By Fr Kenneth Pereira SDB for BIS Mumbai

 This year, the parish of St Dominic Savio (Wadala East) has 43 youngsters preparing to receive Confirmation. That’s an unusually big number for us. Ordinarily we would have conducted their pre-Confirmation retreat in April, just a few days before their Confirmation. But this year, one of our parishioners came up with a daring suggestion: “Why wait till April for their retreat? Why not hold it in September, during the ‘Ganesh holidays’? We can then hope that in the months ahead, they will prepare themselves with renewed enthusiasm.”

Well, that’s exactly what happened. The pre-Confirmation retreat was held from September 17 to 19, in the parish hall of Our Lady of Dolours (Wadala West) - the parish closest to ours. Rather than have a residential retreat, we opted for a three-day morning-to-evening retreat. It was conducted by the Central unit of the YU4C (Youth United for Christ). Our 41 retreatants were put into the mood of the retreat almost as soon as it began, with lively and catchy hymns from the YU4C musicians, that swept all on their feet, dancing as they sang!

Even the topics that were taken up in the course of the retreat were most relevant for our youth - topics such as God’s love, sin and its consequences, relationships, addictions, the power of music, self-identity, inner healing, commitment. Added to this, our retreatants could easily connect with the young organizers who at various times came forward to share their own testimony.

On the second day, all our retreatants made a good sacramental Confession and availed of counselling from six professional counsellors. The resultant freedom-from-guilt was palpable in many of them.

The best part of the retreat program was the adoration at the end of each day, where an outpouring of blessings and graces was most evidently manifest. An experience of inner-healing brought tears of catharsis to many of them. And the ‘infilling of the Holy Spirit’ was the jewel-in-the-crown.

There is no doubt that all this is God’s doing. He has used the YU4C very powerfully as a channel of his graces and blessings to all our retreatants. As one of them said in his feedback: “I initially came for this retreat out of compulsion. But now, I’m feeling sorry that it’s getting over so soon!”