people counting volunteers and vendors.

Betsy Kneepkens, director of the marriage and family life office for the diocese, said there were not only people from nearly every parish in the diocese — 27 came from Grand Rapids and 20 from Hibbing — and from other dioceses in the state, there were also people from Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Missouri.

Speakers at the annual diocesan conferences for men and for women at the Marshall School were, from top left, Trent Klatt, Colleen Carroll Campbell, Father Bill Baer, and Benedictine Sister Lisa Maurer.

The men’s conference Feb. 13, also at Marshall School, keynoted by Father Bill Baer of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, drew about 325.

Both conferences also featured moving testimonies from local Catholics — Trent Klatt of Grand Rapids at the men’s conference and Benedictine Sister Lisa Maurer at the women’s conference — as well as confession and a closing Mass with Bishop Paul Sirba.

Men’s conference

Klatt, a former National Hockey League player who is currently the hockey coach for Grand Rapids High School, drew an immediate standing ovation for a testimony that covered his conversion to more deeply embracing his Catholic faith and growing in his relationship with God during his time in the NHL.

One of the spurs, he said, was the first diocesan men’s conference, which he reluctantly agreed to attend at his wife’s encouragement. The speaker that year, Father Larry Richards, “poured gasoline” on him, he said, lit a match and set him on fire for the Lord.

“There’s nothing more important in this world than cooperating with God’s grace,” he said.

Father Baer, who gave three encouraging talks on the day, ended with what amounted to a pep rally for the Diocese of Duluth. Relying on his knowledge of Bishop Sirba, the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota Duluth and the diocesan seminarians he’s worked with, he said there is a bright future for the diocese — if the faithful are ready to cooperate with God’s grace.

“I am convinced that God wants to do something that has not been seen before,” he said.

Calling up to the front of the audience about a dozen young men associated with UMD, he said the school has one of the most vibrant Newman centers in the country, as well as some of the finest seminarians.

“You really do have some of the finest priests in the United States in the Diocese of Duluth,” he said.

He said the current struggles facing the diocese are actually signs of God’s presence. “The Lord in his mercy is allowing your diocese to be tested,” he said.

“You’ve got a future, men of Duluth,” he said. “Now go at it.”

Women’s conference

Campbell, who also has two popular books, “The New Faithful” and “My Sisters the Saints,” gave two talks on the day. The first detailed how she had grown into a deeper faith life through the concern of her parents and through getting to know the saints. The second was a warning about the dangers of spiritual perfectionism.

During her first talk, Campbell closed with five lessons she’d learned from the saints: blooming where you’re planted, following God’s lead, embracing the cross, cultivating joy and being women of prayer. She illustrated each with stories from the lives of saints like St. Teresa of Avila, St. Therese of Lisieux and Blessed Mother Teresa.

Her warnings against perfectionism were, she said, important for those who take their faith seriously but may not think God’s mercy applies to them. She said it was particularly a danger for women, who play a “comparison game” with each other she likened to a “high-tech emotional blood sport.”

She said when people think of themselves as “one of the good ones” there is no excuse when you fail. The remedy, she said, is trusting in God’s mercy and forgiving ourselves.

Sister Lisa, who was emcee of the event and has drawn national headlines for her work as an assistant college football coach at the College of St. Scholastica — right outside her monastery window — went into more detail about how God had brought coaching back into her life after calling her to religious life.

She said that she long knew she was called to religious life and that her work in coaching was the hardest thing to give up. She said God convinced her she could give it up and be OK.

When she entered the monastery, it was painful not coaching, she said, and she at first distanced herself from sports before gradually starting to be around the college’s events. When the invitation to coach came unexpectedly, Sister Lisa said she was initially hoping her religious superiors would not give her permission.

“I was really scared to say yes to it,” she said, noting that it was a sacrifice she had given to God. Now she has seen many unexpected blessings. “I think the point of all this is that God is good, and that he can never be outdone in kindness,” she said.

