Franciscan at Home

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I was at a Steubenville Youth Conference, and we just had a powerful evening of prayer, Eucharistic Adoration, and empowerment. At conferences like these, I always offer to stay up late and talk with any of the youth if they need some guidance. Sure enough, at this particular conference, one teen took me up on the offer. Her name was “Julia.”

As soon as we sat down to talk, Julia blurted out, “I can’t stop drinking.”

I knew a little bit about Julia’s background before I took her to the youth conference. Julia was a junior in high school and she had a reputation that followed her. She got drunk at parties nearly every weekend, had experimented with drug use, and she had a reputation of being promiscuous. I believe she was even hung-over when she arrived at the youth conference.

Julia was also a sweet girl, very beautiful, artistic, and full of good intentions. She had encountered Jesus in a powerful way that evening and was wrestling with her own sin and brokenness.

But the conversation went in a direction that I was not expecting.

I said to her, “You are not alone in wrestling with this problem. The first step is to admit that you have a problem with drinking and to come closer to Jesus...”

She interrupted me, “That’s not the problem. I would have no issue giving up drinking and partying. I know that is what God wants me to do and I want to do it. I don’t even like getting drunk…

…the problem is, I can’t leave my friends.”

Whether it be Captain America and Iron Man fighting over whether or not the Avengers should submit to governmental authority, or the constant slew of stories that portray the bad guy as the good guy, Hollywood loves moral ambiguity. “The Walking Dead” is still popular not only because of the horror of zombies but also because of the constant moral dilemmas the protagonists must face: if a child is bitten by zombies and will become a zombie in a few days, should we kill the child before she becomes a zombie or should we wait until she might kill us? Such questions seem unanswerable.[i]

This continual barrage of “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenarios is symptomatic of an ethically relativistic society, and leads young people to the conclusion that there is no “right” answer to moral dilemmas— whatever the person decides is best. Like all heresies, there is a measure of truth in that statement. People of good conscience can still make bad decisions. However, we do teenagers no favors by posing the most difficult of moral situations, when the vast majority of their day to day decisions have far clearer answers to questions as: “Should I cheat on this test or lie to my parents?”

“The truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32). A large, prominently displayed banner with this proclamation greeted my high school students every semester that I taught Morality class. I spent many of the ensuing months unpacking this verse and its implications. What is truth? Or better, who is truth? What does it mean to be free? Crucial to this inquiry was a thorough study of the Church’s teaching regarding conscience. Any catechist would agree that we do not want to train our students to blindly follow a set of rules; instead, we want to be the conduits for them to develop a dynamic freedom to choose the ultimate good. This is the importance of properly teaching about conscience, which is “present at the heart of the person” and “enjoins him at the appropriate moment to do good and to avoid evil.”[i] If we merely memorize a list of laws and then try by our own power to live by them, we will always fail. New, unique moral challenges arise every day. However, if we have a well-formed conscience, then we have the ability to choose the good in every situation.

Last year, on the eve of All Saints Day, a teenager showed up at my door searching for candy and donned a self-made t-shirt for his costume that can only be described as “genius.” The shirt simply said, “Terrifying,” and had two images emblazoned upon it: the icon of a dead phone battery and the icon representing “no wi-fi available.”

I laughed out loud. It was the perfect indictment of modern culture through a teen’s eyes. It also illuminated a severe problem that parents and catechists currently face when trying to introduce this next generation to the timeless and eternal Father. How do we guide a young soul with little or no prayer life into an intimate relationship with God, especially in the midst of this over-stimulated and screen-based culture?

Waiting on God

We had just begun our new catechetical year at the parish. Following an opening session that was offered in large group, I made my way around to the various confirmation classes to sit in and see how things were going and how I might better support the catechists and candidates that year.

Trying to catechize a young adult who has never had a conversion to Jesus is like trying to teach marine biology to someone who has never seen an ocean. We might be able to transmit some knowledge, but we might also leave him or her disinterested to the reality that the ocean is dynamic, beautiful, and powerful.

