October 23, 2024 at 12:19 p.m.
UNLEASHING LOVE
Today’s culture tends to define women by their roles — wife, mother, lawyer or doctor — but the starting point for spiritual strength is one’s identity, according to a cautionary message at the third annual Unleashing Love Diocesan Women’s Conference.
Your core identity “is bestowed upon you,” said author and Catholic Bible-study leader Laura Phelps. “You don’t change your identity. Identity is not what you do; it’s whose you are.”
Citing the Genesis passage where both male and female are created “in the image of God” and the Gospel of Mark where Jesus heals a woman he addresses as “daughter,” Phelps told the Oct. 19 women’s conference that people ride “an emotional rollercoaster” if they work toward an identity rather than working from one.
“When you leave here today, if you remember one thing, remember this,” she said. “You are the daughter of a king. Lift your head up and stand up straight. You are royalty — God’s daughter.”
Attendees pray with speaker Laura Phelps, who spoke on the topic of “Favorite Daughter, Reclaiming Our Identity,” during the Unleashing Love Women’s Retreat on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, at St. Edward the Confessor in Clifton Park, N.Y. Cindy Schultz for The Evangelist Women hear many messages from secular society, such as “I’m worthless” or “I’m ugly” or “I’m not enough” or “I’m too much,” or “I’m a mess,” Phelps pointed out. The devil, who “really hates women,” wants them to internalize identities that aren’t from God — “You got what you deserved … No one can help you ….”
Phelps asked, “Ladies, is this the voice you’re listening to? Is this the voice your daughters are listening to?” She retorted, “The amazing thing I think about reclaiming our identity and owning our belovedness is that, once we know who we are, well, look out, because there is nothing we can’t do in the name of Jesus — nothing.”
Women’s ability to receive and spread God’s grace bears fruit when we cut through the cultural clutter and “find our purpose,” according to Phelps. “When we know to whom we belong, my friends, we unleash love and set the world on fire.”
Susan Salisbury of St. Mary of the Assumption in Waterford, right, joins other attendees as they pray with their rosarys during the Unleashing Love Women’s Retreat on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, at St. Edward the Confessor in Clifton Park, N.Y. Cindy Schultz for The Evangelist More than 200 women from around the Diocese of Albany heard her galvanizing insights during the daylong conference at St. Edward the Confessor Parish in Clifton Park, similar to the annual diocesan men’s conference held at the parish in August.
The Unleashing Love event included Mass, Eucharistic adoration, rosary and the Sacrament of Reconciliation provided as a number of priests of the Diocese visited during the day.
Attendees also heard from Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger and Father Roger Landry, a leading preacher for the ongoing National Eucharistic Revival and director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States.
Bishop Scharfenberger cited the observation by Pope Francis that there are “three fundamental relationships that define what is human” — our connection to the Creator, our human bonds to each other, and our ties to all of creation, which includes the environment as well as all our earthly experiences in our “common home.”
“A lot of people are very unhappy these days,” and this generally points to brokenness in one or all of those relationships, Bishop Scharfenberger said. Healing can begin with our creator’s “intense love,” our realization that “God loves us intimately.” Building upon this faith can help to teach us that trust is possible in various relationships.
“God creates things to be ordered,” he said. “I think we can take a look at what it is in ourselves that is most natural and most real, and be confident” that this relates to holiness, he said.
Referring to male and female as reflections of “the image of God,” he said a woman’s participation in everyday human bonds, such as sacramental marriage, harkens back to creation — “it’s not just the complementarity, it is a cooperativity,” with each person equal in dignity.
Our relation to the world at large can be disrupted by materialism and various sorts of addiction, Bishop Scharfenberger added. Again, he urged looking to the creature-creator connection, which is “absolutely essential.”
He recommended setting aside time for daily prayer. The time devoted to Eucharistic adoration may seem unremarkable, he said, but “the graces that God plants are only sprouting as the day goes on, or as the week goes on, or maybe as the year goes on … God is always, always seeding us with grace.”
Father Patrick Butler blesses Azelie Cieply, the 8-month-old daughter of Annieke Cieply, left, during the Unleashing Love Women’s Retreat on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024, at St. Edward the Confessor in Clifton Park, N.Y. Cindy Schultz for The Evangelist As with Jesus’ parable about sowing seed, he said, this gift for our souls “lands everywhere.” Paraphrasing the Holocaust martyr Edith Stein, known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Bishop Scharfenberger told the audience of women to keep seeking truth.
“You’re seeking God, whether you know it or not, so don’t be afraid to ask questions.”
As Father Landry put it, the search for truth — and the development of one’s identity — must be centered in the Eucharist as God’s living presence among His people. Encountering Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament leads to a “Eucharistic identity” that helps orient all of life’s experiences toward Him.
“Women as spiritual moms are meant to breastfeed the entire world on that living relationship,” he said, continuing:
“Let us ask Jesus for the grace to encounter Him, to ground our whole identity in Him, to draw our life from Him, and then to go forth with zeal, with fire, with the Holy Spirit to help everyone else to come, to unite their whole lives with Him, too.”
Father Landry, a priest of the Diocese of Fall River (Mass.) who led a pilgrimage to the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis in July, noted that the U.S. bishops have asked every Catholic in the country to offer prayer and sacrifice for one person to return to active participation in the Church.
He pointed to St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, founder of the nation’s Catholic school system, as a powerful missionary with an abiding love of the Eucharist.
The list of other great women who model transformative Eucharistic devotion includes St. Therese of Lisieux, known as the Little Flower, and St. Kateri Tekakwitha, he said. Saint Kateri once asked what was the best way to please the Lord. The answer she learned was to “receive His unleashed love in His presence.”
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