The conference also included a “Bible Bingo” game hosted by Mary Margaret O’Brien of the Archdiocese of Chicago, who kept up a rolling banter with theology questions and help from the audience.

— By Kyle Eller / The Northern Cross

Here are some of the area fish fries taking place at parishes in the Diocese of Duluth during Lent.

• February 12: Queen of Peace (Cloquet); St. Francis (Brainerd).
• February 19: St. John, St. Raphael (Duluth); St. Francis (Brainerd).
• February 26: Cathedral, St. Benedict, St. Raphael (Duluth); St. Francis (Brainerd).
• March 4: Cathedral, St. John (Duluth); St. Francis (Brainerd).
• March 11: St. Benedict, St. Raphael (Duluth); St. Francis (Brainerd).
• March 18: St. Benedict, St. John, St. Raphael (Duluth); St. Francis (Brainerd).

Details

Cathedral: 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. $10 adults, $5 kids, $30 families.

St. Francis: 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. $9 adults, $5 children 11 and under.

Queen of Peace: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. $12 adults, $5 12 and under, and 4 and under free. Family maximum of $35.

St. Benedict: 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. $9 adults, $5 12 and under, and 3 and under free.

St. John: 4:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. $9 adults, $7 ages 6-13, and 6 and under free.

St. Raphael: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. $10 adults, $4 children, and under 5 free.

Note: This list is incomplete and is based on a list sent in by one of the faithful. Would you help us “crowdsource” this and expand it with information from your parish? Please send additions or corrections to us and we’ll try to keep it updated.

As I wrote in the December edition of The Northern Cross, the Holy Year that Pope Francis called for 2016 is a pretty big deal. The tradition of Holy Years has been around for more than 700 years, and the fact that the current one is not in the regular time sequence (every 25 years) makes this Holy Year even more uncommon.

Pope Francis felt impelled to call an extraordinary Holy Year because of what he says is the world’s desperate need to hear the message of divine mercy — hence the Holy Year of Mercy. There is no doubt that God’s mercy is something we can never hear too much about, because we all need it, all the time. Everyone is a sinner, thus everyone needs God to show them mercy.

Father Richard Kunst Apologetics

As a priest, it is not uncommon for me to come across people who don’t think they are forgivable. Some people think their sins are so big and so plentiful that they will never be forgiven.

People like this are in a sorry spot, not the least of which is because they are putting themselves above God. Who can say that their sin is bigger than God’s mercy? God is infinite; we are finite. Most often, in cases like this, a brief conversation about God’s infinite mercy will remedy the situation, and the person is open to accepting God’s forgiveness.

St. Jean Vianney, the patron saint of priests, said, “Our sins are grains of sand compared to the mountain of God’s mercy.” Think about that. Adolf Hitler’s sins are like grains of sand compared to the mountain of God’s mercy. There is nothing we can do to outpace God’s mercy.

Sin requires repentance

Scripture speaks of one sin, however, that is not forgivable, and that is the sin against the Holy Spirit. “I give you my word, every sin will be forgiven mankind and all the blasphemies men utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. He carries the guilt of his sin without end” (Mark 3:28-29). So the big question is, what in the heck is the sin against the Holy Spirit?

The precise meaning of Christ’s words about the sin against the Holy Spirit has been much debated. Many of the early Church fathers wrote that apostasy or rejection of the Gospel was the sin that was unforgivable.

Depending on which of the three times Jesus refers to the sin in the Gospels, it could also be taken to mean that the sin against the Holy Spirit is attributing the work of Christ and the Holy Spirit to the work of the devil. But it is the great St. Augustine who gives us the most compelling sense of this sin, which is also widely accepted by theologians today.

Augustine writes that the sin that cannot be forgiven is the unrepentant sin. God cannot forgive a sin that the sinner refuses to repent of. This is the unforgivable sin, the sin against the Holy Spirit. Another form of unrepentance can be similar to the story mentioned above. If someone truly believes that God is incapable of forgiving their sin, then in a way they are right. Besides being repentant, we also need to have faith in God’s ability to forgive.