Herein lies the issue in many of our current catechetical models with young adults in the Catholic Church: our sequence, method, and execution of young adult faith formation is not working because it is out of order, ineffective, and unattractive to young people.

The statistics tell us only one side of the story, yet they also help frame our problem with young adults in the Catholic Church. According to Pew Research, only 30% of Catholic adults are still “practicing” their faith (that is, attend Mass at least monthly). Another 38% self-identify as Catholics, though they rarely attend Mass. That leaves nearly 32% who no longer identify as Catholics.[i] In the young adult population, the numbers are even worse.
Other questions arise: How many of those who go to Mass are intentional disciples who understand their identity as children of God? How many are open to sharing their faith? How many are seeking out opportunities to serve the poor? How many have a personal prayer life? How many are making good moral decisions?

While the numbers can seem overwhelming, the opportunities to make a change to something better are everywhere. For decades, the Church’s mode of operation with young adults in the average local community hasn’t changed much. Consequently, most young people feel disenfranchised from the Church and many have stopped caring about faith issues at all.

Algunas consideraciones para los padres de familia

En el último número, Jim Beckman describió como los ministros juveniles puedan trabajar con una mentalidad que respeta y habilita a los padres a familia para ser los catequistas principales de sus hijos adolescentes. Jim concluye esta serie que consta de dos partes, dirigiéndose a los padres de familia en cuanto a los puntos fundamentales para encaminar sus propios hijos hacia una vida en Cristo.

El discipulado se escribe T-I-E-M-P-O

Si es nuestra intención conducir a nuestros hijos hacia una relación más cercana a Cristo, primero y ante todo debemos de pasar tiempo con ellos. Por supuesto, el apartar tiempo para algo es un reto singular en la cultura de hoy en día. Pero no es imposible. Con un poco de creatividad, a menudo encontramos el tiempo en nuestra agenda semanal para las cosas que son prioritarias para nosotros - aun cuando originalmente quizás no creíamos que encontrar un tiempo adicional fuera posible. Pasar tiempo con nuestros hijos tiene que ser una de esas prioridades.

Those involved in youth and young adult ministry accompany and mentor young people as they center their lives on Christ. We hope you enjoy this testimony written by a young adult woman, who describes a significant instance of this conversion from her own life.

Recently, I spoke to 100 young adults on a retreat in the mountains of Prescott, Arizona. The majority of attendees were single and feeling uncertain about their lives and the direction the Lord was taking them. In addition, many spoke of the ache they have in their hearts—the longing they have to find someone to love them in marriage. I remember this feeling myself when I was a single younger adult praying for my vocation and wondering if God would ask me to be single for the rest of my life. The thought made me feel so sad and lonely. Then something changed.

“Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!” (The Hound of Heaven, Francis Thompson)

Christian history is awash with the affirmation that human beings have been created to desire God, like the beautiful “cor inquietum” of St. Augustine: “You have made us for yourself O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Since the sixteenth century, however, many academic philosophers have disputed this and have claimed that there is no evidence that human beings are “made for God.” I have no intention of entering into this controversy. Instead, I would like to draw attention to the insights of the saints and the teaching of the Church through the centuries. St. Thomas Aquinas expressed the same thought when he wrote, “Wherefore God alone can satisfy the will of man, according to the words of Ps 102… Therefore God alone constitutes man’s happiness;” and St. Francis de Sales wrote, “Thou hast made me, O Lord, for Thyself, to the end that I may eternally enjoy the immensity of Thy glory.” St. Alphonsus Ligouri had the same idea and worded it thus: “Eternal salvation… is the one and sovereign good of man, seeing that it is the one end for which he was created.” In our own time, the Catechism insists: “The desire for God is written in the human heart because man is created by God and for God… Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.” We can therefore rely on this desire to draw our students to God. My experience also tells me we can. Before I say how, I need to offer some caveats: first, it is God, who draws his children to himself at his appointed time; second, the individual human being is always free to reject God’s invitation; moreover, the relationship between God and the individual soul can never be reduced to an automated mechanical response: love can only be love if it is freely given and freely accepted.