 Hello, good morning. So sorry I'm late, let's dive right in. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Almighty God and Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of your love for us. We thank you that you sent your son so that we might not perish but have eternal life. Your son who became incarnate among us and walked with us so that we would know your face and your love. May we also in that image and ministry be able to walk with young people and those that you put in our lives. We ask this all through Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, good morning everybody. Yes, I did get to hold my grandson yesterday. So that was awesome. Yay. My wife has him. I don't know, they're on Facebook. It looks like a baby. You know, they all look the same. I'm convinced like the photographer just pretends to take pictures but he's just got stock photos of like small children. You can see I'm really a romantic about that kind of stuff. So today we're gonna talk about charigmatic accompaniment with teenagers. We hear the word accompaniment a lot and the phrase charigmatic accompaniment actually was lifted from the Vatican released something about the marriage catechumenate like a catechuminal program for marriage and they use this phrase in it. A charigmatic accompaniment with people which I just think really gives a beautiful emphasis to the goal of accompaniment which is really to lead them more deeply into the message of Jesus Christ. And so accompaniment, the word literally in Latin means to break bread with. That's what the word accompaniment means to break bread with. And obviously that comes most beautifully in the image of the road to Emmaus, Luke chapter 24. Now on that very day, two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred. And it happened that while they were conversing and debating Jesus himself drew near and walked with them but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. He asked them, what are you discussing as you walk along? They stopped looking downcast. One of them named Clopis said to him and reply, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place in these days? And he replied to them, what sort of things? They said to him, the things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene who is a prophet mighty and deed and word before God and all the people and how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him. But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel. And besides all this it is now the third day since this took place. Some women from our group however have astounded us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body. They came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive. Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described but him they did not see. And he said to them, oh foolish you are, how slow of heart to believe all the prophets spoke. Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things then enter into his glory and then beginning with Moses and all the prophets? He interpreted them what referred to him in all the scriptures. As they approached the villages to which they were going he gave the impression he was going on further but they urged him stay with us for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over. So he went in to stay with them and it happened that while he was with them at table he took bread, said the blessing, broke it and gave it to them and with that their eyes were opened and they recognized him but he vanished from their sight. What a beautiful story that the Gospel of Luke gives us. Obviously there's a lot of ways you could apply it. Maybe the most beautiful way is in the liturgy and certainly in the RCIA. But Pope Francis in his document, Christus Vivit which was his exhortation on young people. Really uses that image of the road to Emmaus to help us have an understanding of the manner in which Christ wants to accompany us. Everything that we do we're always looking to Jesus. How did Jesus do this? That's one of the beautiful things about the scriptures is that we not only look to the scriptures for the content but also the method. Those of you that have had me for master's class or have been part of our program know that the revelation of scripture is also not just what he said but how he said it and we as best we can want to continue to model the very means by which God did ministry to us now we are called to do that with others. And so the story of the road to Emmaus then really is a very beautiful and profound moment that in some ways is very surprising or at least we should allow ourselves to be surprised. So maybe a good way to look at it is well what else could Jesus have done? You know like if Jesus wanted to reveal himself to these disciples who are going the wrong way I mean they're walking away from Jerusalem. You know they couldn't leave until Sunday, right? Cause Saturday was the Sabbath and the Passover. So as soon as Sunday hit they were getting out of dodge. Right? You know Christians were being persecuted and he was a follower of Jesus. They just went through this horrible traumatic event and so they're gone. You know they're leaving town because they know better, right? They're not gonna stick around and see what might happen to them. And of course their hearts are heavy as they're walking. Well now the goal of Jesus is he wants to reveal himself resurrected to them. You know he wants them to recognize him in the Eucharist and he would like them to go back. And he'd like him to go back to Jerusalem and rejoin this community that they had left that they are a necessary part of. Well you know, WWJD what would Jesus do in this? Well I feel like sometimes we might think if we didn't know this story that as they're walking on the road Jesus appears to them shining in glory and they fall on their face before the Lord. And Jesus points to them and says you're going the wrong way. I have resurrected. Get your butts back to Jerusalem now. And then he disappears with angels and they go okay and they run back. Right? Maybe you don't think that but that's a way it could happen. Sadly I would argue with you that I think this is often the way the church tries to talk to young people. You know? This is the truth. God is here. Get yourself, you know, straighten up and fly right and get back there. We can be very impatient with young people. And I think sometimes, and I would say this, you know you might not realize this but Franciscan is slightly on the conservative side of things. I know that's a shock, it's a shock. We'll break into small groups and process that later. But I would say one of the difficulties that I struggle with sometimes is certainly we want to proclaim the truth. And I don't think the idea of listening to young people equals watering down the truth. You know, because it wasn't that case for Jesus who was the way of the truth in the life. I'm amazed at how Jesus, first of all he shows up among them and they don't recognize him and he just starts walking with them. Again, walking where? In the wrong direction with them. He just starts going with them on this journey. And he starts asking questions. You know, are you the only one that doesn't know about these things? And he goes, I don't know what things, right? Because he wants to hear, he knows what happened. He just wants to hear their experience of it. How did they process this? What is going on in their hearts? He doesn't need the details. He's really looking for the journey. He's looking for their emotion. He's looking for their perspective on it. And the humility of Jesus, right? That he's walking with these two guys and he's listening to them as they're explaining what he just went through. I bet he knew it better than they did. You know? I mean, I bet at one point, you know, they're saying, oh, and he was whipped 38 times and Jesus is like, 39, please continue, please continue, you know, right? I mean, he was the guy that knew the most about this. And in his humility, in his humility, he just wanted to hear. And I think it's interesting, obviously the Gospel of Luke doesn't give us everything that was said, but this one, you know, where it ends, I think is important because they're talking to him and they're talking to him and they're saying things. But listen to, after he breaks in, it's really what they said. It wasn't so much the details, it was what they felt. They said this, that we were hoping he would be the one to redeem Israel. That was the