VINELAND – Nicole Arango is nonverbal, but every morning, she wakes up and communicates the joy of encountering her father.
“She knows that daddy is going to enter her room, kiss her and make her breakfast,” explained her father, Andrés Arango. “When I open the door, she smiles and reaches out her arms to me.
“Every morning I fall in love with her, and I do whatever she needs. I am an imperfect father, but if I am able to do that, can you imagine what God the father can do for us? If every morning we open our hands and extend our hearts, he is going to love us. He is going to take care of us.”
Arango, the Bishop’s Delegate for Hispanic Ministry and diocesan director of evangelization, related his personal story of a father’s love during Theology on Tap on July 14 at the Double Eagle Saloon, Vineland. Nearly two dozen young adults attended the event – a relaunch of the RENEW International program in the Diocese of Camden. Theology on Tap aims to bring single or married people in their late teens, 20s and 30s together in faith.
“It’s a blessing to be here,” Arango told those gathered, recalling his fond memories of the Theology on Taps held years ago, when he was director of young adult ministry in the Diocese. José Rodriguez, current director of family and youth ministry, said he was happy to see the program return.
In his keynote talk, Arango focused on prayer and spirituality, and their role in strengthening one’s relationship with God.
In prayer, he said, there can be a tendency to “spend too much time talking, and not listening to God. In this sense, we’re not really praying, since prayer is a dialogue with God, and a dialogue is a conversation between two or more people to express ideas and affection.”
In one-sided conversations, he said, “God wants to tell us something important, but we don’t allow him to speak.”
He spoke of the power a relationship with God can have, recounting a story he had heard from a priest about a man named John. John spent five minutes of his lunch hour every day in the Adoration Chapel at his church. When his visits stopped, the priest became worried and learned John had been hospitalized. Although no family or friends had visited, John was the happiest person in the place, the nurses and doctors testified.
The priest, Arango related, asked John why this was. John said that every day, at the same time he would have been in the Adoration Chapel, “Jesus enters my room, sits down in front of my bed, and says, ‘Thank you for accepting my love.’”
Like John, Arango said, all faithful can come to understand that “we are speaking to a God who is near to us, who died for us” in love. This knowledge, however, takes a commitment to prayer – whether five, 10, 15 minutes or longer.
Spirituality is similar, Arango said. It’s not just “how we relate to God, but how we relate to our brothers and sisters. To be a Christian is not just to follow Jesus, to be a disciple, but to live, love and forgive as Jesus.”
Those in attendance listened intently to Arango’s message. “I heard his passion,” said Larry Lopez from Vineland’s Divine Mercy Parish. “He helped me to know that Jesus is here, and he is with me.”
Sitting next to Lopez was his friend Yami Perez, already expressing an interest to attend a future Theology on Tap event. “I needed to hear some of this,” she stressed.
Couple Shannon and Jayme Jaussi, who were welcomed into the Catholic Church during the Easter Vigil at Marmora’s Resurrection Church, Saint Maximilian Kolbe Parish, said they appreciated Arango’s personal stories.
The couple said they made the trip to Vineland wanting “to make more connections with young people in our age group.” Jayme Jaussi said they were “comforted that there were a lot of people who felt this way, too.”
Rodriguez, whose diocesan office sponsored the evening, said he was pleased to see Arango’s message resonated with the group. The talk was “a great reminder to see Christ with us and next to us.”
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