Later, in medieval theology, the notion of the unforgivable sin was elaborated on by Peter Lombard, the French theologian and bishop of Paris. Lombard wrote that there were six aspects of the sin against the Holy Spirit: despair, presumption (meaning to presume upon God’s mercy without asking or desiring it), impenitence, obstinacy, resisting divine truth (to oppose or resist a known truth as false), and envy of another person’s spiritual welfare, meaning you are envious of someone else’s spiritual gifts, assessing your own spiritual gifts as not good enough.

Peter Lombard may have made it seem a little more confusing to you, so I will go back to St. John Vianney who simply said, “There is nothing which offends so much the good God as to despair of his mercy.”

Pope Francis did the good and right thing in calling an extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy. One thing we can never tire hearing of is God’s willingness to forgive us of all our sins as long as we are willing to accept his forgiveness.

If we are obstinate in believing he cannot forgive us, or if we refuse to repent of our sin, then we have just sinned against the Holy Spirit, and unless we change that tune we will never be forgiven.

Father Richard Kunst is pastor of St. John the Evangelist in Duluth and St. Joseph in Gnesen. Reach him at rbkunst@q.com.

“Father Paul, or ‘Parson Larson,’ as we sometimes called him, was one of our diocesan characters,” said Father William Graham, in Father Paul J. Larson’s funeral homily at Blessed Sacrament Church in Hibbing Jan. 25.

“Often, when Paul would speak or even just appear, one of us priests would turn to another and say, ‘And you thought all the characters were dead.’ You can’t say exactly what a character is, but you know one when you see him. And one of the endearing qualities of characters is that as much as we love them, we often find them exasperating in almost equal measure.”

Bishop Paul Sirba presides at the concelebrated funeral Mass for Father Paul Larson at Blessed Sacrament Church, Hibbing. (Kyle Eller / The Northern Cross)

“Characters have something in common with saints,” he added. “It is easier to recognize their goodness in death, because all of those things that made them characters become endearing in death, when their goodness no longer threatens us, but instead invites us to imitate their charity and goodness. Father Paul touched the hearts, souls and lives of many, many, many people whom others of us failed to see, know, touch or love.”

Father Larson, 64, pastor of Holy Family in McGregor and Our Lady of Fatima in McGrath, died Jan. 19 at Essentia St. Mary’s Hospital in Duluth. (See “Obituaries,” page 4.) His funeral Mass at Blessed Sacrament — the same parish where he was baptized, received his first Communion, was confirmed and was ordained a priest in 1979 — was celebrated by Bishop Sirba. It filled the large church and drew a huge crowd of clergy, members of the Native American community and people from the many parishes he had served.

Sister Marie Rose Messingschlager, CDP, director of Indian Ministry for the Diocese of Duluth, said Father Larson’s family recognized his connection with the Indians and had requested drum and the smudging ritual for his funeral, as well as Indian-made medallions in the coffin.

Parishioners shocked

Deacon Mike Barta, who serves in the same parishes Father Larson was serving, said parishioners were “shocked and very saddened. Father Larson was with us and saying Mass for us on the weekend, and Tuesday morning he was gone. This was the first time our parishes have ever dealt with the unexpected death of a priest.”

He said the parishes have been fortunate to have had Masses continue as normal but that the weekend after his death felt “somber and sad.”

He was known for his great love of the outdoors, hunting, fishing and harvesting wild rice, and for his connection to the Native American community.

Sister Rose, in a eulogy for Father Larson, said when she began her work for the diocese and visited each reservation, “it seemed everyone knew Father Paul and had some story to share of how he’d been there for their family at a crucial time in their lives.”

She described him as someone who had a hard time saying “no” when someone needed him — whether it was sharing a meal or “his last dollars” or a middle-of-the-night visit to the dying.

Or a letter.

“Father Paul was a letter writer,” she said. “He believed in the power of prayer and the power of a postcard. He never tired of acknowledging a kindness, a visit, whatever with a written note sent via the Postal Service.”