heart of it. I believe that's really what Jesus was listening. Like, so what's going on in your heart right now? Like, why are you leaving? And it was, they were despairing. We were really hoping that this would be the guy. And it seems clearly that it's not. This path of accompaniment needs to begin in a dialogue of love. It begins by walking with young people. I love this, again, this vision that this phrase, charismatic accompany, it means that we're not, we're not gonna walk with them off a cliff, right? You know, like we're not, we should love them enough to meet them where they are. But we love them too much to leave them there. We have a gift. And this was, again, the whole plan of Jesus. Jesus wasn't just gonna keep walking and be like, well, it never came up, I guess I'll just keep walking. Like, he had a very specific goal that he wanted to share his life with them. He wanted to free them from the despair that they had experienced. You know, they were crushed. These were disciples. I think another thing that's important is I, sometimes I feel like maybe we stretched the road to Emmaus a little bit too far. We wanna remember that in this story, these are people who knew and loved Jesus, had followed Jesus, were disciples of Jesus. This isn't their first encounter with Jesus. You know, they had a relationship, but they've fallen away. They've fallen away because they were scared. They've fallen away because they didn't know what was going on. And Jesus and his kindness and his midst meets them in this place of woundedness, meets them in this place of walking away. And then he begins to reveal himself to them. But even as he's explaining the scriptures to them and breaking them open, he's still not saying who he is. You know, he's really giving them the dignity. And this is what's so beautiful and so important about accompaniment. You know, if we wanna be like Jesus, we want to give our young people the dignity of discovering Jesus in their own heart and in their own life. Not just being told about Jesus, but the dignity of discovering Jesus. That's what Jesus gave them in that moment, that he allowed them to come to that, their own realization of who he was. And he was sharing scriptures and he was sharing the truth. And then at the end culminated in the breaking of the bread. And it was in that moment, they finally recognized that you've been with me the whole time. I would love to be able to force that recognition on other people, right? Especially people that we love so much. Like we just want them to get it. But that's a process of the Holy Spirit. You know, I've done ministry now 30 years. Many of you have done that and then some. And I can say this with great confidence. I've never changed a person's heart because conversion is a work of the Holy Spirit. But the Holy Spirit has used me and the love I have for others and my witness in the things I've said to be that spark, to be that engine, to be that very thing that allows them to open their eyes. But we can't, you know, forcibly open somebody's eyes. That is the work of the Holy Spirit. And even Jesus is sensitive to this. That he never actually says, hey, I'm Jesus. He just lays out all the truth and all the things that are going on until eventually they can say, they recognized him in the breaking of the bread. And they follow up by saying, you know, as I look back, wasn't he here the whole time? Wasn't our hearts burning within us? I love hearing witnesses of young people after retreats. And many of them almost say the exact same thing. Like I encountered Jesus, but then I recognized he's been with me the whole time. You know, they look back in their life and they see, and we've seen that, right? Like in the dark times, Jesus, where are you? But then we get an insight and we look back and there he was in the darkness. There he was in the difficulty, walking with us and loving us. He shows a beautiful example of patience. And not just patience, I would also say patient confidence. I think that's something that's really key when we talk about accompanying young people, that I have a very patient confidence when I am spending time with young people, when I'm building relationships with young people. I don't know when the Lord is gonna have this moment for them, but I don't feel the need to force it. I'm just gonna let the spirit do what the spirit does. And I'm gonna be very docile to the spirit because God's timing is perfect, but ours are not. And I feel like for most of us, or maybe I'm just speaking to me, I have a tendency to wanna rush things. I wanna rush conversions in young people because I just want them to know the love of God because I see the mess that they're in. I know God is, I know Jesus is the fullness of life. I want them to experience that. So I often, I'm kinda like that chef that keeps opening the oven and keeps checking it. And I don't, can I microwave this instead of cook this, right? And I would say that maybe that's sometimes the church's attitude. Can we just put this in a microwave and hit a button in 30 seconds? We've got, you know, disciples of Jesus. When actually for many young people, it's like a slow cook, you know? It's like, you know, but that's what makes it that much more beautiful and that much more incredible. To have that confidence that Jesus cares more about this young person than I ever could. And that any passion I have for this young person comes from the heart of Jesus. Jesus is allowing me to share in the passion that he has for these young people. And so I don't wanna move until he tells me to move. I really do just want to be a part of their life and look for those opportunities to share the gospel when it's genuine, when it's appropriate, and when it's just a reflection. Again, you know, I love them and I, and because I love them, I wanna share the gospel with them. And that's not manipulation. I think sometimes there's, understandably there can be a concern of proselytization among any times we're passing on the faith. You know, that my only goal is to make you a convert and if you're not a convert, I'm outta here. I would say that obviously we shouldn't be doing that but that shouldn't be confused with the fact that I really do love these young people. And because I love these young people, I really want them to know about Jesus. And if they know that I'm motivated by love, they listen and we have great conversations. If they feel I'm motivated because I need to hit some kind of quota, forget about it. And young people, more than anybody, can sense that 100 miles away. They are so used to being marketed to and sold to. And so in some ways, this idea of accompaniment is essential because Mark Ostrizer, who used to work in youth specialties forever ago, but he had this great thing. He said, he talks about in communities, there's belief, behavior, and belonging. And he said, the problem is that many times in our Christian communities, we make this deal that if you believe what we believe and behave as we behave, you can belong where we belong. But the truth of the matter is just for evangelization in general and of course this certainly applies to young people. The conversion comes first through belonging. That's where it begins. It's through the belonging in a faith community that they see the behaving and start modeling themselves after that so that they can end up believing. It's very inverted from how we often approach ministry. We think if I teach them and then I model it for them, then they can be part of the community. But the truth is it's being in the community that they see models. And the models are what really teaches them. That's why the first stage of evangelization is always the witness. They need to see the gospel lived out before they're gonna be open to believing that the gospel is true. They need to see changed lives. They need to see joyful lives. They need to see something that's attractive. Bishop Barron often talks about with young people how beauty is such an essential element of ministry with young people today and it's very true. And I love what Pope Francis talked about in Evangelic Gaudium. He talked about the via polkretudeness, the way of beauty. And that's an essential part of evangelization. But he emphasized that the way of beauty isn't just about how nice the room looks or the art that we use or the music that we play. And it's not denouncing that stuff. But the true beauty that young people are looking for are joyful disciples of Jesus Christ. People whose lives