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Archives Helping parishes provide student retreats

March 22, 2023

By Darcy Fargo
Editor

With NET Ministries unable to travel to the Diocese of Ogdensburg to provide confirmation retreats this year, the Department of Faith Formation is offering parishes support as they plan for their youth to have an opportunity to experience a retreat.

“One of the preparation requirements for reception of the sacrament of confirmation is a retreat experience,” said Anita Soltero, Director of Youth Ministry and Assistant Director of Faith Formation. “Our parish Faith Formation directors are very talented and provide great retreat experiences for their students. Offering a good retreat requires a great deal of preparation and some parishes have limited resources. To relieve that burden, the diocese has in the past secured the services of NET Ministries to run retreats on both the East and Western sides of the diocese where up to 100 youth can gather for a unique retreat experience. NET ministries trains young adults year-round to minister to their peers. They travel around the country offering retreats on a wide variety of topics in addition to confirmation.”

After a two-year hiatus due to COVID, NET ministries returned to the diocese in 2022 for confirmation retreats. This year, however, NET Ministries did not have enough staff to send a team to the North Country.
Unable to find a similar replacement, the diocesan Department of Faith Formation and Youth Ministry collaborated to create a retreat experience that could be rolled out virtually or in-person around the diocese.

Soltero, Faith Formation Assistant Director Catherine Russell and former Youth Ministry Director Tom Semeraro worked together to develop the retreat.

“The three of us came together and were talking about the fact that kids that age seem to think their religious education and training is done with confirmation,” Soltero said. “We all kind of came to the idea at the same time – God’s Not Done With You Yet.”

The program includes a series of video presentations created by the local Faith Formation/Youth Ministry team, as well as a video of popular priest and speaker Father Mike Schmitz and witness testimonies from young adults who served as counselors at Camp Guggenheim.

“We tie in the sacrament of Baptism and the vows made for them when they were babies by their parents and Godparents,” Soltero said. “We talk about how it’s time for them to take ownership of those vows and what they mean in terms of our beliefs.”

In addition to the videos, the retreat includes plans for prayer reflections and journaling, which the youth complete around the video segments.

“There’s a popular Christian song, ‘God’s Not Done with You,’ by Tourin Wells,” Soltero added. “It’s a beautiful song, and we use it as a reflection piece during the retreat.”

While the retreat is packaged in such a way that it could be easily rolled out by a catechist or youth ministry leader, Department of Faith Formation and Youth Ministry staff is also available to conduct the retreat in parish/regional locations.

On March 11, Soltero worked with St. Mary’s in Brushton and St. Augustine’s in North Bangor, Father Raymond J. Moreau, pastor, and Deacon Lee Trudeau, director of Religious Formation,  to conduct a confirmation retreat for seven youth from those parishes, as well as several from Malone and Fort Covington.

“It’s great when smaller groups can come together to share the retreat, and that is the idea of offering a diocesan event,” Soltero said. “Some parishes have only one, two or three students preparing for the sacrament. Group discussion and faith sharing are part of the retreat experience, which is hard to do with only two or three students, so it’s great when multiple parishes can pool resources in this way.”

The youth concluded their retreat experience by attending the vigil Mass at St. Augustine’s. Confirmation students served as altar servers, greeters and in other ministry roles for the Mass.

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