Deacon Barta was the recipient of one of them. He said after he’d given his first homily in Father Larson’s presence, he had received a personal note about it — “a note filled with encouragement, insight and a big two thumbs up at the end. That meant very much to me.”

Sister Rose said he taught her how to harvest wild rice, gather cranberries in a bog and more. “Being the earthy man that he was, he took me out following various animal tracks — identifying the animal who made the tracks,” she said. “Once he even tried teaching me — by feel — to identify the difference between wolf excrement and other piles we found.”

She said that time in nature was where he prayed some of his most simple prayers.

Father Graham described how he and his friend would pray Psalm 1 before going out to harvest wild rice.

That formed the backdrop for the anecdote with which he began the funeral homily. One day Father Larson called him and asked Father Graham if he had written the day’s homily for The Liturgical Press — about Psalm 1 and wild ricing and winnowed chaff.

It turned out that Father Larson had been unprepared to preach daily Mass that day and had begun reading the pre-prepared homily.

“People laughed as I read it to them,” he told Father Graham. “They recognized that it was about me at about the same time as I did.” He added, “I suppose this is one more thing you’ll mention at my funeral.”

“I assured him that our friendship of 40 years had afforded ample time and opportunity to collect, consider, analyze and pray over what might need to be said,” Father Graham said.

— Kyle Eller / The Northern Cross

An example of lived mercy was the recent day of Prayer and Reparation for a Culture of Violence. When a series of undercover videos revealed a Planned Parenthood official discussing the harvesting and sale of tissues and organs from aborted children, people’s consciences were rightly shocked. The question left to people of good will was, “What to do?”

Bishop Paul Sirba Fiat Voluntas Tua

In our diocese, a day of fasting and prayer was introduced on Jan. 22 and was connected with the March for Life at the State Capital. Mercy was connected to reparation. Jesus substituted his obedience for our disobedience — “For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19) — and we imitated Our Lord by freely offering our prayers and penance in the way of fasting to repair the evil of violence in our culture.

Jesus accomplished the substitution by offering himself as atonement for our sins. As sacrifice, the Eucharist, Jesus’ Paschal Mystery, is offered in reparation for the sins of the living and the dead. Flowing from the Eucharist is the Sacrament of Penance.

During the Year of Mercy, another lived reality of mercy will be the emphasis on the Sacrament of Confession. Hopefully, in addition to testimonies on forgiveness, the priests of the diocese will offer extended hours of Confession as well as catechesis on this great sacrament.

Many choices

We desire to bring in people who haven’t celebrated the Sacrament of Reconciliation in a while, as well as encourage the regulars to receive the inestimable mercy of God expressed personally in the confessional.

Twenty-four hours of Confession at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary will take place March 4-5. In communion with Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, and all the cathedrals of the world, God will manifest His great mercy in the Sacrament. The event begins with a penance service for the priests themselves, followed with Confessions from noon on March 4 to noon on March 5, within the prayerful context of Eucharistic Adoration.

Confessions will also be heard Monday of Holy Week, March 21, before our celebration of the Chrism Mass, from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., and before the priesthood ordination on June 3 from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. What a great tie-in to the ministry of priesthood and the mercy of God and an opportunity to walk through the Holy Door!

This Lent will be celebrated within the context of the Jubilee Year of Mercy. We ask God to open our hearts to receive His mercy and for us to share it.

From our personal conversion in the Sacrament of Penance, fed by Our Lord in the Eucharist, we are sent forth to share the Good News of what the Lord has done for us.

Other days to keep in mind for celebrating the Year of Mercy within the context of this Lent: the Men’s Conference on Feb. 13 and the Women’s Conference on Feb. 27, both at Marshall School in Duluth.

We remember those who will be coming into the Church at Easter. The Rite of Election is scheduled on Feb. 14 at 2:30 p.m. at the Cathedral.

All are encouraged to attend these beautiful events, and they are situated close to the Holy Door at the Cathedral, so you can gain your Year of Mercy indulgence.

Bishop Paul D. Sirba is the ninth bishop of Duluth.