 Okay. Hello everyone. My name is Gina Bauer. Can you hear me okay? Good. I'm very grateful to be with you today. And we are going to be talking about the role of family and community in youth ministry. How many people here are in youth ministry? Oh boy. Gear up. You gotta gear up if you're in youth ministry. You have to have a certain type of tenacity and strength and definitely humor to stay in youth ministry. So let's start off this afternoon with a prayer and I think we're just going to pray one Hail Mary and we're going to pray it really well. I have a lot of information as you can see in this handout. It's basically the document from John Paul II but I'm going to go through and teach on parts of it. How many people are actually doing programs with your youth or your schools that include the family? Okay. How many people would like to maybe include that a little bit more? Okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to teach some of the foundational pieces and then towards the end I'm going to actually give ideas of what I've seen different parishes doing and I'm also going to take some time for question and answer. So we'll hopefully give you some good inspiration and then also be able to strengthen you with practical ideas to like take it home. Okay. All right. So let's pray in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit to thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Our lady queen of victory pray for us. Amen. Okay. So I'm going to start off just with this little story. I was watching YouTube one night and there was this little baby bear and it was playing out in the field and all of a sudden I see this cougar and the cougar is prowling on the little baby bear and so the little baby bears picks up on the center of the cougar and starts to run and if you if you watch this on YouTube you can hear the little guy going and the cougar is chasing it and at one point I'm like why am I watching a cougar chase a baby bear? Okay. But I kept watching. So anyway it gets to the river scene and what happens is is the little bear is swimming in the river and the cougar is running along the side the little bear gets out of the water gets onto the log thinks it's safe and there is the cougar and the cougar starts whack whack whacking the baby bear and all of a sudden the camera switches and there's mama bear and that cougar just takes off and I thought that is one of the best images that I can think of our blessed mother and how she is working night and day with her son Jesus Christ to defend the church and in a specific way the family in our time because we know that the family is really really been put in the fire the family has been put in the fire but it is truly the fire of God's love because God is with us God is with us through it all now for you and for me the fire is too much okay for you and for me the fire is too much but for our blessed mother and for her son Jesus Christ it's not we were born for this we were created and put into this time for a specific person and that is for Jesus Christ and the person sitting next to you we are in this together I use that video to teach consecration to the blessed mother to high school kids it works many many miraculous medals went on and many scapulars started to be worn once they understood that the blessed mother has this mantle of protection to put around them it is not a mantle just to hide in it is a mantle of grace which equips us for the battle it makes us warriors and so this is why our lady is calling us in this time to draw very very very close to her son and to the church and this is what st. John Paul II wanted to teach us now is the time for the family to follow Christ because it's dark and so when it is dark you don't stare at the bits of darkness until you can't move that's what happened to that woman in the bible when she turned back to look at the city remember that she freaked out and she froze so we have to do the opposite we have to keep our eyes on Christ not on the enemy on Jesus Christ if we keep our eyes on him then we will be able to lead and as dr deacon bob brice talked about last night our father in heaven is calling us to lead he is calling us to model he is calling us to protect he is calling us to be like God and we can do this with grace with grace we could I told Jesus one time I said you want to make me holy good luck that's how he wants us to be because nothing is impossible with God the family has a mission the mission is to guard reveal and communicate love guard reveal and communicate love we cannot fulfill our mission if we do not know Jesus Christ we have to know Jesus Christ we have to love Jesus Christ we have to breathe Jesus Christ we have to eat Jesus Christ yes literally eat him in the holy Eucharist amen amen yeah Jesus is like eat me be me live me do it you know and this is why we follow him because he was crazy enough to create you and he is crazy enough to save you and he is crazy enough to bring you home you know and we are gonna honor we are on our way home to the heavenly kingdom where every tear will be wiped away where we will live a life full of joy there will be no more sin no more pain no more weakness why because the finite is passing and the infinite is here here and now in the holy Eucharist the fullness of every joy of everything your heart was ever created for already exist in one little host and you and I go to communion and we receive eternal life the holy father john paul the second said when you go to holy communion you receive fire and spirit that's what you receive and that fire and that spirit it's stored up in you and how are you going to raise out of your coffin someday by the fire and the spirit of that holy Eucharist so I would tell your teenagers they better get gassed up because they're gonna need it okay so the Eucharist is the source of christian marriage the Eucharist itself Jesus Christ is the source of christian marriage and when we teach our kids about marriage and family life we have to teach them Jesus christ we have to show them Jesus christ and we have to love them to Jesus christ pope francis recently wrote a document called christ is alive and in this document he said it is not going to be enough just to put our kids into classrooms and teach them doctrine I talked to a youth minister last week and in her church they have started a pretty successful youth program it takes three years to build a successful youth program they're on their year one and already she has pressure from different people the voices right who want everything to go right back into the classroom classroom only and so what we need to understand is that classroom can be the beginning if the person who is in the classroom is acting in Jesus christ the most important thing you can do to prepare for your students whether it's youth group classroom school it doesn't matter what it is is your prayer life you have to pray for these kids and you have to ask Jesus to help you to love them I was doing a retreat one time I had middle school kids I had two boys directing