have been changed and transformed by the love of God. People who have a peace that the world cannot give. People who have a joy that can't be bought at a store. People who are real, people who are fallible, people who make mistakes. You know, the goal isn't that we need to appear as a super Christian. And again, sometimes that can be our default or certainly it can be my default. You know, if you look at my Instagram page, it's none of the ugly pictures of me. It's all the nice pictures of me, right? And all of us do that, yeah? And that is our natural tendency as we appear in front of everybody. We always want to go, okay, do I look good? You know, and it's a natural thing to put our best foot forward. And I'm not suggesting that we don't do that. But if we're not careful, we can come across as a caricature of Christianity. We can come across as something that's fake or something that's not attainable. If I make it sound like I love Jesus and I have no problems in life and I've always loved Jesus and I have no doubt and my prayer lives are always in ecstasy and everything's great, then somebody actually is more discouraged than encouraged by hearing that. They go, well, gosh, that's great that you have that. I wish I did. But it's actually when we share our brokenness, as St. Paul talked about. It's in our weakness that he is strong, that when we are honest about the difficulties of the faith life, one of the things I loved about this summer's Youth Conference, and Katie mentioned it yesterday, the theme was refuge. And we use the verse from Matthew, you know, come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for my yoke is easy and my burden light. And it gave us a chance to talk with young people about this idea of a yoke, that there is a yoke involved in following Jesus. You know, it's either the yoke of the world or the yoke of Christ. There's no no yoke option. You know, like everyone's asking for the no yoke option. Can I just run in frolic in the fields? No, there's no yoke option. You're either gonna be yoke to the world which is gonna drive you down into the ground or you can be yoked to Jesus. And what does that look like? And how is that possible? And it's the witness of our lives. And I focus lives because really it's in a community of faith that young people can experience this, that they can come to a deeper understanding of Jesus. It's more of an apprenticeship in faith. It's about being mentors. I think that's a really good way of thinking about accompaniment. It's this idea that we are walking together towards the gospel truths, towards the realization of the love of God. But the love has to be genuine. And I mentioned this yesterday, but it's just worth saying, continually ask God to give you His heart for the young people that you're working with. Because many times youth ministry can become more about ministry than about youth. And I think that's why sometimes even this idea of accompaniment and accompanying young people, I'm gonna try to get into some details as we get deeper into this workshop. We've got safe environment. We've got these things. What are you talking about? What is a relationship supposed to look like? These are the things I'd like to unpack a little bit in this workshop. But I wanna just make it really clear that ministry only happens through relationships. That's how it happens through relationships. Books are great. Videos are great. Talks are great. But all of those only really work in the context if we have the relationship. I remember when the Passion of the Christ came out, that movie came out. And it meant obviously a beautiful movie. And at the time, many thought that this was going to evangelize the world. This was such a gorgeous movie about the life of it's gonna just evangelize the world. And I was a part of some different Christian and Catholic groups at the time. And there was a lot of evangelicals who were buying out entire theaters to show people the passion and doing all this stuff. And I remember reading an article about six months later. And the title was, Did the Passion Evangelize? And the answer was no. Actually, they found that most of these churches that had done that were quite disappointed in how new people coming to see the movie would respond. Now what they found was that people who loved Jesus thought this movie was the most incredible gift ever. And they were moved to tears. But you bring a stranger in there. And I had a buddy of mine who wasn't a believer but decided to go see it. And he texted me afterwards. And he used more colorful language, so I won't use it. But he just said, what was that movie about? I just watched two hours of a guy getting the crap beat out of him. And it was like, you don't have a relationship with that guy. I mean, I saw it and I'm weeping, right? But he doesn't. And I think if you don't have the relationship it doesn't matter how beautiful the presentation is. If you don't know who it's about, it doesn't matter. And I think sometimes that's the disconnect that we can have, we who believe. We can stand up in front of young people or anybody and we can be moved and we can be crying at the beautiful words we're saying and we can just think, this is so incredible and they're staring at us. Because they don't know the who that we are talking about. In fact, I'm convinced and I've said this a few times that one of our biggest problems in faith formation is we spend more time talking about what God wants of us than who God is. Because what God wants of us makes it a very difficult, moral, religious code. But who God is helps us fall in love. And that's the desire of God. When we talk about modeling ourselves after the pedagogy of God, we have to realize that the Old Testament version was God speaking from a distance and through prophets and stone tablets and other things. And that had a limited effect. But in the New Testament the word becomes flesh and dwelt among us. It's an incarnational attitude that he walks among us. And again, just like he did in the road to Emmaus, the first thing he didn't say was, hey, I'm God, bow down and worship me. He slowly revealed himself. And that's that humble patience of accompaniment that we have to be confident that we can slowly reveal God and allow them to step by step come to their own recognition that Jesus Christ is Lord. I think it's interesting that when Jesus went to synagogues and the demons were there, what did the demons shout? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. It's an interesting statement. Why would they say such a thing? Like, I mean, the devil's the Lord of lies. Why didn't he just lie about stuff? The devil was actually trying to ruin Jesus's pedagogy. Jesus didn't wanna reveal himself just then and the devil was trying to ruin his ministry by jumping ahead to the end and saying, oh, here's the Messiah because everybody had their own idea of what Messiah was and that wasn't what Jesus was. And so even the devil was trying to screw up Jesus's ministry by skipping to the end without allowing the apostles to have their own moments, right? I mean, like one of the reasons we think that moment of St. Peter saying, you are the Christ, the Son of God is so beautiful is because Jesus allowed Peter to have that moment of recognition. He said everything out there but when Peter said it himself, that was the ministry and that's the beauty of it. And so part of the idea then of this accompanying, now I'm not saying like, don't stand up and say Jesus is God, right? Like I'm not doing those things but I'm talking about in a relational level that we're able to, you know, where are you at? We're able to listen to young people. We're able to know their stories, know their faces, know their names. You know, the most important vocabulary word in all of our brains is our own name. And God who calls us by name, we need to be able to call our young people by name. That's really, I actually struggle with names. It's like my kryptonite in ministry. And so in the beginning of every year, I would find stupid reasons to take pictures of kids but I would do that so I could write their names on it and I could pray looking at, you know, a book of just their pictures and their names and calling them by name. That is all part of the ministry of accompaniment. In this path of accompaniment then we wanna be aware that there's kind of stages that we wanna walk in. And Pope Francis really beautifully writes about that in Christ is Vivid. He talks about aspects of Jesus' life