Motus Christi for young adults was held this year on Monday, February 19 at the Faith Formation Center of St. Dominic’s Church in the Bronx. Around 30 young men and women attended this retreat from our parish. The retreat was led by the Idente Missionaries: Fr. Fernando Real, the General Superior of the men’s branch and Sr. Rose Calabretta, the Legate of the General Superior of the women’s branch. The retreat was both in English and Spanish.
Sr. Rose in her talk spoke about living in the spirit as opposed to living in the soul. He explained what real love and freedom looks like. Finally, she provided us steps to live this love and freedom. Fr. Fernando in his talk emphasized the need to move from having information about Christ to having a personal relationship with Christ. In the Gospel, the rich young man had kept all the commandments but was not ready to sell his wealth to follow Christ. With this example from the Gospel, Fr. Fernando explained to us that we will need to also sell things in order to follow Christ. What do we have to sell? Pride, lust, laziness, anger, conflict, comfort, irresponsibility. He urged the young people to work as heirs of the Heavenly Father’s business enterprise rather than as employees. The means to achieve this, he said, were – daily prayer, reading of the Gospel, eucharist, and spiritual direction.