the retreat instead of me anybody ever feel that way finally I'm halfway through it I was like I can't go on I've got to stop I stopped I said to everybody turn to your neighbor and I always just give them a question okay ask them their favorite color it doesn't even matter what it is then I went up to the two boys and I said boys you are so mine soon as it's lunchtime you are here and they're like I said so anyway lunchtime came and everybody left and the boys were sitting there like this and I went and they came they both sat down I go not together you over there you it's so the little guy said yeah and I pull up a chair and he pulls up chair and I said let's pray let's pray so I don't know what I'm doing how many times do you really know what you're doing raise your hand tell the truth this is called this is called punting in the Holy Spirit so I start to pray and I get done I and I pray quietly that kills them okay and then I open my eyes and I said what's wrong with you that's what came out of my mouth what is wrong with you and he looks at me he goes I'm adopted I go he says he goes I'm adopted and he starts crying and I'm like oh my gosh so he's crying I mean I said okay well let's pray about that so that I show my eyes I start praying quietly and what comes to me is that is where his wound gets and so I looked at him and I said all right I said do your parents love you and he said yes I said your mother could have aborted you she loved you enough to give you life and your parents love you now and so you are given life again and what are you doing with the life that God gave you and he just looks down immediately and then he looks back up and he looks at me with these tears coming down his little face and I said listen here God wanted you to live you are alive you are gifted you are talented and you are driving everybody crazy so I said will you will you consider changing and he goes okay and I said well it's good to be good so why don't we work on that I said today you will work for me and he said okay and so I gave him a job all day long I just kept giving him jobs and he stayed right by my side then I called the other little guy up and I said sit down I prayed for a second I looked at him I said knock it off he goes okay so this is the thing we have to take the time in our youth programs classrooms when we are with youth we have to be love in the classroom and we can do this if we are praying for our students the Holy Spirit wants to help them more than you do I know a story of a man who is doing pro-life work and he started to lean more on the Holy Spirit really really praying before he went to do the sidewalk counseling and one day he said he went out there and a woman was going into the into the clinic and she had long beautiful red hair and the word that came to him was bow ties have you heard this story before bow ties he says bow ties he just screamed it out she turns around and she looks back at him and she's like and he and he doesn't even know how the Holy Spirit is working but he figures it has something to do with her beautiful red hair and so she comes back to him and he says your baby will need bow ties and she said to him my father never had much time for me but the one thing he always said to me was I had beautiful hair and he liked my bow ties so this is where I feel that the Holy Spirit the Holy Spirit is a mystery right we have Jesus he's showing us who the father is right and then he got this Holy Spirit you know but I think the Holy Spirit wants us to trust him he wants us to trust him and so this trust is most beautifully shown in the way that we pray for our students and the way we pray for our kids and the way that we walk into that classroom not as oh can I do this job no obviously I can't do this job that's why I need God okay I need you God I need you to work through me today even though I have this problem this problem this problem God knows all about me and all about you he knows our brokenness that doesn't bother him what bothers him is that we don't trust him and entrust our little selves to him so that he can work in a big way a big big way because God is infinite we are finite God has no beginning we have a little beginning and we have a little end and so he is not afraid of our finite because he is the infinite and so when we accept the finite love of God into our hearts then he takes our little broken finite hearts and gives us infinite power and it is an infinite power that lets us love people the way he loves people when we want to give up he gives us grace to not give up to try one more thing to keep going and that is what this talk is about today this talk is about the need that we have to understand the situation and then apply what the church is telling us to do to strengthen the family so that the civilization of love which st. John Paul II spoke over humanity can come into existence and it can only come if you and I are fully committed to Christ and fully committed to accepting our situation acceptance is grace and then letting that power and that love of God work through us anyway okay because it's not enough just to accept it because you might just accept it and lay down go to sleep you know what I'm talking about or go out and have a drink maybe two I will tell you what the first time I came to stupendville like a long time ago I bought down a bus of kids and our bus broke down I think five six times along the way we literally had to get a new bus three times when we got to campus the lights of the bus were all on again the bus driver said where are you and where are you going to I said well we're from Minnesota and we're going to this franciscan university conference father mark who is the priest in the bus and the bus said take this bus up the hill I don't care what happens to it because all the lights were on they brought us up we came out here we are all sitting out under the tent because in those days we had a tent father mark comes back to me and he says good thing we prayed to our guardian angels I said why he said the axle of the bus was hanging on by a thread and they said it should never have made it up the hill yeah yeah and I have to tell you youth ministry 101 I got those kids sitting on the hill quick get them in the tent because it was full they're all sitting out on the hill and I started to head down to the hill to the hotel one of my leaders grabbed me says where are you going I said I'm going to the bar what are you going to do I'm getting a strong one I said I feel like I'm in hell and I'm never coming back here again and I've been back every year since for 18 years and I never did get to that bar so the need that we have to understand the situation I'm going to read this quote living in such a world second quote page one under the pressure of coming above all from the mass media the faithful do not always remain immune from the obscuring of certain fundamental values nor set themselves up as the critical conscience of family culture and as active agents in building an authentic family life yes to good no to evil