“Be not afraid”

Mass of the Holy Spirit
Joe Conley
Salesianum School 2026

Good morning everyone,

My name is Joe Conley, I’m vice president of Faith and Service, and I am honored to be giving the Salesian reflection for the first school Mass this year.

As I look back on my time at Salesianum, I recognize that my relationship with God has taken many different shapes. There have been moments where everything seemed to click, where I felt the presence of God in every step. Then there have been other moments where God felt distant, and I was left trying to make sense of life alone without God’s presence.

One habit I’ve struggled with in my faith journey is that when life gets hard- when I mess up or hurt people I love, instead of seeking God’s healing, I often turn away in fear. Fear of not being good enough, of not being perfect.

I start to believe that my flaws make me undeserving of God's love. For Him to love me more, I would need to stop messing up, stop falling short, or “fix myself” before going to Him.

But this “I can handle my problems by myself” mindset only drags me down further. Instead of finding comfort in God’s love when I make mistakes, I find myself hiding from it.

Last school year, that struggle became real for me. I got injured and couldn’t run track, a sport that I loved; I crashed my first car, and I knew so many of my closest friends would be graduating soon and moving on. I spent more time in class overthinking than paying attention. I spent more time driving to school in tears than not. Among all of that, I was more focused on running away from God than running toward him.

But in the Gospel today, we are reminded of a powerful lesson - we do not need to be perfect to be accepted by God. Through Peter’s imperfections, he experiences a miracle. After a night of fishing with no success, he goes out into deeper water and pulls in a net that was so full of fish that it nearly capsizes his boat. Following this catch, Peter collapses in front of Jesus and says, “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” He is overwhelmed by his own perceived unworthiness. But Jesus does not give up on Peter. He doesn’t put him down or say “You’re right, you’re no good,” instead, He replies “Do not be afraid,” and calls Peter, a guy hyper aware of his imperfections, to be his first disciple. This reveals something incredible about the heart of God. God does not expect us to have it all together when we encounter Him. Instead, He draws perfection and greatness out of each one of us as he loves and works through us.

Perfection is not a prerequisite for following God; it is a result.

God meets us exactly where we are. Not when we reach an imagined level of holiness and deem ourselves worthy of His love. He meets us in our flaws, our doubts, our worries, our concerns, our anguish, and our fears.

And instead of turning away from our brokenness, He uses this as a place to enter more powerfully into our hearts. The same is true for Peter. Peter didn’t encounter Jesus after he was already a leader or a saint, or after proving himself flawless- he met Him in his everyday work, on an unsuccessful night, with empty nets. And in the middle of Peter’s feelings of frustration and loneliness, that is the exact moment that Jesus chose to step onto the boat and enter Peter’s heart.

This Gospel story is a reminder that we don’t have to handle everything on our own. We don’t have to fix our flaws before surrendering to God. Like Peter, we are not called because God thinks we are flawless; in fact, it’s the opposite, it’s because God loves us more than we can ever imagine- enough to work through our difficulties and with love for them. Jesus’s words, “Do not be afraid,” a phrase that appears over one hundred times in the Bible, are a reminder to us that anxiety, weakness, and failure are not reasons to run away from God but rather invitations to allow God to enter our lives.

Today, we celebrate the Mass of the Holy Spirit.

It is a tradition at many Catholic schools. It calls us to begin the year invoking the Holy Spirit to guide us through the challenges, joys, ups, and downs of the year to come. The same spirit that entered Peter’s heart and filled him with the strength to accept Jesus is the same one in our midst today. So, what does that mean for us today as we begin a new year? We are not asked to be perfect students, educators, or disciples. We are only asked to be optimistic; to let the Holy Spirit enter each of our lives, just as Jesus stepped onto Peter’s boat, and to trust that God will meet each one of us right where we are. My prayer for all of us today is this: no matter how broken we may be, that the Holy Spirit remind us of our infinite value and the unique ways God calls us every day. May we remember that God walks with us through our struggles and transforms weakness into strength. May we remember that no matter what we do, what we say, or how we act, there is nothing we can do that can make God love us any less, and nothing more we can do to make God love us any more than he already does.

Lastly, at the conclusion of this Mass, Fr. Beretta will leave us all with a final blessing. In this, he will say something along the lines of, “Go forth, the Mass has ended.” I want you all to focus on that first word: “Go.” I want every one of you to take this as a challenge at the start of this school year. Go take risks, go and better our community, go and better yourself, go and strengthen a relationship in your life, go make our school a better place. Go and do something. The only thing not included in that command to ‘Go’ is remaining the same.

So, as we walk out of Mass today, let us “Be not afraid” as Jesus said, and let us GO and serve a world in need. Thank you.

Claim the Name.

Live Jesus.