‘Can you not wait one hour with me?’
Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published March 31, 2006
Detroit – At this year’s Put Out into the Deep men’s conference March 25, Fr. John Riccardo gave the 3,000-plus attendees a challenge: to pray, each day, for a continuous hour.
He asked the men to question their priorities – whether they get stirred up about trivial matters like sports, and how that stacked up against the affection they feel toward Jesus Christ.
“Choose today to follow the Lord for real,” the conference’s founder appealed. “We’ve got to make a good return on what the Lord has given us.”
Conference attendees admitted that, amid such a busy culture and active families, an hour on-end would be a sacrifice.
But an hour with the King of the Universe would always be worth it.
“If I can do it, and I plan to certainly try, it would yield such great benefits,” said Mark Kehoe, a father of eight from St. Mary Parish in St. Clair. “It is a challenge, I admit that, but I think the benefits would be fantastic, spiritually, emotionally for me and my family and my parish.”
Kurt Shreiber of Divine Child Parish, Dearborn, said he would try, as well.
“I’m going to take the challenge seriously,” he said. “And I’m going to take it as a challenge to be a better person a year from now when I come back here.”
Last year, Fr. Riccardo asked men at the conference to pray a half-hour each day.
He made light of last year’s challenge when posing the new appeal.
“A half hour? That’s nothing,” he quipped. “That’s a sitcom.”
When asked during the conference how many men were able to commit to that half-hour over the past year, hundreds stood.
Others, though they struggled with it, benefited from the challenge.
“Last year, I resolved to pray the rosary more frequently with my family and with my daughter,” said Michael Boucher of St. John’s Armenian Church in Southfield. “And we have done that more frequently. Not the 30 minutes a day – but closer.”
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