because the media is so strong our people can't always see what is good and what is evil and so if we are going to help them to embrace an authentic family life and I'm not I'm talking about your teens if we are going to want to call our teens to authentic love we have to be able to help them to see that the media is not leading them on the right path but that Jesus Christ is God is and you might say well how could we ever do this it seems like at times that the media is so overpowering it's so forceful it is a finite reality it is a finite reality it is not more powerful than Jesus Christ it's just that right now we have to be able to take the kids closer to Christ and so how do we do that it means that we will take the kids I had a group of kids one time that were middle school kids and just to get them to sit still for five minutes to teach them anything was miracle and one morning in my prayer so this is why you have to pray if you don't pray you can't serve the church because you won't hear Jesus Christ and you won't be serving the church I'm not trying to be harsh I'm just telling you the truth I when I was a new youth minister I had a dream one night hammer was pounding on the rough and tiles were flying everywhere and then a big hand from heaven came down and it just started to nail and I knew Jesus was saying I know you're trying very hard but you're really making a mess of things okay so but because I had learned to pray about everything because I couldn't tell what was good and what was evil I couldn't tell what to do with the kids and what not to do I couldn't tell what voices to listen to because it's all coming at you at once this is how important youth ministry is the enemy does not want your kids to fall in love with Jesus and he does not want them to have a good experience of church when they're young it's like a restaurant if you go to a few good restaurants if you go to a bad one what will you do go find a good one you don't quit going out to eat right okay but if you have never had a good experience of family life and church life and you have a bad experience you will never go back so our job is to give them a good experience so I'm down I'm sitting in front of Jesus said the Blessed Sacrament and I hear bring little children to me and I still remember to this day saying to Jesus looking right at the Blessed Sacrament and going I can't Jesus and he's like why not I said they'll get bored and right away he says to me so you think I'm boring this is a Holy Spirit thing whack whack okay the Holy Spirit whacks you you should listen and if God tells you to do something you should do it right away okay so I struggled with this all day long and then that night I was at youth group and it was like the shepherd's crook you know how the shepherd the bishop has that well I call it the shepherd's crook I can't see it but I can feel it it's when Jesus wants me to do something and I don't want to do it and it's just this pressure okay so I mean I could grab it from him and clunk him over the head but instead I said to the kids okay if I told you that Jesus Christ was over in the church right now how many of you would want to go every hand went up I said he is they're like oh he's in disguise disguise I said yes he's in that little gold box and a piece of bread it's his disguise but it's really him they're like cool so I said let's go visit him what do you want to ask them so they started writing down questions and so we're going over to church they're doing cartwheels back can springs flips you know junior high kids are I'm like lord have mercy I'm gonna lose my job we get into the church and and some parishioner you know I just anyway so I started taking them into the church you know I remember one time I get these kids to go to the church and pray and this little lady comes to me and she goes what are you doing now you're making so much noise again I go what are you doing she says why I'm praying I go what are you praying for she said I'm praying for the salvation of souls I go he's doing it she goes oh so I get these kids into this church and we're having a and I just they had their questions and where they spread out through church and they said now he's in the box this is why we genuflect because every knee shall bend to him so make sure you genuflect go up take your time but ask him your questions and listen and they and they're asking well how do you know he's talking back to you and I said well what I do is I think about the answer I get and I think could I have come up with that and that's how you know it's God because God is smarter than us okay that was enough junior right so off they go first time I did this they were in that church for 10 minutes quiet spread out through the church middle school kids and when they were done it was time to go I went to get them and something said just give them a few more minutes and so I gave them a few more minutes and then we came out onto the grass waiting for the parents to come and they were like what was that this one little girl goes I was just filled with peace I said that's who you receive every Sunday when you go to communion but if you go back to your pew and you're distracted and you're thinking about what's for lunch and you don't pray then Jesus comes into your heart but he's he's like a guest that's invited into your heart but then you you're not kind or polite and you don't talk to him that began teaching young people prayer the kids requested then to go every few weeks and we would go over and I was able to pick up the five steps to prayer and I did not bring that handout with me but if you ever if you want to pick that up you can go to Gina Bauer.com and I can send it to you but in the five steps to prayer that we basted on a friend of mine who I went to school with helped me to write these five simple steps to prayer out based by Saint Teresa of Avila we were able to start working with middle school and high school kids on this five steps to prayer that help kids to take off in their prayer life and I was able to use it with adults parents whoever you're working with so many people go sit down to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament and they stay at step number one tell your problems to the Lord okay and when they leave an hour later they're at step number one and they're still thinking about their problems and the Lord's like uh all right amen okay we've got to keep going here so I want to go to following Christ the church seeks the truth which is not always the same as the majority opinion following Christ the church seeks the truth so when I was in the Twin Cities one day driving down to go shopping downtown I see a big bus and it's completely pink and it's promoting contraception for Planned Parenthood okay that is what the world is promoting another big sign up in the Twin Cities says Planned Parenthood will never leave like it's God no Jesus Christ will never leave okay everything human is finite and is passing and so the world is going to promote ideas like it is God but God is God and so we