Confirmation Retreat

Well, we are gearing up for our Confirmation retreat this weekend. It is a busy time of year to organise a weekend retreat, but I think it works. It is part of the initial period of evangelisation at the start of our programme. We only have twenty 13-year-olds so it is possible to do this. We’re going to a youth retreat centre just outside London. The whole weekend is about EVANGELISATION!!

Youth 2000 retreat - a blueprint for effective youth evangelisation

The basic Gospel message. The reason we are taking them away for the weekend is to give them the space to hear it (between the homework slots ) We have planned everything as best we can to lead these young people to an encounter with Christ. This is what the whole weekend is about. My forte is sadly not youth evangelisation, and we no longer have a youth coordinator, so it has somewhat fallen in my lap. (A catechetical coordinator has to be all things to all people! PA, catechist, youth minister, counsellor, catechist trainer, diplomat, administrator, cook, liturgist, technician, babysitter, housekeeper…)But God is good (all the time!) and we are really blessed to have a great team leading this retreat, including a fantastic girl who has worked with us this month in the parish and two Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, and some great priests who will be dropping in at different points. Thank God for great youth evangelists

I recently came across this excellent article by Amy Welborn on the foundational and effective steps of youth evangelisation. She is basically saying, forget the gloss, the gimics, the “window-dressing” – the Holy Father shows us how it’s done. She identifies five key points which are at the heart of our evangelisation of young people:

1. Teach them who they are
2. Continually hold up Christ as the answer
3. Seeking Christ? He gave us the Church so that we could find him
4. The way of the Christian is the way of the Cross
5. Go out to all nations

This weekend, we will focus on 1 and 2. Who they are and Christ. Jesus and you. He loves you and wants to have a living relationship with you. That is the core message.

St John Bosco - patron of youth

So, we have lots and lots planned hopefully to facilitate this happening. For many of our teenagers it will be the first time they have been to Confession in a long while. For many of them, they will encounter Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament perhaps for the first time.

I pray for an awakening in their desire for God! This is the foundation that is needed for them to receive this year’s catechesis with open hearts.

At the same time, I know that evangelising young people is tough. I know it’s going to be a difficult weekend with not much sleep and goodness knows what other problems, but… call me mad, but I think it’ll be worth it

World Youth Day Madrid 2011

Welcoming the Holy Father to Madrid

Where do I begin?! 

I’m back from the most unforgettable ten days of my summer  

Let’s be honest – part of me thought that, at twenty-six, I was a bit old for World Youth Day, but Christ ALWAYS surprises. 

WYD has been full of so many diverse experiences. One of the best things was our group: we had a group of 85 amazing, talented, generous and fun young people. They came from many different backgrounds, schools and universities, and it was beautiful to watch friendships developing over the week and the group becoming really close. On the one hand, WYD is an inspiring experience of the universal, worldwide Church. But on the other hand, our group shared a more intimate experience of the Church each morning – we were blessed to have our own chapel in the crypt of the church where we stayed, and here we had a half-hour meditation each morning, followed by Mass, and on some days, catechesis. For me, these were really worthwhile moments of the day – it ensured that World Youth Day was an interior experience for us, as well as the more dramatic, external, exciting experience…

It might seem incredible that, as one person in a crowd of 1.5 million, you can experience the personal call to conversion. You might think that in a crowd that size, you feel pretty anonymous and insignificant. But amazingly, the experience of World Youth Day is the opposite. I was aware, without a shadow of a doubt, that Christ had called each one of us personally to be there. He was intimately present to each young person’s heart, knowing and loving us more deeply than we know and love ourselves. That love is experienced too through the great love of the Holy Father for the youth, who stayed with us in the rain, who did not abandon us. The depth of the call to personal conversion definitely takes you by surprise – Christ wants total holiness from us, not mediocrity, nothing half-hearted. He showed the completeness of his love, and invites us to give our complete selves too.

Finally – the role of suffering in World Youth Day! Yes, the Holy Father offers a plenary indulgence to the pilgrims, surely because the sacrificial aspect is like Purgatory itself! One of the life-giving things about the penitential parts of World Youth Day is that you are all in this together. Nowhere have I felt this more than in Madrid. On the five-hour walk in blazing heat to Cuatro Vientos, there was a severe shortage of water and shade. When we arrived at Cuatro Vientos, there seemed to be even less water and shade and, to top it all, a shortage of toilets. And stampedes of people crushing together whenever you wanted to get anywhere. Several people in our group fainted. Extreme conditions bring out both the worst and the best in people. It humbles you, because you realise how much you need the people around you, and how much they need you. World Youth Day forces you to forget your independence, your needs, and the standards of comfort you expect in your normal life, and to stay in solidarity with others. You have a choice – either you can fight for your own needs over others; or you can let go and realise your solidarity with everyone else who shares the same needs you have. 

I believe that somehow, this element of sacrifice and suffering heightens the joy that is characteristic of WYD. The same goes with sleeping on the floor and cold, communal showers for ten days – I am sure our group was closer and stronger because of these things.

Thank you, Holy Father, for being with us, for loving us! ESTA ES LA JUVENTUD DEL PAPA!!!

“Humanity is loved by God!…”

…This very simple yet profound proclamation is owed to humanity by the Church.”

 

This line is from a document issued by the Pontifical Council for the Family in 1995, The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality. Clearly it is a message thousands of young people need to hear urgently given the events of the past week in the UK.

Blessed John Paul II knew that young people needed to know the love God has for them, which is why he started the World Youth Days.

How timely it is that at this time millions of young pilgrims from around the world are getting ready to go to Madrid for World Youth Day, to hear of and experience the love of God.

At the end of August, there is another, more local, event to which young people each year gather to learn of and receive the love of God into their hearts: the Youth 2000 summer festival at Walsingham. Sometimes it seems like the Church is merely whispering the reality of God’s love to young people who are asleep, when we really need to enter their reality and proclaim it loudly so that they can hear. This is why events like the Youth 2000 festival in Walsingham are so important.

Here are a couple of clips: One about World Youth Day and one about Youth 2000. It’s not too late for young people to book for the Youth 2000 festival.