that can prove inspiring for all those young people who are developing and preparing to take up their mission in life. And he draws three points out of the life of Jesus that we can see reflected in the life of young people. Growing in a relationship with the father and awareness of being part of a family and a people and openness to being filled with the Holy Spirit and led to carry out the mission God gives them, their own personal vocation. These three moments of really, you know, various ways we accompany them that, and I would say these can actually kind of highlight the goals in some ways of what we wanna help young people do. We wanna help them grow in their identity as a son and daughter of God. We wanna have them be more rooted in their family and their community. And we want them to be filled with the Holy Spirit in openness to the vocations to which the Lord is calling them. And he goes on to say, this is the same point, none of this should be overlooked in pastoral work with young people lest we create projects that isolate young people from their family and the larger community or turn them into a select few protected from all contamination. Rather, we need projects that can strengthen them, accompany them, and impel them to encounter others to engage in generous service in mission. If you've taken classes or if you've been in our track for a little bit, one of the things that we continually try to emphasize is ministry with young people is more than a youth group, though a youth group can be a great part of ministry with young people. There certainly is an element where young people can thrive just being among their peers, and there's a lot of great ministry that can be done in that context, particularly for those that might not feel connected to the community, this can be a great entry place into it. But it can't just stay there. I think that is, in some situations we've seen this occur, where a youth ministry is purely a youth group. It almost becomes its own separate little youth parish with the youth minister as like their own little youth pastor of this. And they might have a fantastic experience in this youth group with the youth leaders, but then they graduate and they go off, and at best we've kind of trained them to be really good Protestants, just like find a group of people and find a little church you like and a dynamic leader and have a great time. The challenge is really trying to integrate the young people into the wider community, into the community of faith. And it's a challenge both for the young people, but also the adults in the parish who many times are very happy to send them to the kids' table and they would much rather them have their own mass and their own group and we can do our thing, right? The division between adults and young people is a societal division. Chap Clark who's a well-known writer in youth ministry circles, he says he goes so far as to say that our society has abandoned young people. We've abandoned them to institutions where we want them to be in a high school and then we wanna send them to college and we really don't wanna have to deal with you until you're maybe in your mid-20s. And so that societal understanding is really difficult and I would say it's particularly strong in Anglo cultures, that we really like just send them off to boarding school. That would be great, do those kinds of things. And this idea of family, familia, community, extended family, that's something that many of our parishes, many of our community struggle with. And because of that, our young people really struggle with it. They're no dummies. For many young people, they don't have any relationships with adults outside their own family members. And the society in which we live drives them to such insane schedules that they're often just going from a teacher to a coach to something else. And even active loving families might not get the face time that they would hope to have with young people. And so one of the gifts that we can have, I think as a faith community and our ministry programs is really just that opportunity to draw them into a place of belonging and into community. We can try to help slow things down a little bit for them in their life. And we can surround them with people who love them and can help walk with them in all these various stages. Let me go back to what he said earlier in that quote, but I'll put it in a little bit of a different graphic. These three movements then that we see reflected in the life of Jesus that we truly want to help accompany young people reflecting in their own walk. I think this isn't necessarily one, two, three. I think in some ways they all kind of, it's more of a spiral that keeps happening, but it's, one does build on the other. That first part of who are they? That is really the question, particularly teenagers start asking, you know, who am I? It's a shift in the early adolescents, they ask the question, who's am I? They're all about identifying with the group and those around them. But as they kind of move from early adolescents into later adolescents, this is, you know, sophomore, junior year perhaps, maybe even freshman for the more mature. They start asking the question, well, who am I, you know? And we, and the answer is found in a relationship in a relationship with the heavenly father that they were made for something so much more than what the world has to offer them. And again, it's the witness, it's the mentorship of disciples of Jesus who can talk about their own identity as being sons of God, as being daughters of God. Young people are understandably stressed about what are they gonna do in life and all these other things, where are they gonna go to college, the bad economy, these other things. But if we can help them just start understanding that it's not about what you do, but who you are and the love that God has, that's the foundation for all of us. And that's the foundation for all of us to be followers of Jesus Christ. And they discover that identity in the midst of family and in the midst of community. One of the things I think is beautiful about many ministry programs with young people is the goal is gathering lots of volunteers and lots of people. Many of our students, well, many of them go into youth ministry, many of them go into teaching at schools, and one of the challenges in schools is you're like one person and 30 students. And I mean, it's not insurmountable, but it's a challenge, but it's way better if you can be in an environment where there's a lot more adults, all of whom are frequently sharing their witnesses, giving of their time, really trying their best to love the young people. That this awareness that American culture and consumeristic culture can really make us feel so isolated, but you're a part of something, you're a part of a family. If he is our father, that means we are brothers and sisters, and how to deal with family, whether it's your biological family or your communal family, that becomes a really important part of it. And finally, your vocation, and one of the things I don't have time to go into it, but read the encyclical, Pope Francis tries to just move away from thinking of vocations as priesthood, married life, single life, which is important, but what are the, maybe the smaller V vocations? What's your giftedness? What's your voice in the world? We talk about vocation, which is certainly God's call, but also it has that word vox in it. It's our response. What is your voice in the world? It's one of the things I've actually loved the most about doing youth ministry is affirming in young people their skills and their giftedness. And you might even think when you are a teenager, some of the most valuable conversations you had with adults is when they pointed out your skills and your giftedness. Oh, you're really good at that. You should do that. They're looking for that kind of affirmation, and we can give them that very positive affirmation in the life of faith. These things in some ways happen all at once, but certainly they're built on each other, and that's part of the community. And Pope Francis says a little bit later in the document this, he says, in addition to the ordinary well-planned pastoral ministry that parishes and movements carry out, and he's saying in addition to, okay, so like he's not saying that's a horrible idea, don't have youth ministry programs, don't have groups and other stuff like that. That's not what he's saying. But he's saying in addition, he