want to be able to pass this on to our families the situation in which the family finds itself presents positive and negative aspects the first is the sign of salvation of Christ operating in the world the second a sign of the refusal that man gives to the love of God we are going to find both things happening in the world if you look you will see Christ working if you look you will see the refusal of man and woman to love God and that is all it is okay that's all it is so we shouldn't be so terrified of it instead we should keep our eyes on God and we should refuse to not love God okay we will love God we will do what's right and when we are so strong in that that grace will pass on to others okay so the second on the backside our age needs wisdom and you don't have to follow along if you don't want to I just I'd like to go to a conference and go home with notes so I can use them for my talks so I wanted to give you guys some material our age needs wisdom more than bygone ages if the discoveries made by man are to be further humanized for the future of the world stands in peril unless wiser people are forth coming there you go and who are those wise people they're right in this room you're right here you want to make a difference you want the next generation to do better it is not in our hands and yet it is it is not in our hands it's in God's hands God the Father has a plan I remember being in St. Paul during the riots that we had a few years ago has that already been a couple I think and I'm in St. Paul they were the riots were in Minneapolis crossing over to St. Paul coming up Robert Street so my house is on hill and I was praying through the night and I could hear the the sirens and the police officers I could hear everything going on and I literally prayed through the night and another trick I do Jeanne Bauer trick is I YouTube the Blessed Sacrament put them up go get them Jesus so sometimes I even do it when I'm driving my car I'll be driving on the highway Jesus get them Jesus get them there he is right on the old so I just want to say that that night when I sat down I said God you must have a plan I know if my dad was in charge of the universe he would have a plan dad always had a plan and as soon as I said this I felt peace just go all the way through me from the top of my head to the bottom of my toes God has a plan and nothing will stop this plan from coming into existence and so is messy as it gets his plan is in operation and quietly and silently it's coming it's coming every day and what is that plan Jesus Christ the bridegroom of the church and the sacrament of matrimony the spirit which the Lord pours forth gives a new heart and renders man and woman capable of loving one another as ordained Jesus Christ in giving us the Holy Spirit gives us a new heart and it is this new heart that allows us to love one another and so the plan that the father had was to restore all things in Christ but it was very specifically the human heart that the human heart would be restored in Christ now this means that our hearts have to be filled with love um number 11 love is therefore the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being Christian revelation recognizes two specific ways of realizing the vocation of every human being to love and the vocation is either marriage or virginity now the first time I read this I was like oh my gosh holy father this just seems like really hard to unpack but the truth is is that once our hearts are renewed in Christ through our baptism through our confirmation you know we're learning how to walk in the Lord our virginity our person is for Christ alone and so every man and every woman is called to virginity now I have never been this specific about this but we also have a culture that is fighting the human person right and so now we have to go let's go back to the beginning right what did Jesus say let's go back to the beginning very good place to start okay so he is saying we're going to go all the way back to the beginning why did I make the human person and the human person is first and foremost created to be in a relationship with God most high your supreme calling is the holy trinity that is your supreme calling the meaning of your life is God himself your fulfillment it's here it's now it's happening it's God and it's in that supreme calling that you find your vocation your vocation to serve and your vocation to love your human vocation which is your calling but it begins with God and so your person your virginity is yours even if somebody takes it from you it's still yours so you can take it back this is so important so that you understand that the gift of your person is the whole gift of your femininity or your masculinity your sexuality that this is something that you are created with and you can make a lot of changes to your body like I could dye my hair and I could totally change the way I look but I will never ever be able to give myself a Y chromosome okay so this whole sexuality thing and being a human person is a gift from God he created them male and he created them female and he created them to be one like the trinity we are made in the image and likeness of God who is trinitarian we are made for unity we are made for undivided love it's what we're made for and so the enemy could throw everything against us that's possible it will never be undone and it will never be changed because in the beginning God created us male and female and so by getting the kids and ourselves in touch with the fact that we are a gift if we can teach this really well that each person is a gift and you can have kids that come to you and say but I feel like I'm this and I feel like I'm this and I feel like I'm this all of it right and you could just say in the beginning it wasn't so in the beginning it wasn't messed up and the beginning there was no brokenness there was no confusion the world was in perfect harmony God was in perfect harmony with Adam and Eve and Adam and Eve were in perfect harmony with God and guess what Adam and Eve were totally one they totally loved each other and gave themselves as a gift to each other if I give you a gift and you give me a gift we both gifted right even in our giving our self-giving we're receiving right and that's how God intended it to be and everything got messed up when sin entered the world and so what the holy father wants to do is he wants to call us back to Jesus Christ and he wants us to understand that when bodies unite in sexual love the soul is to unite too and that can only happen with grace so this is an image I've used with my high school kids okay you ready you can have a guy and a girl in a gymnasium and they can run at each other 100 million miles an hour boom body parts will fly but they cannot unite their souls so we are either going to use our bodies the way God intended us to with love and giftedness or we are going to beat each other up with our bodies but the union that Christ called man and woman to in marriage Christian marriage and in the family is something that is so great and so high