Christs' Message to Young People

What does Jesus ask of young people to do? What is His message for them? What is His challenge for them? Today in the Gospel reading we are given that message and as the Gospel was read and as the homily was given I began to reflect on the many conversations I have had with people who I care deeply about, whether close friends or kids in the youth groups I have been apart of and am apart of now. Todays Gospel was about the "rich young man" who, after having observed faithfully the Commandments all his life, went to Jesus daring to ask Him, "what more must I do?" Point number one, this man new that he was still lacking something. He was still empty inside despite everything he had already done. I think it is very common for people to feel this longing for something deeper and more substantial in their lives. Young people especially are drawn to finding the deeper meaning to things. Point number two, this man had the courage to ask Jesus what more he could do. I think often times we have the feeling that there is something more and we desire something more and we know without a shadow of a doubt that there is in fact something more to life than what we have, but we often fail to take the extra step of what this man did and stand before Jesus and actually ask him for the answer to our question. I think we often fail to do this because we are afraid of the answer and we see in the Gospel that the man despite having that longing for something more and despite having the courage to ask did not like the answer he got. "What more must I do Lord?" And Jesus says in reply, "Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven: then come, follow me." The man then walks away sad because he has many possessions. I cannot begin to express how frustrating it can get for me to talk to so many young people who have the same response as this man in the Gospel. We find ourselves living in a society that teaches us that more is better and we must keep ourselves busy all the time with the various material things in our lives which we must have or we will not be happy. And not necessarily always material things eaither. I think the main point that Jesus has for young people and really all people is don't let your possessions get in the way of entering into relationship with other people and most importantly not letting things in this world get in the way of entering into relationship with Jesus Christ. And if they do keep us from entering into that relationship then go and sell them and give to the poor. When I talk to young people I get this general message. They are like the man in the Gospel who know there is something more, something deeper, some even have the courage to ask what more must I do, though not very many are able to get this far, but then the ones who do get that far then react like the man in the Gospel. But to be fair every once in a while some do follow Jesus' last instruction and when they do they are truly happy because of it. What is keeping us from building a relationship with Jesus? We may think that our relationship with Jesus is good as it is. We may think that our faith life and our prayer life is good enough. The only problem with that is that in this life we will never be at that point in our relationship with God that we cannot go deeper. There is always more, but do we accept that? We have our Ipods and Ipads, we have our cell phones, we have our playstations, X-Box's, and Wii's, we have DVD players and T.V.'s. We have computers full of things like Facebook and Myspace. We have Twitter and texting. We have school, we have work, and we have sports teams. But do any of these matter if we don't first of all have a deep and continuosly growing and deepening relationship with Jesus? Do the things I have mentioned above often keep us too busy and take our focus off of our faith and prayer life? The question I think Jesus is asking in this Gospel passage is, "are you, my children, who I love so deeply, willing to give up the things that distract you from Me? Are you willing to give these things up and in response enter into a deeper relationship with Me? Are you willing to Give up everything to follow me?" He calls the man in the Gospel to not only sell his possessions, but also to follow Him. Are we willing to do this? Can we let go of everything and follow after Christ? Lent is coming up soon. A perfect time to maybe start getting rid of the things in our lives that distract us and start spending more time in prayer, more time at Church, more time with each other, people who are a positive influence and will help us grow in our faith, and ultimately more time with Jesus. It is a very challenging message. But it is what Christ asks of us. Are we willing to answer His call? Are you willing?

Peace and all good,
Jason

Discernment

Last week all of us postulants were on a discernment retreat up in Orangeville, Toronto. Yes, way up in Canada! And I do have to say that it came at a pretty good time. Mostly because I was already beginning to enter into a time of my own discernment. This week just gave me some extra time to think. So what was I thinking about? What was I discerning? As you may already know, my ministry here in Milwaukee is at St. Francis of Assisi Parish working with the youth group there. We just had our retreat not to long ago and in my opinion it didn't go well. But at the same time more kids are coming to youth group every week so I guess maybe I was wrong. Maybe it didn't go how I wanted it to go, but it went how God wanted it to go and thats the imoprtant part. But I began thinking alot after the high school retreat. I began wondering if this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Because in my mind I failed. I began praying that God would show me how to minister to these kids. And to get to the point what was going through my mind was that I am a white guy from a mostly white suburban area growing up in a nice middle class family. Every youth group I have worked in up until now has been upper middle class to the low end of upper class. And now here I am ministering in the inner city, with inner city kids of minority racial backgrounds. Now I find that I am the one who is in the minority. That is a huge switch for me. And I have been trying to find a way to connect with these kids. And I keep doubting my ability. Then a few days before we left for Canada I had a profound, yet terrifying thought that came to my mind as I was praying about all of this. I was praying, and when I say praying I mean I was mostly complaining, to God that I don't know if I'm the right person for this ministry. There has to be someone better than me. But unfortunately no one ever puts any effort or money into inner city youth programs and I thought if no one else is going to do it then who is? And in the depths of my heart a heard a soft and gentle voice respond, "You are." And it scared the crap out of me. It's one of those moments where you just want to laugh at God and be like you've got the wrong guy. You got me mixed up with someone else. So what do I do with this? Well I took it with me on my discernment retreat and thought a lot about it. But the thing about discernment is that it is ongoing. I didn't get the answer while on the retreat. But it gave me the time to pray about how I am suppoosed to minister to these kids. How can I connect with them? So a series of events took place. Our last day in Toronto we were walking around the city with the Canadian Candidates. Guys who are thinking about beginning postulancy next year. And one of them worked in education and he was telling me that to connect with kids you have to find out what they are interested in and then become interested in that yourself so you can talk on their level. I didn't really think much of it at the time because I thought I knew that already. Obviously I didn't. On Saturday we left Toronto for Chicago. It was about a 12 hour drive so it gave me a lot of time to think and so I was praying more about this whole situation and suddenly what that Candidate told me sank into my head. What are the kids interested in? Become interested in it. Well they all love rap music. So I began to think that maybe a way to connect with them was through rap. We could do a bible study and then from there we could as a group write a rap song together about how the message of the scripture passage is relevant to them in their lives. One of the kids already writes his own rap music so I thought this could actually work. For the first time in a long time I was filled with joy and excitement about my ministry. I feel like this could be it. This could be how I start to make a breakthrough with the kids. Take what they already love and re-direct it to fit the message. Isn't that what evangelization is all about? Heck Saint Paul did it in Athens when the people were questioning him he pointed out to them "You Athenians, I see that in every respect you are very religious. For as I walked around looking carefully at your shrines, I even discovered an altar inscribed, 'To an Unknown God'." (Acts 17:22-23) He took what they knew already. They had an altar to an unknown god because they knew that there would always be a god they didnt know about so they wanted to make room for it. And he took that and turned that unknown god into the God of heaven and earth. The only God, creator of all things. He re-directed them in their worship. He re-directed the altar of the unknown god to fit the Christian message. I hope I am able to do the same with these kids. Pray for me that God will guide me in my ministry.

Peace and all good,
Jason