talks about this idea of allowing room for a more popular youth ministry with a different style, schedule, pace, and method, broader and more flexible. It goes out to those places where real young people are active, fosters the natural leadership qualities and charisms sewn by the Holy Spirit. It tries to avoid imposing obstacles, rules, controls, and obligatory structures on these young believers who are natural leaders in their neighborhoods and other settings. We need only to accompany them and encourage them, trusting a little more in the genius of the Holy Spirit who acts as he wills. I mentioned this yesterday. The audience for Christ is vivid really were more like 16 to 30 year olds. And so in some ways, Christ is vivid maybe leans a little bit using some of our language that we use at times towards young adults than to youth. But I think this does certainly apply as we look at our older adolescents. Again, at the bottom end, the 16, the 17, the 18 year olds. It is a common question I get when I travel. How do you keep upperclassmen involved in ministry? We get freshmen and sophomore, but then when they're juniors and seniors, they seem to kind of fizz out. Oh, okay, well tell me more about the program. What do you do for the juniors and seniors? Well, we have youth group. Now I said, what are you doing for the juniors and seniors? Well, we have youth group. And we can think that, well, we have youth group. So that should be freshman, sophomore, junior, seniors. It's like, no, that's the problem. I really think that many, the parishes I've seen do youth group well, they recognize our youth group is an evangelistic, charismatic proclamation really focused on freshmen and sophomores trying to get the basic gospel message in to their lives in a somewhat structured way. They might take them to a youth conference or a work camp or do other things. But once they've received that message, they're ready for something more. And actually what they're looking to be is something more like what Pope Francis is talking about, this idea of something a bit more popular, a little bit less rigid, not so programmatic, really responding to their giftedness. This is what they get at high school, to be honest. By the time they're juniors and seniors in high school, many high schools are very active in promoting them to positions of leadership, finding their giftedness, they're doing projects or other things that they're passionate about. But sometimes in the church, we still think that we're treating them like they were 14. And that's the reason they don't stick around. They're hungry for something more and something different. Maybe not something that meets at this time every day this week, but conversations with them about what are you passionate about. Particularly if you take them on a mission trip and bring them back and say, hey guys, so how can we serve in our community? You tell me, I'll be here to help you do it. But what do you guys wanna do? Like how might, you know, we really wanna give young people that experience of leadership because we want them to feel comfortable in leadership for those that end up going to college, you know? Because they need to be evangelists in college. They have to be a lot more proactive in college. If they're just used to showing up and somebody telling them what to do all the time, they go to college and nobody's there really to give them that kind of instruction or information. So this bigger picture, this bigger idea then of as we are accompanying them and relating with them, part of the goal of the accompaniment is it's a dialogue. It's a dialogue and we're recognizing the charisms and gifts that they're expressing and we're finding ways to plug that into the parish life. Sometimes I've been asked, because I'm a musician, they're like, you know, when I was a youth minister, do you have a youth mass or do you have young people who sing at mass? And I know sometimes like parishes and if this is you, it's okay, you know, we'll try to put like a youth band together that will lead music at mass. I'm not a fan of that. I'm a fan of if somebody is a really talented guitar player and is a young person, I want to get them involved in the liturgy or in worship. If somebody's a really talented singer, then I want to find ways to get her involved. But I'm not starting with the position and then advertising a job description. I'm just looking at the people and I'm finding ways to use their giftedness and passions to plug them in to the life of the parish and the life of the ministry. And that I think is the real valuable way to do it because if you start with the job description, then one year you get this kid who's amazing, but then the next year that kid graduates and now I need somebody, okay, well, you're not very good at guitar, but why don't you try and then you're making everybody suffer, you know, for those kinds of things. So, you know, I generally would say in youth ministry, I try to avoid formal positions with young people. I just try to acknowledge giftedness and lift them up as best as possible. And by the way, if you wanna play at our Sunday Night Mass, that's awesome, but I'm also gonna put you in the rotation to do the 9.30 because I don't want to create a separate parish of young people. I wanna be able to, that young people would be a part of all of parish life, the good, the bad and the ugly of it and just get used to doing that and be a part of that. That's really some of the idea of being relational and accompanying young people. So, how might we start to do this? I wanna get to some practical elements of it. The first thing is we would do it as a group. We would do it as a group. Nobody should ever feel like they are the Jesus Christ figure and their one relationship is going to save this young person. We need to work as a community, as a family to reach out to young people. And a number of years ago, there was a wonderful book, I'd encourage you to read it. It's called Sticky Faith. It's by Chap Clark and Cara Powell. And this was when everybody was recognizing that many young people were leaving the church. This was kind of the beginning of the nuns, in terms of the stats. And many people started asking the question, why are so many young people leaving the church and religion in general? Which is a great question. Chap Clark and Cara Powell, I think, asked a better question. Why do they stay? I wanna, let's talk to the kids who stayed and find out what was the driving factor of it. And one of the things they found in all the kids that they talked about, and they talked to the ones that left as well, because they wanted to figure out what it was. One of the big things that they discovered was that those that continued their faith throughout college could mention five adults in their life that were mentors for them or they had relationships with that inspired them, that were praying for them that were continuing their journey. And so writing in the book, it said this, that many children's and youth ministries say they want to have a one to five ratio of adults to kids, meaning they want one adult for every five kids for their Sunday school class or small groups. What if we reverse that? What if we said we want a five to one adult to kid ratio, five adults caring for each kid? We're not talking about five Sunday school teachers or five small group leaders. We're also not talking about five adults whom you outsource the spiritual, emotional, social, and intellectual development of your kids. We're talking about five adults who you recruit to invest in your kid, your young people, in little, medium, and big ways. So it's not necessarily, you might say like, oh, I'm going to need a lot more volunteers for my youth group. That's not necessarily the case, but get as many as you can and you know you want to anyway. But it's also just about this idea that how might we create environments where we can just be more intergenerational, where young people can connect more with older people in fun ways, in genuine ways, in honest ways. We're not assigning these things. But if we're creating environments, faith, intergenerational environments, and those are hard to do, again, remember the societal split that's present. But if we can help enable adults to really feel more active in the lives of the young people in their community, to be praying for them, to know their name, to have positive relationships with them, to send them care packages when they go to college, you know, all