and so beautiful and so loving that it's worth fighting for it's worth fighting for this is what one of the early church fathers taught on page three tertillian said this how can I ever express the happiness of the marriage that is joined together by the church strengthened by an offering sealed by a blessing announced by the angels and ratified by the father how wonderful the bond between two believers with a single hope a single desire a single observance and a single service there is no separation between them in spirit or flesh in fact they are truly two in one flesh and where the flesh is one there is the spirit that's what Christian marriage is it's so beautiful and so it has to be taught with such love I remember my little sister when she went on her first date in high school with Scott she came home from the first date she laid on the floor in our bedroom ugly carpet I can still remember the red stripes the green stripes and the white stripes and she said he held my hand it's her first date that's the gift that's the theology of the body it's when I reverently hold your hand and in time if God wills this grows into marriage I reverently hold your life and you reverently hold my life we hold each other in grace with the father with the son with the holy spirit what does this remind you of the holy mass with him through him in him in the unity unity good idea for marriage in the unity of the holy spirit all glory be to god the father almighty and yes it does glorify him it glorifies him when we learn to let him love through this heart anyway right that we can lay down our life and love this other person for his or her own sake in a lifelong committed marriage impossible for men and women impossible but for god nothing is impossible you men is this helpful are you getting fired up to teach about marriage only can have so much fun you know because because we can you can do your skits and your dramas you can have a big heart with the holy Eucharist on it you can have all the ways that our relationships are being attacked but you gotta have a big strong jesus because that is what jesus did when he loved us as the bridegroom of the church on the cross he was a big strong jesus and jesus through love kicked off all the demons and made a way for us anyway and this is possible for us part three the role of the christian family family this is on the bottom of page oh i'm sorry guys i think it's page five my numbers didn't come out clearly part three the role of christian family okay we're doing good is it oh thank you yep i got a half and i got a half of the line there family become what you are family become what you are an intimate community of life and love the family has the mission to become more and more what it is called that is a community of life and love and an effort that will find fulfillment as well everything created and redeemed in the kingdom of god so the role of the christian family so every human person is called to virginity or called to marriage and then in holy marriage you give the gift of your virginity the gift of yourself to another person and i have to tell you have a daughter in high school and i think we just have to start teaching this way again that's what they did in the ancient culture with the pagans right they'd be like oh never st agus you know virgin and martyr well there was something that was really valued about her virginity her personhood she wasn't just going to give herself away to anybody and it was the same with the men they're not just going to give themselves away why because in christ we are baptized in christ every woman is called to spiritual motherhood and in christ every man is called to spiritual fatherhood and you will either mother in the holy spirit or you will mother in hell and you will either father in the holy spirit or you will father in hell does this make sense every person has a choice oh i get fired up so it's kind of scary did that sound scary it's the truth though you know what she looked like i scared her but does it makes how many people got scared sorry but the thing is think about it you're teaching people to pray and to love and to do good deeds and i'm not going to go into any of this but all you have to do is go see the new movie that's out freedom and you will see that there are other people who are mothering and fathering and it is not in the holy spirit okay so that's what i'm talking about and so when we can distinguish good from evil and we make a choice that our choice is going to be love in the spirit we can see then how jesus christ radically loved us we can see why sisters and priests radically love christ we it's not it's everybody now christie fidelli lacy called everyone into the vineyard st john paul the second called you two going to my vineyard everybody is called to a radical love and commitment to jesus christ right sister it is she does she's like come on guys i need you i need you i need you okay so so we're so that we understand that we're in this together and so then with that we can challenge our kids to purity because guess what it doesn't matter what you are right now i told a young man this who was 13 who was struggling with maybe he was you know had this problem okay and i looked at him i said well that's fine while you're figuring this out we'll pray but you're called to virginity right now and he's like i am i said yeah you really don't need to worry about this unless you get married and then of course if you do get married you need to if you want to follow christ that needs to be a christian marriage so everything's taken care of and he honestly looked at me started laughing he goes thank you so much it was kind of heavy for me he's like oh my gosh okay here we go back to this okay so forming a community of persons so the family has this mission then so the husband and the wife are married they in in christ they they give the gift of themselves to each other and they start their family children are the crown of marriage so children are a gift to marriage and i think it's really important to bring in people and have them witness to your youth groups and to your classrooms the love for their children because some kids don't feel loved and so they can experience hearing about the love of families and other kids they they'll start to connect and realize that the gift of their family that their mom cares about them and their dad actually gives them rules that that's actually a gift does this make sense so it's like we can't take the gift of families and children for granted they're the crown of marriage they're the only thing you can take to heaven with you can't take any of your stuff to heaven you can't take any of the fun to heaven and you can't take any technology to heaven you can only take your families i remember my son one of my sons going to the university of minnesota and bringing home a student who is from china for a weekend and we were just having a good weekend having some family meals together and at saturday night we're having a nice candlelight dinner i like candles all the time