Fostering Hope and Evangelization Among Youth

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How can we as Church and parish be inspired by the virtue of hope exemplified by young people? What virtues, habits and practices will help us to accompany young people as they take up their call and go out to serve the world? The Church must embrace the hope and vitality of young people by taking their struggles and questions seriously, offering compassionate guidance, and witnessing to the Christian life as both a relationship with God and a battle for holiness. In turn, older generations can be renewed by the faith and innocence of youth, fostering a reciprocal journey toward truth and evangelization.

1. Hope in Youth

As older folks, we should be inspired by the newness of efforts they put forth which speak to the reality of struggle. Indeed, what Christ says concerning youth is striking. “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.”, don’t lead them astray, and “unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14; Matthew 18:6; Matthew 18:3). As we look at how these two realities interact that there is hope (for a better world, that one is not the only one to seek good things, and that there are new persons with new strength entering the fight) and their need for guidance, it seems we should recognize the role we are called to i.e. to share the truth the Lord has provided for us.^1^

2. Authentic Accompaniment

One thing that the document Chistus vivit suggests and that the need for authentic listening in pastoral contexts demonstrates is that children desire to be taken seriously, as we all do. Perhaps this question is better posed, how can we better treat children like real live humans? Indeed, this is love, sometimes lust does not have sexual meaning, sometimes it is simply wrongly interpreting beauty. How then do we rightly interpret the beauty of youthful persons that we may see them not only as pure and innocent, adorable humans, but as humans first of all? So often the young leave the Church because they think we are unable to answer their questions, that we don’t want them to ask questions, or we trivialize their struggles. I would suggest a compassion borne of a very intentional love, one that is not so near-sighted so as to see only hubris as we look at the young.[1] In my experience, people often lack the interest or assume there is none on the youth’s end to be guided, accompanied, and helped along the path of having a life fully alive.^2^

3. The Christian Life as a Struggle

So often we pretend like Christian life is not a struggle, a battle. How can we better witness to the young what the Christian life truly is, i.e., that it is not only a relationship - although primarily that - but also that it is a battle where God is providing for us, a deliverance from evil with which we must both suffer and cooperate; that life without it is truly death and starvation of the worst kind; and that it is a set of beliefs with the least error, so that we may not find ourselves longing for truth while being lied to at every turn by a world consumed with hatred of objective reality?

4. Guidance and Evangelization

First, we must purge ourselves of anything that prevents them from a relationship with Christ wherever possible, we must do a service to them that they may be led unto Christ and not lost to the world’s wiles, and we must learn from them anew what it means to be innocent, pure, and to seek God (Matthew 10:16; Matthew 28:19-20; Luke 15). Moreover, we should recognize that the faith and virtue we now possess does not precipitate from our own wanting it, but in our wanting it by God’s grace and the Church He established which consists of generation after generation of faithful Christians who came to this same conclusion, and did not sit idly by while we starved for what is truly good while coming to despise what is only its faint reflection.

5. Learning from Youth

It is difficult enough that we are born into our own weakness, striving every day to be better, even to follow the Gospel, surrounded by people that are/appear better than us in every way, it is a whole new level of difficulty to find that they are not better than us when it comes to sin and brokenness. We are called to be something for the world which it is not for us, holy.

Written by Carter Carruthers & Arranged by ChatGPT

Footnotes

  1. Francis, Apostolic Exhortation on the Growth in Personal Vocation to Young People Christus vivit (25 March 2019), §6-21.
  2. Francis, Christus vivit, §12.
  3. Donald DeGrood, “Sunday TV Mass - July 14, 2024,” YouTube video, from Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls, posted by Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls (14 July 2024) at http://www.youtube.com.

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