Members of Synod Evangelization Teams in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis are gearing up for what is expected to be a convicting and prayerful event.
The Activated Disciple Seminar is set to take place in Minneapolis on May 20 and will include Mass, keynote speeches, testimony and prayer. The event follows Synod Evangelization Team members’ participation in the School of Discipleship and a subsequent 40-Day Challenge, offered through The St. Paul Seminary’s Archbishop Flynn Catechetical Institute in St. Paul.
Mary Healy — who has a doctorate in Sacred Theology — is a keynote speaker for the May 20 event. She joined “Practicing Catholic” radio show host Patrick Conley to talk about how the event will be centered on the Holy Spirit.
“(W)e are going to speak about the Holy Spirit, testify to the need for the Holy Spirit in our lives as disciples of Jesus with personal witnesses, personal testimonies, and then we’re actually going to pray, allow the Holy Spirit to come into our lives in a deeper way and see what he will do,” Healy said. “And I always see the Lord surprise people, change people, excite people, set them on fire, and I have no doubt he’s going to do that this time.”
A professor of sacred Scripture at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit, Healy is an international speaker, author and a general editor of the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series. Her role as keynote speaker, she told Conley, is “to speak about the Holy Spirit from Scripture, talk about what do we see in the New Testament, in the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, about the role the Holy Spirit plays in the life of a disciple.”
Healy said the pressure of modern culture “which is increasingly secular and hostile to faith … is making the Church return to our beginnings, return to the foundations given by the Lord that we kind of neglected for a long time.”
“And the Lord, he’s using the challenges of the present time to break us out of our earthbound and man-centered thinking and ways of acting and leading us back to a radical reliance on the Holy Spirit, which is the way the early Christians were and so many saints who have made a massive impact through the centuries.”
Broadly, Healy told Conley she is “so excited” about what has been happening in the archdiocese.
“I think St. Paul-Minneapolis has just become one of the most visionary, forward-looking dioceses in the country,” Healy said.
To hear the full interview, listen to this episode of “Practicing Catholic,” which debuts at 9 p.m. May 12 on Relevant Radio 1330 AM and repeats at 1 p.m. May 13 and 2 p.m. May 14.
Produced by Relevant Radio and the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, the latest show also includes an interview with Father Jake Anderson from the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota, and Dave Hrbacek, photographer and reporter for The Catholic Spirit, who discuss the great outdoors, including fishing adventures; and former Minnesota Viking and lieutenant governor candidate Matt Birk, who also helped start Unity Catholic High School in Burnsville, which is preparing for the first graduation of students who started as freshmen at the school.
Listen to interviews after they have aired at PracticingCatholicShow.com or choose a streaming platform at anchor.fm/practicing-catholic-show.