for all of our family meals i always like candles i have two candle sticks we've had for 33 years they've been let almost every night for dinner and it's just that light of christ burning at our table and this young man looks at me at the end of the night and he says do you do this all the time and i said yes we do and he said oh he says in my country we can only have one child and my parents are required to live separately because they have jobs in different districts so he was fascinated with our family and was sleeping on the couch reading the books of the lives of the saints you know and i got pictures of jesus up and marry up and the whole thing right never talked about jesus yet jesus was talking the entire time amen and and so if we can if we can make experiences of this like for our families in our classrooms in our youth groups and just try to help people to understand that love begins in their heart and then they can take that heart back to their families and when you have people come in from your parishes to give testimonies or witnesses i would find people i would just pray and look for people who could share their stories had this one woman louise who came in she was 78 years old and she came in just to share with the teens in a classroom situation what it was like when her husband died and how she missed him and how she didn't know how she was going to go on without him and how she felt a hand on her shoulder and she felt peace go through her and she knew that her husband was with jesus because of this experience and these kids are just like she goes and then little louise just looked at him and said so kids this is it you need jesus you got to go to church so make sure you go and if your parents won't take you i will and the kids will look for her at church then so it's a really cool way to connect your people with the community and the schools because part of this whole family situation is many families live extended families that's considered community but also just in your communities that there's people out there and so we can reach out to them at all times and how do we do this we're to guard love reveal love and communicate love that's the role of the family so how does the family guard love and in the family of god guard love so when we think about guard love reveal love and communicate love i'm talking about the individual families but i'm also talking about your youth programs so i'm just going to throw out some ideas so like guard love i had a young person who came on one of my mission trips he did not want to come at all his dad put him on the bus his dad asked permission if i would let him put this young man and his sister on the bus two days before our mission trip how many youth ministers would just say no two days before a trip amen i'm with you i wanted to say no really bad there's just one problem i could not say no to this father because his wife had passed away that year and they were in a crisis situation and he was desperate and so i made some calls and i did the paperwork and i asked people to pray and we let him come on the bus and so he came on the bus the dad dropped him off the daughter hugged his father the son had nothing to do with his father got on the bus with his hands like this i greeted him didn't say too much don't ever say too much in the beginning and put him on the bus on the way home we have sharing on the bus all of a sudden this young man comes to the front of the bus the whole bus goes quiet he gets up to the front and his sister's in the back and he's like yo adrian not really but you know i'm talking about and he starts talking to his sister and he says i just got to say as all of you know i really did not want to come on this trip my dad made me go my sister and i my dad we lost our mom last year and then he talked to his sister and i've been a bad brother ever since i've been drinking i've been doing drugs i've been doing things i shouldn't be doing and he says and i'm gonna change and she comes up she's just this tiny thing and he's holding her everybody on the bus it's like a hallmark moment everybody's crying you know and that was it that's how you guard love you guard love by doing tough things you have when people ask something from you with your youth program if you have a type a personality you have to say to somebody who doesn't should i be merciful here you know and if you have somebody asking to go on your trip and you let everybody come then you need to go to a type a person and say should i let this person go on my trip because sometimes you gotta say no does this make sense and this is why we have to pray so this young man came on this trip his father guarded love the church guarded love and he was healed and the family was healed and they could go forward and so when john paul said we have to guard love we have to guard love number two we have to reveal love it's not enough to talk about it it's not it will never change anybody's heart to just sit and talk about love and then be mean to sit and talk about love and be prideful and unforgiving to sit and talk about love and go out and do the opposite and so what jesus is looking for is people who will let not perfect people let me tell you that right now you know what i gotta tell you this is really funny this just may on fall seven times a day i had that bible verse memorized then i got the other half and the lord god delivers them from every fall and i i've you know i was doing the stations of the cross one son one week when my life is hard and tough i do the stations of the cross then i go shopping good sister sister says yes do those stations so i do the stations of the cross and i got to the one where jesus fell three times at our church and i don't know why but his face you know it's just smushed in the ground i was like jesus you look terrible you like to like me and he's like right away i heard him say i made the ground holy i made the ground holy his death his wounds healed us he made that ground holy he made your faults holy he made you holy just invite him into the brokenness invite him into the habits that are not pleasing to you invite him invite him in jesus help me change i remember when this was years ago my holy priest said you need to give up those cigarettes now so yeah i sneak if we smoke because i had them in my freezer he says i think it's time for you to give these up and i said oh father i don't smoke that much are you sure he said yep it's time so next time i see you he said did you do it i go oh father i started smoking more than ever when you told me i had to give him up right he goes oh don't do that he goes okay so just pray about it just pray about it so i said okay i could do that so i did not pray about it for like three weeks and that's time to see father again so i'm like okay i gotta pray about those so one night i'm praying about it and this right here is jesus you know i don't smoke that much do you want me to quit and i hear a line from mcbeth oh damn spot out do you remember that mcbeth i said i started laughing i just burst it