Franciscan at Home

Rose’s Gift

My first year teaching kindergarten, I gained a whole new level of respect for Catholic parents of young children. The term “herding cats” could certainly have been applied to my first few attempts at taking my energetic class to Mass and adoration. Leading my 21 students up to the steps of the sanctuary each week for adoration was an act of radical trust every time. When I didn’t have a child trying to push over his friend while he was kneeling, I usually had at least one who was dangerously close to giving himself a “second baptism” in the parish’s large (and, to be fair, rather inviting) baptismal font.

What made this group particularly challenging catechetically was the fact that about half the class was not Catholic and many of them were not baptized. Everything was new to them, and I didn’t know where to even begin when it came to teaching them the faith. The textbook I had been given was sound, but it presumed that the children already had an impressive theological foundation for five- and six-year-olds. Taking my worries with me into the chapel at the end of that first week, I surrendered my plan for the year and asked the Holy Spirit for clarity in how to proceed.

His answer was clear: Bring them to me.

Returning the textbook to the shelf, the initial proclamation of the Gospel became the order of the day for that day and every day that followed. Every topic we explored in God’s lesson circled back to the person of Jesus and the goodness of God as a loving Father. This time together quickly became their favorite lesson of the day, only to be topped by our visits to Jesus. Knowing how important it was for my students to have this special time with our Eucharistic Lord, I was committed to making the regular “field trips” to the parish church, but I didn’t know how much of what I taught them was sinking in.

Youth ministers are some of the busiest people I know. And really, the same could be said of everyone who works in ministry. Whether it’s late-night Bible studies, weekend retreats, or countless hours spent tracking down registration forms, it’s incredible how quickly our schedules can fill up with events and tasks that seem to require our immediate attention. For the past 10 years, I have watched as this reality has led many of my peers and coworkers in parish ministry to a space of overwhelming stress, professional dissatisfaction, and, ultimately, burnout. All too often, the demands of ministry can lead us to feeling like we are barely able to keep our heads above water—both at work and in our personal lives.

I remember, a number of years ago, being in an exceptionally busy season of ministry and feeling like I was absolutely at my wits end. One evening in particular, I found myself in the adoration chapel dreaming about leaving my job in ministry to go work at Starbucks (mostly because I’d heard they had great health insurance). A few minutes into my reverie, I decided it might be a good idea to open my Bible. The Lord led me to the story of the prophet Elijah on Mount Horeb.

Now, many of us may have heard this story before, but let’s set the stage a little. If we rewind a few verses, we find Elijah on the run for his life, in a complete state of desperation and despair: “Enough Lord! Take my life, for I am no better than my ancestors” (1 Kgs 19:4b). This exclamation, which comes from a place of dejection, causes the Lord to send an angel to deliver one of my all-time favorite messages in Scripture: “Get up and eat or the journey will be too much for you!” (1 Kgs 19:7b). Elijah obeys and, after eating, his mood improves (which is just so incredibly relatable), and he sets off for Mount Horeb.

It’s on the mountain that Elijah bears his heart to God, sharing with him the heaviness he carries. He had followed the call the Lord placed on his life—to speak his Word to the chosen people, the Israelites—and the message he had given was not received. It was, in fact, met with hostility and violence. Elijah felt defeated. I must admit that it was at this point in my prayer that my heart began to stir. I knew what it was to feel defeated in the mission entrusted to me by God. I could deeply relate to the exhaustion and hopelessness that Elijah seemed to be communicating to the Lord. In that particular season of busyness, I felt often that I was pouring my heart, my time, and my energy out for an end that I never seemed to achieve.

When Catholics hear the word “priesthood,” our minds often jump to the parish priest at the altar. Yet, the Church teaches that all the baptized share in the one priesthood of Christ. This truth, while ancient, is often misunderstood, overlooked, or reduced to a vague notion of “service.” The priesthood of the baptized is not a lesser version of ordained ministry—it is a distinct, ontological participation in Christ’s own priesthood with its own dignity, power, and mission.

This article explores the biblical and theological foundations of the common priesthood, its relationship to the ministerial priesthood, and what this means for our daily Christian life and formation.

Biblical Roots: Christ the High Priest

The Letter to the Hebrews offers the clearest New Testament teaching on Jesus as high priest.[1] Unlike the Levitical priests, Christ’s priesthood is “according to the order of Melchizedek” (Heb 6:20)—unique, eternal, and perfect. Two qualities define his priesthood:

• Full humanity: “He had to be made like his brethren in every respect” (Heb 2:17). Christ stands in solidarity with us, able to sympathize with our weakness.
   
