April 5, 2025 // Bishop

‘We Are All Brothers and Sisters in the Human Family’

Denise Fedorow

Freelance Writer

Bishop Rhoades Visits Retreat for CRS Clubs at Diocesan High Schools

Thanks to the initiative of Saint Joseph High School student Nick Nguyen, members of Catholic Relief Services clubs at Saint Joseph, Marian, and Bishop Dwenger high schools held a retreat day with Bishop Rhoades at St. Martin de Porres Church in Syracuse on Thursday, March 27.

A group of girls from Marian and Saint Joseph told Today’s Catholic that their clubs meet once a month. Lucy Palmer, Yeagen Winston, and Nytalia Berry from Marian said it was their first year involved in the club, and they liked how kind, welcoming, and inclusive everyone has been. They also liked getting to meet people from other schools. Laila Temple and Susie Alcantar from Saint Joseph have been in the CRS club for four years. They shared that when their club meets, they often talk about fundraising projects.

Another group of girls from Bishop Dwenger – Kyliana Drew, Katherine Keefer, and Hannah Thurber – joined with Marian’s Justin Kruk to work on the posters. Kruk has been with CRS for two years, and the girls all said it was their first year. Drew remarked that their club might be small, but they’re making a difference. Thurber agreed, saying she liked that they’re helping people. The Bishop Dwenger club meets every other Friday morning and recently discussed how federal funding is being cut so the things they do are even more important, and they discussed more ways to help.

Marian student Leo Vesprini was working with Alexandra Zanker and Alexis Marscola from Saint Joseph. Zanker said she likes the community of CRS clubs and how they get other people to join and donate to the cause. Marscola said they try to get the entire Saint Joseph community to be involved with their fundraising projects.

In the afternoon, Bishop Rhoades celebrated Mass with the students and greeted them by saying: “It’s great to be with you today; it’s great to see the work that you do to support the Church’s outreach and assistance to the poor and needy throughout the world. As you know, I’m very involved with CRS, so to have high school students in our diocese support the bishop’s efforts means a lot to me. Thank you, and thanks to the moderators of the high school clubs, and thanks for being here today.”

Bishop continued, saying, “We remember in our prayers those who are suffering throughout the world, who are living with violence and war and ask the Lord to inspire more people to come to their help like CRS does.”

During his homily, Bishop Rhoades shared that Psalm 95 is the psalm the priests, deacons, and bishops pray every day in the Liturgy of the Hours – “If today you hear my voice, harden not your hearts.” He shared that the psalmist was talking about how God’s people heard His voice but didn’t obey His word; instead, they grumbled – and especially during the Exodus, they worshipped the golden calf.

“Even in the first reading (Jer 7: 23-28), God laments the fact to Jeremiah about the hardness of the people’s hearts and that they’re a stiff-necked people. He tells Jeremiah that they’re not going to listen to him either. … That whole discussion of people with hardened hearts is common in the Bible; you can find it in more than 100 places. And, of course, it’s a message to all of us not to be hard-hearted and to listen to God, to have our hearts softened to love, to obey the Lord, and to love one another.”

“There are a lot of hardened hearts today,” Bishop Rhoades continued. “People who are angry and prophets like Jeremiah suffered because of this,” he said. “In the Gospel today, we hear how those with hardened hearts criticized Jesus for expelling a demon. They even accused him of doing it in the power of Beelzebub, which was ridiculous. Our Lord Jesus said how illogical it was for Satan to cast out his own.”

“It’s a good message, and I can connect it to the attitude to many in the world today toward the millions and millions of people who are really suffering, who are poor, who are refugees – the millions of refugees. As followers of Jesus, we know we should not have hardened hearts toward those who are suffering in our midst, even in our country, or to think that we shouldn’t care about those in other countries.”

“This whole idea of only caring about ourselves and our well-being goes against the Lord’s teaching and the Catholic Church’s social teaching. We are all brothers and sisters in the human family. That’s why the U.S. Catholic Bishops have Catholic Relief Services to come to the aid of our brothers and sisters in the poorest parts of the world and not have hardened hearts,” he said. “Some people don’t think about it – maybe they’re not hardened, but they ignore it.”

He compared that to last week’s Gospel of Lazarus and the rich man, pointing out that the rich man didn’t harm Lazarus, he just ignored him.

“That’s why I’m so proud of all of you. You could be spending time doing other things besides CRS, doing things to make you more comfortable, but you learned in your high school and in your faith that you need to do something,” he told the students.

Bishop Rhoades shared with the students the highlights from some of his trips where he got to see CRS in action, like in Haiti, where CRS built a hospital in Port Au Prince. Also on that trip, Bishop Rhoades said he was excited to walk on the beach, but “it was the worst beach ever,” he said, “filled with mounds of garbage and wild dogs.” He said CRS is also very concerned about the environment, and he asked them when they were going to address that beach.

In El Salvador, he visited a prison where he met with 150 former gang members and learned how CRS helped to rehabilitate them. He also visited Ethiopia, where the country was undergoing a famine, and CRS had 263 food distribution sites. He said when he visited Gaza years ago, it was practically destroyed by bombs. He said he couldn’t imagine what it looks like now. But CRS built hundreds of small homes and developed peace-building programs, especially working with young Palestinian and young Israelis.

He told the students: “This is great work you support through your high school. I’m so grateful for all you do to spread awareness. This is part of the work of the Lord, part of being a disciple of Our Lord Jesus, to not have hearts hardened, to not feel for those who are suffering.”

“We’re always a people of hope,” Bishop Rhoades said. “Even if it’s a small light, we’re called to bring the light of Christ into the world.”