out laughing i said okay jesus if you really want me to stop i give you full permission to take this away from me but i don't want to stop but i give you permission to take it away so guess what happens i go out for dinner next week with my husband pull my smokes out of the freezer put it in my purse we have dinner then we go out on the patio i go to light one up guess what i start coughing it burns all the way down i go oh no my husband goes what's going on i go this is making me sick he goes well don't throw him away they're expensive i i have to tell you he completely took it away from me completely so what i learned from that was that invite him into your struggles invite him into your bad habits talk to him about it ask him to help you god will help us with grace you know and he loves us where we're at he accepts us he loves us and he wants us to know that he has revealed love to us and jesus christ and he wants us to invite him in and become the best we can so that we can reveal love to other people with that i got sidetracked there with with that one i wanted to share the story of revealing love my i was working with my high school kids and i had i wanted to interview people on how they knew they were loved and so i asked my little sister i said christa how do you know that you are loved by god how do you know that and she goes all that's easy i go it's easy she goes yeah for me it's always been easy i said why is that she said well you remember when mom was pregnant with me they told her that she could die and i was like oh my gosh that's right so my mother my sister christa was the eighth child my mother almost died having michelle who was the seventh child and she was told don't have any more babies because because you can't carry any more children and so her and dad my dad is catholic doctor nfp they were practicing that but they had never really practiced it to not have children and so they started doing nfp and abstaining and dad understood it mom understood it and they prayed and it worked just fine for about six years and then she got pregnant with christa and it was it was really a quite an ordeal and i remembered this when she said it because we were all little but we remember my mom crying and dad talking to her and and dad calling all of us to pray for mom anyway christa was born without a hit but christa knew her whole life that my mother laid her life down for her so she said because she knew that my mother had been willing to lay her life down for her my mother revealed love to her she had no problem believing that jesus christ would lay down his life for the world isn't that beautiful that's revelation that's to reveal love and then the third thing that the holy father asked for was to communicate love and so in communicating love we are to do sometimes just really speak clearly what god wants to say to the people we're with and we have to sometimes i'm looking for the next thing i want to do here we have to sometimes be willing to do the things that are difficult and i just want to give this example of my father when my one of my siblings my brother had stopped practicing the faith and my mom and dad knew it and i just remember one night lile stopped in to visit and dad just said to him i hear you're not going to church anymore and he said yeah i'm not and my dad just said well your faith is the most important thing that you have don't throw it away and when you're ready you get yourself back to mass and you get yourself to confession and he said it a little bit more german than that okay but you want to know what he said it and he said it with love and i think sometimes that these hard conversations with our students i've had kids really struggle with their faith and i'll say you can struggle all you want but you need to get to mass you need to be humble because if god is going to form you and work with you you have to be humble you have to realize that you're this big and god is you have to understand that and so i had a young woman who was going to walk away from the church leaven grader she walked into my office and she said all right i've given it all a chance nothing's changed i'm done i said you're done she said yep i'm done with god i'm done with church i gave it a chance leaven grader and i believe she was gonna leave and i said would you want to sit down for a minute i have no idea once again what i'm gonna say but i'm just asking the holy spirit what should i say and she sits down and above her head is a cross on the wall it's not hanging there it's on the wall and i feel inspired in that moment just to grab the cross off the wall and put it in her hands and this is something now i've done as a prayer in youth group i'll use a crucifix and pass the cross and let with music playing and let them talk to jesus from their hearts after i tell this story and so as she held jesus she looks at me and the crucifix and she says what what reveal love i said what else does he have to do for you she says what do you mean i said what else does he have to do for you you said you're walking away you're done what else does he have to do for you and she looks at the cross and then she really looks at it and i just told her his hands and feet were pierced for you for every time your feet has walked to sin and every time somebody has taken their hand and broken you his head was crowned with thorns for every bad thought you've ever had and every bad thought or accusation that's come against you his heart was pierced for your broken heart and he was beaten all over his body for all of the ways that you have been beaten in your body in your young life that would make you walk away from the god of love and this little girl takes this cross she puts it up to her heart that she starts crying and i saw 11th grader receive the gospel she goes get all done it's completely quiet and she goes now what do i do i go i think you need to go to confession she goes i just went i go yep but you didn't confess the big one she goes what was the big one i said you didn't believe in the love of jesus christ she goes oh my gosh that's a sin i go yes we are called to love jesus christ the way he loves us it's we gotta love him we gotta love jesus and we gotta be like jesus freaks i remember this lady she goes i said turn when i was working at this one pair she said gosh you haven't been invited to any of the parties of the social things in the families she goes that's because you're into jesus i go oh she goes yeah you're kind of jesus i go yeah she goes i go and if you hang around me you're going to become just like me two years later she goes we're out one night having dinner she was my secretary she goes oh my gosh she goes i'm just like you okay so we're to guard love reveal love and communicate love now i wanted you in the last minutes we have together um i wanted to just give you i wanted to just give you four ideas of practical things that you can do at your parish if you want to the first thing is is that i am seeing at different parishes in the country families are doing family faith