of these things. It really gives us a bit of a different perspective, I think, that this idea is that we're going to try to do this as a community. Something I hope happens eventually would be a better explanation definition of the role of a youth minister in a parish. I think that's something that you can find little bits and pieces of. It'd be great if it all comes together at some point. But this is what I would propose. I think sometimes people might define a parish youth minister as somebody who does ministry with youth, which is really just rephrasing the title, right? I would say this, that a parish youth minister empowers the faith community to do ministry with young people. Now they're gonna do that first and foremost by modeling it. You know, they're gonna do a great job with that. But they're gonna continually be saying, hey, like my goal here is not just to run the splinter organization, you know, this kid version of our parish. My goal is to do what I can to just bring about awareness, advocacy, to get more adults involved in a lot of different ways. That might be, you know, the Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast. It might be the Rosary Club, you know. By the time they're getting to be older in the group, I wanna figure out ways. What are the ministries the parish is doing? And how can I start plugging them into those ministries? How can I meet, you know, and I did this, you know, there is this Rosary Club, which was, you know, the 70 and older club. That's not how they advertise themselves, but that's exactly how it was. And I met with them and I just talked about young people and the lives they're living. And, you know, one of the things you have to do often with adults is you have to bring about a sense of empathy for young people with adults. There's always a generational gap, right? You know, we always think that we're the smarter generation and what are those kids doing, right? And so, but just by talking about the, what's going on in their life and empathy, just make it more of a welcoming place. I think I have some women that would really love to join your group. And, you know, but if they do, would you make sure that they're a part of the group that you don't kind of treat them like kids, you know, even though you're like 60 years older than them, but they're still 17, you know. And really some of my favorite ministry things is the relationships these young girls would have, you know, with these grandmas who kept in touch with them, you know, and, you know, tried to zoom them during COVID but didn't know how to work the buttons. And, you know, just all those beautiful things, but like that's part of it. Like it might, it's not necessarily an immediate, but hey, my goal is as I see a young person that starts being involved in whatever ministries I get to, you know, run and be a part of how am I connecting them? I get to know them a little bit and I think to myself, you know, I know this person would be great for you. And it's just so much about building relationships. I mean, really, programs are very important, but programs are an excuse for relationships, I think. That we want to be, you know, part of the environment that we're creating is a proclamation of the truth and a proclamation and experience of prayer and opportunities for service, all these things, but we're always trying to think relationally. Now let me talk a little bit about safe environment stuff because it can be felt that, I remember a safe environment happened, some Catholic youth ministers were like, wow, man, safe environment, those restrictions are really tough. It's really hard to do, you know, relational ministry with young people with these restrictions. And I would say, you know, be honest, you weren't really doing great relational ministry before those restrictions, right? In fact, I think some people were like, oh good, there's a restriction, now I have an excuse to not do relational ministry with young people. You know, there's a lot of ways to do ministry that's safe with young people. And again, the group mentality is great. When we started having, you know, a deeper and better understanding of safe environment and why it was so important, we just said, okay, you know, in the two hours on a Sunday night that we have with young people, we're actually gonna cut back some of our programming so we can be more intentional about relationship building. I'm gonna try to do things that empower my adults to help build relationships with young people because they're not necessarily very good at that. Again, society doesn't teach us the skill. So when we would have snack time, I made sure that my volunteers fed the kids with the snacks because it's a real easy in to walk up to a group of guys with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and start a conversation that way, you know? And I would always try to, as somebody that was the parish youth minister, keep thinking to myself, what are things that I can do that can build relationships and help my leaders build, just spend time with each other. I learned this actually when I was in high school, I was a part of a ministry called Young Life and they really did excellent relational ministry. They were all about spending time with young people and here's an example of it. So I grew up in Chicago and we used to go to a camp in Colorado which is not nearby and we take a bus and it was a 40-hour one-way trip and a 40-hour other-way trip. It was a great camp, you know, but it was like a lot of time on a bus and then we'd stop at like the Mall of America and do stuff like that. So, well, a year or so into Young Life, I realized that there was a Young Life camp in Wisconsin which was five hours away and so I mentioned this to my leaders thinking he didn't know this, right? You know, I'm like, hey, do you know there's Young Life camp in Wisconsin? He's like, oh, yeah. I'm like, is it any good? He said, oh, it's state of the art, it's amazing. I was like, why don't we go to Wisconsin? And he looked at me like I was dumb and he went, and miss 80 hours of relational ministry with young people? He was like, oh, right? But like, even things like that, for example, like I know a number of youth groups that intentionally will go to a Steubenville conference a little bit farther away and they'll try to package it like we're gonna go to this conference and then we're gonna go to this theme park afterwards and they're gonna wanna do a few more things like that and I mean, they're crazy like a fox and what they're doing is they realize that a youth conference is exciting but man, it's like sipping from a fire hose. It's crazy, it's emotional, it's fast. They're like, we wanna dare too to just hang out with young people and hear the conversations and just let it be natural and engaging because the goal is we want to build a relationship. We try as hard as we can, by the way, somebody that helps plan our youth conferences to have that in mind when we create the schedules. We actually recognize that for our youth conferences, it's not actually, we don't actually do our youth conferences for the teens, we do it for youth leaders so that we can, so a youth leader can have a dynamic, charismatic, sacramental experience of big church that they can bring a kid to and from there, through that relationship, continue a path of discipleship and in fact, I'm very glad the university is pushed against, sometimes it's been, well why don't you just let a teen sign up by themselves? Well who's their mentor? Like who's gonna follow? Like we're not naive enough to think they came to a great weekend and then they're sad. We're actually doing it so that that youth leader, those groups of people, have something that they can build off of and continue to build community with. So when we think of charismatic accompaniment, we wanna make sure that it's not just one person. Jesus did that in the road to Emmaus, he gets a pass. He's also the Trinity kind of, so you know that works out. But we wanna be thinking more, big picture about how might we get more adults involved in different elements of ministry, how might we get young people more involved in things in the parish and I always felt like as the parish youth minister, I was the advocate, I was the flag waiver. I was the one that was just going around and encouraging enthusiasm and awareness for young people because young people, they're out of sight, out of mind. I mean that's the way our society does it. But when you can