The shimmering emotional highlight of Mount 2000, the annual Eucharist-focused retreat for highschoolers at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary in Emmitsburg, is always the Saturday night eucharistic procession at Knott Arena, with a single spotlight illuminating the monstrance.
Most of the students sit on the floor during the procession.
“Kids expressing adoration for the first time, and in such a powerful way, you can’t help but shed a tear,” said Daniel Morrison, a Mount seminarian from the Archdiocese of Washington who chaired this year’s event.
Morrison, a parishioner of St. John Neumann in Gaithersburg, has attended most years since he was in high school.
“The kids come very faithful and open-hearted. So it makes our job easy in that sense,” he said.
This year’s event had the additional excitement of seeing a sharp jump in attendance – a little more than 1,500, a 51 percent increase from last year, considered an indication that the long-term effects of the COVID pandemic are finally over. It’s mostly students from the Archdiocese of Baltimore and the Archdiocese of Washington, although this year included a group from as far away as Minnesota.
That is all the more impressive, Morrison added, considering that most of the promotion came from word of mouth and through parish youth ministers “and just prayers. We pray a lot for this event.” He was pleased to notice diversity among the students as well.
“This year, students had to work extra hard to make sure people knew about it,” said Stephen Kirby, a Mount seminarian from the Archdiocese of Baltimore, who was a small-group leader.
Student participants were eager to share special moments from the Feb. 2-4 gathering.
“One of my favorite parts was getting to witness how God was working in the hearts and lives of those around me whether it was through Mass or adoration, or even through conversations I had,” said Catherine Doscher, a student at Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville, which had about 30 students there. “This was an incredible weekend.”
Three students from Archbishop Curley High School in Baltimore savored the intensity.
“Walking out of the second day, which started at 8:30 a.m. and ended around 10:30 p.m., I looked at a buddy of mine and realized neither of us had been on our phones all day and we’d been talking, connecting and praying all day and it was the best we’ve ever felt,” said Joey Yakim, a parishioner of St. Francis de Sales in Abingdon. “Mount 2000 will push you to wrestle with the tough questions you have for God.”
Brady Phelan, a parishioner of St. Stephen in Bradshaw, found the adoration a moment for reflection.
“It was the best opportunity that I was given to really take time by myself to think about my previous years of my life and my future and to ask God what his plan is for me,” he said.
For Luke Walz, a parishioner of St. Ursula in Parkville, the highlight was the talk by Father James Morrison and Mike McHugh about vocations.
“I was able to bond, sing and have fun with other young Catholics, but most importantly, I was able to pray and praise Jesus along with them, which is what the experience is all about,” he said.
It took 153 seminarians and nearly 40 men and women religious, plus 70 volunteers and 25 priests, to put on the event.
Kirby, a parishioner of St. John the Evangelist in Severna Park, thought the event had more emotion than in years past.
“It’s a good time for high school students to discover the love God has for them. That’s a very exciting thing,” he said.
He thought the Saturday night adoration went particularly well, considering that “they had to sit on the floor for a long time.”
But he thought the students learned to “let God attract people to himself.”
Kirby’s favorite task was leading silent prayers. The students “responded to it with much maturity.”
Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori not only noticed the inevitable generation gap, but also leaned into it in his homily at the closing Mass Feb. 4.
Speaking about the first-year seminarians with whom he’d had a post-Mass dinner the previous Wednesday, Archbishop Lori noted, “After Mass, one of the seminarians told me, ‘Archbishop, that homily was ‘fire’!’ At which point (Father Tyler Kline, the archbishop’s priest-secretary) leaned over and said to me, ‘Archbishop, that’s a good thing!’
“Jesus never claimed that anything he said ‘hits,’ ‘slaps’ or ‘smacks,’ nor did he claim that his words ‘hit different.’ But Jesus did claim to bring ‘fire,’ as we’re about to see.
“Life changes when we know our purpose, when we can look at what we are doing, especially when it is hard, and then we say, ‘This is why I was sent. This is what I was meant to do.’ That kind of life is ‘fire.’”
The archbishop said St. Paul was on fire with love of Christ and zeal for the Gospel. That’s why he, like the Lord, went far and wide, preaching and establishing the Church.
“My young friends,” Archbishop Lori said, “the Lord invites you to that kind of life, he is calling you to follow him, he is inviting you to share in his mission. He is sending you to set the earth on fire with the power of his love.”
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