• Perfect holiness: By virtue of the Incarnation, his human nature was united to his divine person and wholly sanctified from the first moment of conception.

Christ’s priestly mission was to reconcile humanity to God—not merely by offering a sacrifice but by offering himself as the sacrifice (Heb 9:14). This priestly action began with his obedience to the Father at the Incarnation, was manifested at his baptism in the Jordan, and reached its climax in his Passion, Death, and Resurrection.

Participation in Christ’s Priesthood

The Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, teaches: “Though they differ from one another in essence and not only in degree, the common priesthood of the faithful and the ministerial or hierarchical priesthood are nonetheless interrelated: each of them in its own special way is a participation in the one priesthood of Christ.”[2]

How do we enter this priesthood? Through baptism,
which one might say configures us to Christ cum sensu Christo, “with the mind of Christ” (see 1 Cor 2:14–16), in the mode of his earthly priesthood. Confirmation deepens this configuration, empowering us cum voce Christo, “with the voice of Christ” (see Lk 10:16), for public witness and apostolic mission (see CCC 1777).

These sacraments imprint an indelible sacramental character on the soul: a permanent ontological capacity to worship God and to be an instrument of his grace.[3] In the common priesthood, this character allows the faithful to offer “spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God” (1 Pt 2:5) in every circumstance of life—at home, at work, in society—not just in liturgical settings.

Editor’s Note: The Jubilee year of hope comes to an end on January 6, 2026. In September 2025, the Church celebrated the Jubilee of Catechists, asking God’s grace upon all those who teach the faith. We are happy to republish below the homily of Pope Leo XIV given on this important occasion in the life of the Church and in the lives of each of us who have been invited by God to form others in the Christian life.

The words of Jesus convey to us how God sees the world, at every moment and in every place. We heard in the Gospel (Lk 16:19–31) that his eyes observe a poor man and a rich man: seeing one dying of hunger and the other gorging himself in front of him, the elegant clothes of one and the sores of the other licked by dogs (cf. Lk 16:19–21). But the Lord looks into the hearts of people, and through his eyes, we can also recognize one who is in need and one who is indifferent. Lazarus is forgotten by the one right there before him, just beyond the doorway of his house, and yet God is close to him and remembers his name. On the other hand, the man who lives in abundance is nameless, because he has lost himself by forgetting his neighbor. He is lost in the thoughts of his heart: full of things and empty of love. His possessions do not make him a good person.

The story that Christ tells us is, unfortunately, very relevant today. At the doorstep of today’s opulence stands the misery of entire peoples, ravaged by war and exploitation. Through the centuries, nothing seems to have changed: How many Lazaruses die before the greed that forgets justice, before profits that trample on charity, and before riches that are blind to the pain of the poor! Yet the Gospel assures us that Lazarus’ sufferings will come to an end. His pains end just as the rich man’s revelry ends, and God does justice to both: “The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried” (v. 22). The Church tirelessly proclaims this word of the Lord, so that it may convert our hearts.

Dear friends, by a remarkable coincidence, this same Gospel passage was also proclaimed during the Jubilee of Catechists in the Holy Year of Mercy. Addressing pilgrims who had come to Rome for the occasion, Pope Francis emphasized that God redeems the world from all evil by giving his life for our salvation. God’s saving work is the beginning of our mission because it invites us to give of ourselves for the good of all. The Pope said to the catechists: This is the center by “which everything revolves, this beating heart which gives life to everything is the Paschal proclamation, the first proclamation: The Lord Jesus is risen, the Lord Jesus loves you, and he has given his life for you; risen and alive, he is close to you and waits for you every day” (Homily, 25 September 2016). These words help us to reflect on the dialogue in the Gospel between the rich man and Abraham. The rich man’s plea to save his brothers becomes a call to action for us.

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A witness of faith and keeper of the memory of God; in experiencing the goodness and truth of the Gospel in his encounter with the person of Jesus, the catechist keeps, nourishes, and bears witness to the new life that stems from this, and becomes a sign for others. The faith contains the memory of God’s history with humanity. Keeping this memory, reawakening it in others, and placing it at the service of the proclamation is the specific vocation of the catechist. The testimony of his life is necessary for the credibility of the mission. Recognizing his own frailty before the mercy of God, the catechist does not cease to be the sign of hope for his brothers.