build that up, some really beautiful things can happen. Pope Francis highlighted three means of accompaniment that he wanted the church to be aware of. And the first one is family. He said young people need to have their freedom respected yet they also need to be accompanied. The family should be the first place of accompaniment. Youth ministry can present the ideal of life in Christ as the process of building a house on rock. For most young people that house their life will be built on marriage and married love. That is why youth ministry and the pastoral care of families should be coordinated and integrated with the aim of ensuring a continuous and suitable accompaniment of the vocational process. That youth ministry and family ministry really does need to be very coordinated with each other and integrated with each other because both are very necessary. I said this a little bit yesterday. I think it is, there's kind of a line that I just think is absolutely wrong which is to say that we need family ministry and not youth ministry. And if we had good families, we wouldn't need youth ministry. That is just wrong. That is just absolutely wrong. And let me explain why. So it is very true that much of our work in youth ministry is trying to make up for some difficulties in family life. And that might actually dominate a lot of our time. But that is not to say that that is really the main, it's a similar thing like, when you're preparing a kid for confirmation, it's they're not being rebaptized. They're being confirmed. But you find yourself in the position where they have no idea what's going on. So you just need to really start from the beginning anyway so that they can get to the place where they're ready to be confirmed. I'd say it's a similar thing in youth ministry. I as a dad, and I think I'm a pretty decent Catholic dad, there are things that youth ministry can do for my young people that I can't. First of all, reinforcing what I say at home, adolescents are always wondering, is that right? They can provide a community of peers that I wouldn't be able to as their dad. Opportunities for service, opportunities for discipleship and leadership, all of these things. Like as a parent, I can't organize that. I don't know all those kids. But youth ministry really can give them those opportunities. So yes, though it is true that in some, in many ways we do spend a lot of time maybe trying to fill the gaps of something they should have gotten in their family formation. I think what we can do in ministry with young people is much more than that. And that's why they're both necessary. They're both absolutely necessary. I would also add this. We need to just think more outreach when we come to ministering with young people. And what's beautiful, particularly if they go to a high school, those young people are integrating with other people who might not have any faith background whatsoever, but they'll show up to a lock-in or they'll show up to a service project. And we get to reach young people who aren't even baptized. It's not like their family failed them. It's like their family didn't even know anything about it. And so all of those elements I really think are such a beautiful part of our ministry with young people. But we wanna keep thinking about the family and how might we connect the family more integrated into ministry. Again, that we're not taking the kid away and we'll just do something with them over here. But that the family knows what's going on, that we communicate well, that they're invited to be a part of it. If you've been in ministry as I have you, it's beautiful to see a young person bring their whole family back to church. And yeah, just so many incredible things about that. But really that it's family. The family is the first teacher and that doesn't mean they teach them well. If the family isn't a family of faith then that's what those kids are learning there. And so we wanna accompany families as they're dealing with their young people. Cause when a kid becomes a teenager it's really scary for families, right? We have some expertise, some comfort. There's a place for them. There's a place for you. All of these things. And so we wanna make sure that we just don't view specifically teenagers as isolated people. We wanna get to know and build relationships with their families. The wider community. The community has an important role in the accompaniment of young people. It should feel collectively responsible for accepting, motivating, encouraging and challenging them. All should regard young people with understanding, appreciation and affection. I love this line. And avoid constantly judging them or demanding of them a perfection beyond their years. Wow, he nailed that one, right? Like that is when I talk to adults that line comes up a lot. Like many times adults look at young people and they might not recognize this but they're constantly judging them. And their attitude is when are you gonna grow up? Why don't you behave like me? It's because they're not adults. And well, when are you gonna get to be an adult? And again, that's part of the societal divide. Why don't you just come back when you're ready to act responsible or act maturely? You have to help adults kind of rethink that, like unromanticize their teenage years and just recognize that young people and we need to let young people know they don't need to get older to be holy. But what does a holy teenager look like? It's different than a holy adult, right? Cause they're at a different place in their life. But many of the things that young people reflect, joy, zeal, passion, spontaneity, those are many of the things our parishes are lacking. And that's because we're missing young people. We need to be able to communicate that, like our parishes are worse off without young people, just like our young people are worse off without older generations because they need the maturity, the guidance, the mentorship, right? And the devil just wants to split the divide in half. And so I think one of our goals of ministry is to bring in the Holy Spirit, which is a unifier and try to create a community. And finally, he points out what the roles that many of you are in here today, leaders. The Senate in many pointed to the shortage of qualified people devoted to accompaniment. So in the context of an entire parish being a more welcoming community for young people and intergenerational ministry and dialogue, yes, we need individuals like many of you, like I've tried to be, who really say, this is my goal, this is it. Like I'm really all in on this. Belief in the theological and pastoral value of listening entails rethinking and renewing the ways that priestly ministries ordinarily exercise and reviewing its priorities, that's a great line. The Senate also recognized the need to train consecrated persons and lay people, male and female, to accompany young people. The charism of listening that the Holy Spirit calls forth within the communities might also receive institutional recognition as a form of ecclesial service. And you know what, in the United States, actually, we've really reflected this in one of the best ways in the world. If you talk to other people in different countries or communities, they're always astounded at how many lay ecclesial leaders that we have. That parishes might even have somebody part time that isn't the priest or the secretary that is doing this kind of ministry. And Pope Francis is saying, you know, this should be encouraged, you know, and part of what we're hoping to do here is some of this vision, this training, this idea. How might we continue to build relationships with young people? We do it through the family, we do it through the community, and then we need folks who really know what they're doing that can train and empower others to do that. I think the heart of accompaniment really is reflected in St. Paul, the love. With such affection for you, we were determined to share with you not only the gospel of God, but our very selves as well. So dearly beloved, you had become to us. The goal is to share the gospel and our lives. And if you know the story of Paul when he went to Thessalonia, he was building tents, he was making tents, and he just endeared himself into the life of the community and was present, and it was through those relationships that he began to preach and proclaim the gospel. And of course, through his own very dramatic and profound witness, you know, the witness of what he had been through and how