April 18, 2025 // Diocese

Hearts Set Ablaze at Young Adult Retreat

Paula Lent

“Learning to do hope is learning to do the world as it was meant to be done,” Holy Cross Father Gabriel Griggs told those attending the Ablaze Mission Young Adult Lenten Retreat on the morning of its final day. “A retreat should help you enter back into the world and to be in the world in a new way – to do the world the way it is supposed to be done.”

Sponsored by the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and Notre Dame Federal Credit Union, and held at the
Lindenwood Retreat and Conference Center in Plymouth throughout the course of a weekend, beginning the evening of Friday, March 28, and ending on the afternoon of Sunday, March 30, Ablaze Mission’s first Young Adult retreat provided attendees with a chance to step away from the rush, noise, and attachments of daily life in order to recenter themselves on the Lord and become more deeply rooted in the hope of His promises. 

Photo provided by Ablaze Mission
More than 60 attendees pose for a photo during the Ablaze Mission Young Adult Lenten Retreat, which was held in Plymouth during the weekend of March 28-30.

“Taking a step back from daily life for an extended period of time on an annual retreat is critical,” said Sean Allen, the founder and president of Ablaze Mission, a young adult apostolate founded in 2021. “That provides the space to reflect on and reorient our relationship with the Lord in order to re-enter daily life with renewed focus on journeying with Him.”

Inspired by the current Jubilee Year of Hope, the retreat’s theme, chosen by the young adult planning team, was “Hope Does Not Disappoint.” 

Jesse Iamarino, the assistant mission director of Ablaze, is a recent graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville who holds a master of theological studies degree and has almost 10 years of experience in retreat ministry, working on retreats that ranged in size from 10 to 2,500 people and served various demographics. He told Today’s Catholic that when he, Allen, and the nine young adult volunteers on the planning team were discerning the theme, “We noticed that many of the challenges that young adults face have to do with hope, or a lack thereof.” 

Through a combination of personal witness sharing, guided prayer, and instruction, five speakers provided the 60 young adults attendees (who represented 18 parishes) with much to reflect upon. In addition to Father Griggs and Iamarino, who gave the first evening’s talk, “Jesus Is Our Hope,” speakers included Monica Markovich, the CFO and executive vice president at Holy Cross College, who is a wife and mother of five; Sister Maria Gemma of the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, who is vice president for Catholic culture and student life at the University of Saint Francis; and Bob Kloska, the chief partnership officer at Notre Dame Federal Credit Union, a married father of five, and a three-time cancer survivor. 

In her talk on Saturday morning, Markovich encouraged attendees to discern where their hopes lay.

“Consider if your hope is in the wrong place, whether in a person, relationship, idea – anything that’s not God, even if it came from God,” she said. “Everything leads us toward or away from the end to which we were made.”

Markovich told attendees about losing her newborn son, sharing that when our hope is in the Lord, “We can grieve differently when our hearts are broken. We can grieve with hope.”

She encouraged the young adults to be brutally honest with themselves and with the Lord about their hearts, to steep themselves in His Scriptural promises, to sit in the tension between where their hearts are and the promises of God, and, crucially, to not self-protect.

“Ask the Lord to reveal where you are protecting yourself,” she said. “He wants to love us in that place, and to do new things. … Allow your hearts to be broken, because God won’t let us settle for anything less than our whole selves and what we were made for – Him. … God will use all things to love you and to make you who He’s created you to be.”

In the talk that followed, Sister Maria Gemma guided retreatants through prayer exercises to help them learn to engage in conversation with God, seeking and recognizing His voice through words or images the Holy Spirit placed in their minds in response to questions or thoughts they brought to Him.

During the Saturday evening session, held in the Ancilla Domini chapel at Lindenwood, Kloska shared his experience of hearing the Lord’s voice through the Eucharist when he was unaware he was having a heart attack. A man who is closely acquainted with long-suffering, having fought (and beat) cancer three times and undergone countless surgeries – 23 on his vocal cords alone – Kloska has allowed the trials in his life to bring him ever closer to the Lord.

While attending Mass with his son one day in 2021, Kloska suddenly felt very ill. Gazing at the host as it was elevated during consecration, he heard the Lord tell him, “You’re having a heart attack.” Kloska looked up heart attack symptoms on his phone and realized the Lord was right, but he stayed to receive the Eucharist before leaving with his son to go to the ER. Due to traffic, they stopped at a store along the way to get Aspirin, and as Kloska waited in the car, he asked the Lord not to let him die in the parking lot. In return, he received a sudden glimpse of heaven – and of his own sufferings. Catching a glimpse of heaven, Kloska realized he’d be happy to go there, and when he looked at his earthly sufferings, he saw that they were in fact beautiful. 

Kloska encouraged the attendees to accept the intimacy and vulnerability of a relationship with God, and he shared a prayer he prays: “Sync my heart with yours, Lord. Let my heart beat with yours, never out of sync.”

In addition to the five principal talks, retreatants also heard short testimonies given by young adult team members, had multiple opportunities to receive prayer ministry, participated in optional extended times for praise and worship, and took time for silent reflection and prayer. Optional organized activities included doing crafts together, a trivia night, morning and night prayer, small group discussions, and confession.

Praise and worship was led by a trio of young adult musicians and singers, organized by charismatic worship leader Christian Quilon (who goes by “CQ”), an admissions counselor at the University of Notre Dame. Quilon told Today’s Catholic, “Having the chance to lead worship for this retreat was such a gift and drew me closer to the Lord and to the young adults in the local community. I’ve always desired to pursue ministry in South Bend ever since I started living in town, and I hope that this is only the first of many opportunities!”

By and large, retreatants seemed to have an impactful experience, which made them poised to enter back into the world differently, as pilgrims of hope.

“For some young adults, this was their first retreat; for others, they had lost count, but across the board, they were encountering the Lord,” Iamarino told Today’s Catholic. “From community to prayer, the sacraments to healing, there was nowhere you could look where the Lord was not moving. We had no idea what to expect because it has been four years since the last [diocesan] young adult retreat, and this was the first retreat for Ablaze. It went better than we could’ve imagined.”

Susan Pingel, who came on the retreat after recently becoming a regular at one of Ablaze’s weekly Bible studies, told Today’s Catholic that she was drawn to go on the retreat by “a desire to grow in community with other young adults in the area. Since graduating college, it has become very clear to me that if you desire community, you need to be proactive about finding it. … It was encouraging to see so many young adults, in similar seasons, pursuing a greater intimacy with the Lord.” 

“Father Gabe Grigg’s reflection on living a life of hope was profoundly impactful for me,” Pingel further shared. “As a social worker, I am regularly confronted with the harsh realities of human suffering – encountering individuals at their most vulnerable, many of whom are the victims of humanity’s brokenness. These daily encounters often leave me feeling discouraged, questioning whether my efforts make a difference in a world still so wounded. Father Gabe’s talk served as a much-needed reminder – not to fall into despair but to intentionally cultivate and live out hope in tangible, practical ways. He emphasized the importance of inviting the Lord into every aspect of our lives, grounding our work and struggles in His presence, and in doing so, [we] can [then] share the hope of God with those around us.”