formation night and i went into a family and i was a speaker and i have to tell you i prayed so hard i was so scared i thought well just try it once if it doesn't work i'll never go back but they had three to four hundred people there and it was all age levels the middle school kids were all sit they had a big dinner and the night was called they called their night unify and they had a the knights of columbus put on a lovely barbecue they all came in after working eight and then they came into the gym they had good music and they had just a bunch of chairs out we had an opening prayer and then i did a talk based on the family and i have to tell you that even with two year olds there and stuff it felt chaos but i was at peace but because of the prayer they had around it and that they set up a good meal and they had some good music and they dimmed the lights nice and they had a really nice strong light on me i it it worked and what was really cool is all these dads and moms were there and so to do a talk on the family and to do a talk on marriage and then we had all these middle school and high school kids that were right up front i just couldn't believe it it went really well and so i think that if you're thinking about trying to do this to pray about it and to talk to your knights and to talk to you know just to try it because i see this happening i do see it happening that families just want to come together they want to be together for the night they're tired they need dinner like they got to feed them but if you can give them a good message and then what we did at the end of the night which was new for them but i had this idea and it went over well so you could you could do this simple we made sure there was a statue of the blessed mother on the um stage i have to tell you i i would youtube the mama bear and the cougar because you could so show that to a family they would get it everybody would get it and then what we did is the family circled up and anybody who was there without a family they we the icebreaker we did was take a picture of your family and anybody that's next to you that needs a family and so the groups formed and they did selfies and then those were sent into the church to do a bulletin board later and then at the end of the night everybody got together and we called upon the blessed mother and we did a decade of the rosary together all the families were in holy huddles praying the decade of the rosary and as we went through each intention we prayed for every evil coming against their families and the report that came back to their pastor was that that part of the night was the most powerful i wonder why yeah that's about some other so um and i wanted to just let you know there is um a book that um i i got and read a couple years ago that is called um um mary in the 19th century and it's called the woman will conquer and it goes through every apparition of the blessed mother from the 1800s through the 1900s when i finished this book it's not hard to read i go oh my gosh you must be exhausted like you could just see how mary is working to save humanity so it just gave me a little bit more edge to keep that rosary going i have noticed with youth group and with speaking if i do even a hail mary before i do a talk or or with the youth group so whatever a decade if i can i'll have kids come up oh my gosh this one boy he's up there he's like all lead i'm like you're a leader he gets up there he's stumbling through the our father and the hail mary's everybody's laughing but i can i can tell you what i just kept encouraging him and going with it and eventually by the third hail mary the whole group was praying so it's does this make sense they they get uncomfortable because they haven't learned how to pray together but we just lead and keep stepping forward keep stepping forward okay never idea is intentions see if you can include intentions at your mass to pray for your families help the people are writing the tensions the families are stressed out marriages are stressed out so you could literally have at sunday mass we want to lift up all married couples who are struggling with boom boom and boom we pray to the lord right we want to lift up all families who are struggling with children who are sick or anxious or whatever just to try to get intentions being prayed so that they realize that god knows that they're here they're at church and we're praying for them at church is that a little connection that's a simple one another idea is prayer chains any find the people in your parishes that pray and i know at two at um different parishes they have one or two people is charged with the prayer chain and all they have to do is call one person and fires right through the prayer chain but families that you're working with if you as youth ministers you can't do all this prayer jesus showed me this he's like you got to pray every day as youth ministers and you'll get more of that in your spirituality talk but if you have people parents that come to you and they're struggling and you say hey i'm gonna call the prayer chain can i put you on it no names just get your family on there prayer chains or connect with people who pray my sister who's consecrated taught me this she said the nuns are going to pray anyway the brothers are going to pray anyway but if they get a picture of a youth group or if they get a name of a family that's going to go up in the adoration chapel and you are going to get prayers okay so i make friends with the brothers and the sisters amen sister yeah we have i have some nuns now my husband just started writing to these nuns and it took about two years and finally we got a letter back and it was just this lovely letter and she goes we are your sisters in christ and i was like amen okay see if i got one more thing here okay um i wanted to ask um oh this is another quick thing groups if there's any way that you can help it like i know you're youth ministers but if there's any way that you can do anything to build small groups so like first of all with your core teams by bringing them like having somebody in your core just host a night and you come together and you just have food and then people bring stuff and then you just go in the living room and you do like a youth group with your core team do high point low point then do lexio and then sit together in the quiet and then pray for each other because once you start teaching your core how to do this then you can teach they'll be able to do that with the teens and small groups and then they can also invite other families into their homes and so i know families that are meeting i'm in a family group where we meet twice a month on a sunday and that's what we do we bring food then we get in the living room the kids play we do high point low point then we read scripture we do lexio and we pray for each other it's so simple but what happens is is by teaching and getting small groups going and i know that's in line with the synod and all the things that are being required but i think i think the church is really on with this