—Directory for Catechesis, no. 113[1]

The Memory of God in the Church

The Directory for Catechesis (DC) contains beauty and wisdom for those of us who seek to foster renewal in our own catechetical efforts and in catechesis for our Church. Two essential directives are (1) to look to the catechumenal model, the OCIA, as an analogy for how to develop and grow an evangelizing and kerygmatic catechesis, and (2) to define a catechist as someone who, “in collaboration with the Magisterium of Christ and as a servant of the action of the Holy Spirit,” is a “witness of faith and keeper of the memory of God . . . a teacher and a mystagogue . . . an accompanier and educator” (DC 113). While there is much that can be discussed to further understand these qualities, let us focus on how each of us is a catechist according to the Lord’s will and plan for us, through our baptism and by the working of the Holy Spirit. Each of us, as a member of the Mystical Body of Christ, retains and awakens anew the “memory of God” in our lives—and has the opportunity to reawaken this memory in others.

We have been baptized into a living body, one that already retains the memory of God’s saving plan and action through history, understood as salvation history, culminating in the Paschal Mystery of Christ and now bearing fruit in our own time and place through the grace of the sacramental life of the Church. Just as the lives of the saints, our brothers and sisters in faith who have gone before us, bear witness and announce to us that the Lord has a loving plan for each of us unique to who we are and our own time, so we are invited to embark on the path of holiness set before us. We, too, are called to bear the good fruit of drawing others to the Lord by our witness. What is the “memory of God” that we are to keep, if not the saving action of the Lord in our lives? Our Holy Father Pope Leo XIV reflected on this in a recent catechesis: “Dear brothers and sisters, when will we too be capable of interrupting our journey and having compassion? When we understand that the wounded man in the street represents each one of us. And then the memory of all the times that Jesus stopped to take care of us will make us more capable of compassion.”[2]

When one asks us about our past, our families, or our history, we will often be able to recount details of people and events that are personal and real, that enable another to enter into our memory and, in a way, make it their own. For example, our children may not have known our grandparents, or even our parents, but they may have a memory of them from the stories that we share. Likewise, we have not personally lived through the events of the Old Testament or the New, nor the many events of the Church’s life through the past centuries; yet, we can carry the memory of our brothers and sisters in faith as if they were part of our immediate family.

A strong community life within a parish does not just happen overnight. It is not the result of one specific curriculum or event but is woven together over time, creating a vibrant tapestry of unification in vision and way of life. When you enter a strong parish community for Sunday Mass, you feel alive, welcomed, and called to more. People of every age attend, the young and the old in necessary relationship, as a vibrant parish community is often multigenerational and a place people want to “come home” to and be part of. Together, they can weather the storms of staff and pastor changes or turbulent events. A strong community takes its strength from its intricate weave centered on Christ and his teachings and his sacraments, allowing for frays to be mended and the tapestry to grow.

After nearly 20 years of serving parishes, we have found that helping build strong community is our passion. We have seen real fruit not only for those immediately in front of us but for multiple generations. In the January 2022 issue of The Catechetical Review, we wrote an article titled “No Family Is an Island: The Necessity of Community Living,” in which we focused on our personal experience of building a large young family community within our parish. What began as our deep desire to grow in our faith life through a strong community like we had in college became with God’s grace a thriving, faithful community that included nearly all of the young families in the parish. Once you experience the tremendous blessings of full Catholic community, it is hard to imagine life without it.

In this article we wish to engage the question of how to build parish community from the perspective of parish planning. We have been asked by many people in ministry, “What is your secret to building parish community?” And though it would be easier if there was just one great program to follow, book to read, curriculum to buy, or priest to beg to be assigned to your parish, we have found the answer to be intentional work and a slow and steady weaving of the parish tapestry.

“Is it time for Narnia yet?” The beseeching eyes of my seven and eight-year-old students implored me to say a definitive yes. Smiling, I set my teacher’s book aside and picked up my copy of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. In an instant, the children were sitting in front of me, eagerly awaiting the next installment of the seven-book fantasy series penned by C. S. Lewis.

