The best word to describe our journey to the SEEK Conference would be stress.

We had four young adults who attended the SEEK Young Adult Conference in Salt Lake City earlier this month. This is the first of several reflections Jose wrote that will allow us to share in their experiences at the gathering.

The best word to describe our journey to the SEEK Conference would be stress. Running on very little sleep, feeling air sick,
tired, hungry, getting checked into our rooms and hurrying to get to the welcome Mass on time all contributed. It didn’t take long, however, for that stress to be replaced by joy.
Arriving at the main area where the keynote talks and Mass would take place, we encountered 17,000 joyful attendees participating in a time of praise and
worship before the first talk. After the stress of our trip, the sight of thousands of people jumping, singing, and crowd surfing was overwhelming.
Seek Conference I realized in that moment that this is what we all are searching for. This is what every human heart seeks. Every person is seeking joy in their life, a joy that makes us dance and sing, a joy that comes from knowing you are loved. This is a joy that only comes from Jesus.
The first keynote speakers reminded us that God loves and desires to be in a relationship with each one of us. We are not created to be alone, nor do we have to go through life alone. God is always with us and is constantly seeking our hearts. The only problem is that we must allow him to enter our hearts. God is a gentleman. He will never force us to be in a relationship with him. He respects our freedom so much that he allows us to freely choose Him.
The reality is we often don’t choose God. We try to fill the void of our hearts with temporary pleasures and joy that the world offers. This will never satisfy our restless hearts. It is a hole that only God can fill and satisfy.

This is what the SEEK Conference is – seeking the heart of Jesus because we all recognize that God is the only person who can satisfy our restless hearts. It is knowing the joy of the Gospel, that we are loved and desired by God the Father.
So, now I ask you…Do you know that God loves you? That He desires to be in a relationship with you?
Jose Zamora, parishioner and Young Adult group facilitator

Brothers and sisters in Christ,

A year from now, when we look back on 2025, what will we want to say about St. Anne and what we have accomplished?

In 2005, Robert Rivers wrote, “From Maintenance to Mission: Evangelization and the Revitalization of the Parish.” Rivers and a host of others since, have argued that a parish in “maintenance mode” is, in fact, a dying church. To be sure, maintenance is easier. The church staff simply pulls out the prior year calendar and copies all the events into the next year. No new events are planned. No changes are made to any event already scheduled. One year looks just like the next.

A church in maintenance mode has lots of reasons for doing this. “We don’t have enough volunteers (or staff, or money, or time) to add anything,” they say. In response to a new idea they’ll respond, “That will never work here” or “We tried that 20 years ago” or “No one will come.”

Yes, it is easy to be in maintenance mode. Conversely, it is harder and even scary to be in mission mode. An idea might not turn out well. There might be criticism.

The recently concluded Synod on Synodality drew criticism for wanting to push out of maintenance mode. Some didn’t like it. They wanted everything in the Church to stay the same. At the Synod’s concluding Mass this past October, Pope Francis said in his homily that the church cannot risk becoming “static” but must continue as a “missionary church that walks with her Lord through the streets of the world.” The church must listen to men and women “who wish to discover the joy of the Gospel,” he said, but it also must listen to “those who have turned away” from faith and to “the silent cry of those who are indifferent,” as well as the poor, marginalized and desperate.

“We do not need a sedentary and defeatist church,” the Pope said, “but a church that hears the cry of the world and — I want to say it, maybe someone will be scandalized — a church that gets its hands dirty to serve the Lord.”

As I read the gospels, Jesus was never in maintenance mode. He never taught his disciples (or us) to adopt that attitude. He calls us to be in mission.

What will we say about 2025 when we arrive at January 2026? I hope we’ll talk about surprises and wonder. I hope we’ll tell stories of how God worked in our lives and in the lives of those in our area. I hope we’ll say, “We followed the Lord to places we never thought possible.”