he wants to proclaim Jesus Christ. And so too in our lives then, in our ministry lives, we want to keep finding ways to be in relationship with young people. And I'd say that we need to have more of a New Testament attitude than an Old Testament attitude. The Old Testament attitude was God being distant, speaking from afar, come to Jerusalem, right? The New Testament is Jesus incarnate among us, saying now go out to all the nations and make disciples. We need to have more of a go attitude in our ministry and that's really part of the beauty of accompaniment. Can we go to their sporting events? Can we go to their band concerts? Can we go to those really big moments of their life and just show up and be present? Obviously, we do this again as a group and that's one of the guidance of safe environment but it's just smart, you know, that I will try to coordinate with my leaders. Here's a soccer game and we have a lot of kids in the youth group. Let's go to who, you know, I want two or three of you to be able to go with me. And what I actually liked to do, and I learned this also from Young Life, try to go to the away games. Like go to the games but you're gonna be the most visible at, right? If you're like one of like 200 people in the stands, no big, but if you're one of 20, every kid on that team is gonna know that you drove an hour and a half to be there. The other huge win when you go to away games is you really get to know the families. All the moms are there and they're so thrilled that you're there to support their son or their daughter and I spend most of my time talking to parents and cheering on kids. And then afterwards they usually invite me to Pizza Hut and then I hang out and I say, great game. And then I go back to, but I don't ever like sell the program or do anything. I'm just trying to be there, right? Just how can I be there? Might there be opportunities in the school that you could be present for certain things? You might say, oh, it's a public school, they won't let me. Not necessarily. In my own experience, there was a public school. All you need to do is just say the right language. So I met with the principal and I said, hey, I'm the youth minister at this pair, at St. Ambrose Catholic Church. And we have 150 young people that go to this public high school, which at least was on the census. I don't know how many even showed up, but at least on the census, I said, so I have 100, there's 600 kids in the school. I've got 150 of them, he goes, oh, wow. And I said, yeah, and he said, part of what we're trying to do in our ministry is we're really trying to advocate for a virtuous life. We want them to, you know, not drink, not do drugs. We want them to have pure relationships. We want them to get involved in government and politics. We wanna teach them to be able to stand up. And as Jesus would teach that they would live lives of love and service to other people. And the principal was like, I can't argue with any of that. That's exactly what I want them to do too. It was like, great, you know. Now notice I didn't say like, you know, I'd like them to be covered in the precious blood of Jesus and have a dramatic, you know, devotion to our blessed. Like don't say that kind of stuff, but like we really are on the same page. Like that principal knows if, you know, as everybody in education does, the more religious a kid is, the better behaved they are and the better student they are. So there's a win-win. And what do I wanna do? I just wanna be present. I will not promote the church. I won't bring my, I just wanna be a face in their world. I, you know, could I come every once in a while on a Friday? Could I just bring some pizza to the kids that go to my parish? That sounds great. So every other Friday I was allowed to come to the public school with boxes of pizza and just connect with the kids that were in my parish. But of course I'd meet everybody and then I would leave. But I was a face in their world. I mean, that's such a, that's such a huge part of accompaniment is that, you know, we're going, we're a face in their world. Another thing sticky faith talks about in youth ministry, it talks about the idea of four plus one, which is when you're seniors, when they graduate, think of them, think that you have them for another year and stay in contact with them. And that won't be as busy as when they were in high school. But like try every month to send an email, to send a care package, like just to stay in relationship with these people. Because if it's a genuine relationship, it shouldn't just end because they graduated. I say this to my volunteers, you know, when I had a volunteers, I'd encourage them maybe and say, you know, most of my volunteers are about three or four years, they last about three or four years. And I said, that's a great thing. But even though you might be done three or four years from now, I expect that the relationships, just the genuine ones, the genuine relationships that were fostered here continue on. So that even when you're done with ministry, I hope you're still reaching out to those kids you were close to as they're in college. And again, that's just part of the network. That's just part of the family, the community that we see ourselves in ministry, those of us that might be leaders as creating opportunities to organize relationships and those of us that are in it as seeing any programmatic thing that we're doing as an opportunity for relationships. At the end of the day, they remember more who we are than what we said. I remember when I was in high school, I had this amazing youth minister who I just, I remember he was absolutely brilliant. Every time he got up and spoke, I was mesmerized. And it's really hard for me to remember a darn thing that this guy said. But I remember he cared for me. I remember that he knew my name. I remember that he empowered me. He saw that I had gifts and he said, you're pretty good guitar. Why don't you help me over here and do this? He plugged me in to things going on and it really, that's really what changed my life. As I just started to get more and more involved in the community of faith that was present. And so this I think then is our vision when we talk about this idea of charismatic accompaniment. It's not a cheap accompaniment that at the end, surprise, here's the gospel. It's we're actually accompanying in light of the gospel message, in light of the God who became flesh and dwelt among us and walks with us. That we certainly, our desires that they would know Jesus who is the way, the truth and the life. But we would let that be organic. We would allow the Lord to reveal himself through us and everything else going on. And that even if they say no to it, I'm still gonna bug them. I'm still gonna send emails and say I'm praying for you. You can't get rid of me that easy because the Lord doesn't let them go either. It respects their freedom to be sure, which is to say if they're like go away from me, we go away from them. I just hope that's kind of an obvious statement but it's always worth saying out loud especially because I'm on videotape. But this genuine organic walking with, that is breaking the bread with, experiencing community together. That's really needs to be a focal point and a heart of all the ministry that we do with young people. So let us pray. Almighty God and Heavenly Father, we thank you for your son Jesus who walked with us and continues to do so. God we thank you for the dignity that you give us to allow ourselves to become aware of you, that you don't force yourself upon us, that you feed us slowly and gently, that you invite us lovingly and tenderly. And so I pray in all of our lives that you might give us that humble, patient conviction that this is your work and not ours. Holy Spirit we ask that you would come more deeply into our lives and help us to be docile to you, that we wouldn't think that you are helping us with our ministry but that we are serving your ministry and your work for you are the converter of hearts. You are the one who allows us to proclaim Jesus as Lord and Abba Father. And so most Holy Trinity we just thank you for you being a community, a family of love that you invite us into. As you accompany with us in every step of our journey as we journey homeward to fulfillness of life and you in eternity, may we bring as many young people as we can along with us. And we ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen. I'm the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.