It was 2022. I was on the cusp of leaving teaching to enter a monastery, and as a parting gift to my students, I had decided to read the Chronicles of Narnia aloud to them over the course of a few months. Why? I firmly believed that in years to come, their memories of this series could potentially ignite embers of faith in their hearts or even fan them vigorously into flame. Yes, the language can be old-fashioned in parts; yes, some may recoil at the traditional gender roles or turns of phrase; and yet, there is something so delightfully compelling about these stories. Fans can easily relate, for instance, to what Kurt Bruner and Jim Ware describe as a “delicious” combination of pleasure and nourishment: “Both the dreams of fairyland and the promise of heaven invade the imagination at the same time, baptizing it with wonderful and unexpected effects.”[1]

The Catechetical Power of Fairy Tales

Recognition of the power of quality literature and story in stirring or deepening faith is not a new phenomenon. C. S. Lewis, for instance, attributed one of the keystones of his eventual conversion to reading George MacDonald’s Phantastes. Steeped in rich spiritual overtones, this story features a young man named Anodos whose desire for “fairy country,” kindled upon reading a fairy tale, stirs him to embark on a perilous yet delightful journey through an enchanted wood.[2] Notably, as David Downing outlines, Anodos becomes more attuned to the natural world around him and discovers within himself a “capacity for simple happiness.”[3] From a catechetical point of view, there is an almost Edenlike quality to this. Thomas Howard, for instance, alludes to it when he describes Narnia as the “forgotten country” residing deep in the inner sanctum of our imagination. Similarly, Joseph Pearce highlights our inclination to forget the divine image in which we were made and, hence, the heavenly homeland to which we truly belong.[4] Our natural longing for God and heaven, planted in us at the dawn of our existence, can be easily buried by the clutter and chaos of life.

Fairy tales can awaken this longing within us and reconnect us, paradoxically, with what is truly real. For instance, Lewis found himself enchanted by what he describes as the “quality of the real universe” found in MacDonald’s fantasies.[5] They seemed to prompt an enhanced appreciation of the hidden, illustrious qualities of the world around him or, in his words, “the divine magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live.”[6] This parallels Joseph Pearce’s claim that, far from one’s immersion in a good story constituting a diversion from reality, it is instead a delightful reversion to it.[7] The good “magic” of fairyland, he says, has a sacramental quality: the capacity to reflect heavenly realities to us and provide us with a lens through which we can perceive them.[8] Moreover, one can be both delighted and caught off guard by talking animals, fauns, centaurs, unicorns, and personified trees, and thus more receptive to the truths behind them. If, like Lucy, one of the major heroines of the series, we “see” with the humility and purity of a child, we may in fact be granted a “fleeting glimpse of Eden.”[9]

For adults, however, the many concerns and fast-paced nature of life can stifle our natural capacity for wonder and thus counteract this manner of “seeing.” When we consider, as the Directory for Catechesis outlines, that many sacramental recipients or aspirants have not actually experienced an explicit encounter with Christ and therefore are often unacquainted with the deep power and warmth of the faith, we can ponder the possibility of a disconnect between intellect and imagination.[10] As important as knowledge about Christ and the Church is, it is not enough to recall facts. We need to be immersed in the wonder of it all, to stand in awe of this divine spark within us, the luminous reality of which we are part, and the glorious destiny to which we are called. As such, before the work of catechesis can achieve its desired end of deeper and enduring intimacy with Christ, one of its preliminary tasks may be to unearth and kindle our capacity and natural longing for wonder. One possible avenue is the use of quality literature in catechesis, which opens up a whole world of possibility.

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In every age of the Church, God raises up saintly men and women whose holiness builds up the community of the Church. These saints are living reflections of the face of Christ in the world, and their lives invite our imitation on the path of holiness aided by God’s grace. In our own time, the Church continues to raise up for our imitation saintly men and women who respond to our baptismal vocation to Christian discipleship. They remind us that the Christian life is lived out precisely within the community of the Church and the Communion of Saints.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, highlights our communion with the saints when it teaches that:

It is not merely by the title of example that we cherish the memory of those in heaven; we seek, rather, that by this devotion to the exercise of fraternal charity the union of the whole Church in the Spirit may be strengthened. Exactly as Christian communion among our fellow pilgrims brings us closer to Christ, so our communion with the saints joins us to Christ, from whom as from its fountain and head issues all grace, and the life of the People of God itself. (CCC 957; quoting Lumen Gentium 50; cf. Eph 4:1–6)

Each liturgical year on the fourth day of October, the Church celebrates the memorial of St. Francis of Assisi. This beloved saint embraced radical discipleship through poverty and the preaching of the Gospel to all—rich and poor, lowly and exalted. St. Francis was, and continues to be, a builder of the community of the Church through his radical witness to holiness of life and missionary discipleship. As we join the Church in celebrating his saintly life and in imitating his saintly virtues, an exquisite illuminated manuscript from the early 14th century offers a stirring visual catechesis for our contemplation.

