Revive Espanola is a 15-week summer mission in Espanola, Ont., to “revive anyone who has fallen asleep in their faith,” said Angele Sweeney, a fourth-year health sciences student at the University of Ottawa.
“It’s part of the New Evangelization in the sense of those who are already baptized, getting to have a personal encounter with Jesus,” said Sweeney.
The seeds for Revive Espanola were planted when Sweeney and two friends, third-year psychology and philosophy student Marc- André Veselovsky and third-year nursing student Marie-Claire Hoffman, attended Impact 2012, a Catholic Christian Outreach summer mission.
“On that mission, there was 57 of us from across Canada leading this same faith study, basically evangelizing in the different parishes in the archdiocese of Halifax. And so that’s where we got most of our training,” said Sweeney.
“After that summer ended, I think all three of us were kind of thinking ‘where do we go from here and what do we do now?’ And God really put it on my heart from that point to bring everything that I had learned back to my hometown. That’s why we chose Espanola, because that’s where I’m from.”
Veselovsky and Hoffman agreed to stay in Espanola for the summer and the trio convinced St. Jude’s, the only Catholic parish in town, to let them announce their presence at Mass, build relationships with parishioners and invite them to faith study.
Sweeney, Veselovsky and Hoffman led Revive Espanola with Discovery Faith Study, also developed by the CCO, which consisted of study and discussion of the Gospel, testimony and praise and worship. Sweeney ran faith studies back at school, but her largest group was four people.
The Revive Espanola group was much larger. The adult faith study started in May with the final session in August. For the first six weeks Sweeney and Hoffman led a total of 26 women between ages 27 and 30 in the study and Veselovsky lead about eight men between the ages of 22 and 75.
“There’s sort of a different dynamic. A lot of people who are older are really set in their ways and something like reading the Bible is almost foreign to them. And so it was really exciting to see them start to open up to new ways of living their faith, for them to have heard the Gospel proclaimed clearly and simply. A lot of them had not heard that before,” said Sweeney.
After a two-week break, the second six weeks of faith study was lead by participants who attended the first. That’s how Revive Espanola is meant to spread and thrive once Sweeney, Veselovsky and Hoffman return to school and move on with their lives. Sweeney hopes it will create a multiplication effect.
“Being at St. Jude’s for the summer, we kind of reached our maximum amount of people we could invite to take the study. And by asking new people to then go forth and invite people they know — their neighbours, friends, family — to come out and take this study, the Gospel becomes much more accessible to people,” she said.
During week 15, CCO founder André Reiner will give a talk at an event where people can share their testimony on what God has done in their lives this past summer.
The Revive Espanola founding team also began a youth group out of St. Jude’s for students in Grades 7 to 9. They started with eight kids and now have about 15 members attending activities regularly.
“It’s such an interesting dynamic because these are kids that don’t go to Mass on Sundays. Their parents don’t go to Mass and they’ve had little to no faith formation, but for whatever reason, they’ve been coming out to our youth group,” said Sweeney.
They also held a youth retreat that included youth hearing the Gospel for the first time, eucharistic adoration and reconciliation. “Most of the kids prayed... and opened their hearts to God for the first time,” she added.
The youth group will continue with two new young adults in the community once Sweeney, Veselovsky and Hoffman move back to Ottawa.