The Church recognizes that every parish community includes members with disabilities and earnestly desires their active participation. . . . Catholic adults and children with disabilities, and their families, earnestly desire full and meaningful participation in the sacramental life of the Church.[1]

The parish is where the local Church lives as family, called together by the Lord, amidst all the peace, goodness, beauty, joys, struggles, and sufferings of this world.[2] People with impairments belong in our families and parishes,[3] and the US bishops in their teaching about disciples with impairments and their families, highlight the essential role of the parish, the local and visible expression of the Eucharistic community.[4] This invitation to think not only about individuals but about the whole parish family is instructive and offers an opportunity to reimagine aspects of catechesis.

Turning to the Directory for Catechesis, we similarly find an exposition of multiple facets of the parish and sacramental life, including emphases on: staying close to families of people with impairments, solidarity, inclusion, shared ministry, and a recognition that people with impairments are not passive but active members of the parish.[5] I suggest that the Directory also encourages us to consider that the above characteristics are to be grounded in a fraternal and deeply personal love embodied in close Christian community—not just on Sundays but on each day of the week and not only in parish buildings but wherever Christians gather. We might consider what such love in the parish could look like through four interrelated perspectives on the ordinary, conversion, friendship, and new life.

The Ordinary

While it may sound odd to phrase it this way, the parish is to be for us an ordinary environment—that is, a normative expression of our shared life as Church.[6] And in that sense, to the degree that human impairment is part of this world, we lose out on some of the richness of this ordinary life when those with impairments and their families are separated physically or socially from the parish, perhaps in subtle or unrecognized ways[7] (such as not being made welcome at Mass or at parish events or being left out of parish planning), and pushed behind forbidding walls of strangeness, to adapt a phrase from Miguel Romero.[8] In contrast, a family unity among Catholics with and without impairments, lived out in the Church and the parish, should be a quite ordinary and usual exercise of faith that simultaneously provides a profoundly attractive witness to fellow Christians and to the world.[9]

Such unity is a striking illustration of Pope Leo XIV’s motto: “In the One, we are one.” Working together as a parish family to overcome some of the social barriers and negative stereotypes surrounding impairment and impaired people is a beautiful mission consistent with the Gospel and the witness of the apostolic Church. The communal tasks of discovering and embracing each other’s gifts no matter how out of sight, of listening closely for new voices of peace no matter how muted, and of dismantling social walls no matter how high can help a parish to flourish as a community of love (1 Cor 12:4–11).

Imagine a parish breakfast at which it goes without saying that some enjoying the food and company need help with eating or with having a conversation. Picture a gift bearer at Sunday Mass whose speech is to some extent inarticulate as a result of a traumatic brain injury, or an altar server or lector who is a regular at the Sunday Mass but sometimes takes him- or herself off the schedule due to the cyclical nature of a psychiatric disorder, or a faith formation team with a catechetical leader who uses a wheelchair.[10] All this and more should be ordinary for the parish.

Youth Ministry begins with ministering to young people. Though this statement appears self-evident from the title, it can be easy to forget this simple truth. As youth ministers, our time is often divided between writing lesson plans, answering emails from parents, developing programs and Bible studies, ordering pizza, and a host of other logistical and administrative tasks. But youth ministry is first and foremost about discipling young people—accompanying them on their journey toward Christ. In order to do this, we need to minister to their needs.

There is an old adage that goes, “teens don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” If we want to lead young people closer to Jesus, we need to begin by being attentive to their corporal and spiritual needs and ministering in those areas. In this article we’ll be focusing specifically on young people’s need for community, including practical steps we can take as youth ministers in ministering to this need.

Why Young People Need Community

In 2023, The US Surgeon General’s office released a public advisory titled Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. This eye-opening report documented some concerning trends in our country. As a whole, we are spending far less time socially connected to others in a meaningful way. Participation in community organizations has gone down drastically, with many young people opting for gathering virtually rather than in person. Unfortunately, these lower-quality interactions simply cannot meet young people’s need for meaningful connections with others. Social media, despite its name, can negatively impact young people socially and lead to greater feelings of isolation.[1]

Social media isn’t the only factor contributing to this; overscheduling extracurricular activities, smaller families, the pandemic, and a host of other sociological factors certainly play a role. As people who minister to young people, the question we have to ask ourselves is: what are we doing about this problem? The reality is that we are one of the first lines of defense against the loneliness epidemic. As Catholics, we believe that the human person was made for community with God and with other people. We know we cannot do it alone. Our youth groups and parishes can be a place where young people can experience authentic community, a taste of heaven on earth.