In visiting several parishes over the past week, I've felt change in the air. With school back in session, families are transitioning into the busy schedules of carpools, after-school practices, and of course, homework. Whether or not we are parents, there is a noticeable quickening of the pace of life that is exciting and full of anticipation.
This coming weekend, I will celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass at the annual Parents and Their Teens Conference at Bishop Ireton High School. For those of you who have not heard of it, this gathering is a fabulous day — sponsored by our Diocesan Office of Youth Ministry — of seminars and workshops designed to teach parents how to better understand their adolescent children and communicate more effectively. The teens, in turn, are challenged to understand the many struggles and decisions that parents face. This year's talks will also be offered in Spanish to reach the growing number of Hispanic families in our diocese. Each year, I look forward to this day, when an exciting and admirable sense of family solidarity is on display.
Families are threatened on many fronts today, and forums such as this provide a much-needed — and, I might add, countercultural — opportunity for parents and their teenage children to pray, learn, laugh and reflect together. A family that prays together stays together, and this maxim is something our families and young people are taking to heart.
It is said that our young people are the “Church of the future,” but in fact, they are very much the Church of today. They are the “young Church.” Today in the Diocese of Arlington, approximately 15,000 young people are actively involved in our parishes' youth ministry programs. In parishes where our youth are active in the day-to-day life of the parish, they are nothing less than evangelizers of the parish. Their enthusiastic, candid and personal experience of living and grappling with the faith is contagious. And just as a child can lead his or her parents to deeper faith, so our youth can vivify an entire parish.
This dynamic is evident in our local parishes, as well as in the World Youth Day celebrations. Our Holy Father has made no secret of the fact that he is profoundly encouraged by the vibrant display of faith on the part of the youth. At its core, this inspiring dynamic is an example of what our Holy Father calls the “Law of the Gift,” a law inscribed in our hearts, one by which we mirror the life-giving love and life of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Pope John Paul II recently announced the theme of the next August's World Youth Day planned for Cologne, Germany: “We have come to worship Him” (Mt 2:2). I hope to participate in our diocesan pilgrimage along with hundreds of young people and families from our diocese. This will be a wonderful experience of the universal Church for all who are able to attend.
We have much for which to be grateful. Over 240 teens volunteered a week of their time to serve those less fortunate at this summer's WorkCamp. This October, we'll have our annual Youth Rally, to be held at Bishop O'Connell High School. At the Rally, I will commission our Arlington Catholic Youth Board, comprised of 10 young people who will provide an invaluable service to our youth ministry by assisting in the planning and evaluation of youth ministry programs.
We are truly blessed to have volunteer as well as salaried coordinators of Youth Ministry in many of the parishes throughout our diocese. These committed men and women work with the young people of the parish and help form them into Catholic leaders for tomorrow. They are assisting parents on the front lines of our children's lives. Their relationships with our youths provide the platform on which they can inspire them to “set out into the deep” — deeper into catechetical, service and worship opportunities.
I echo countless parents, priests and other members of the diocese in extending to our coordinators a sincere gratitude for their daily service to the Church of today and the Church of tomorrow. Young people will only be the Church of today if we invite them to be, and can only be the Church of tomorrow if we teach them to be. As our diocese experiences tremendous growth as well as the responsibility of planning for tomorrow, it is my sincere hope that every parish in our diocese will invest in its future — and its present — by making a serious commitment to youth ministry.
At the Mass I will celebrate during the Parents and Their Teens Conference, I hope to affirm the conference's spirit of parent-child cooperation and encourage our parents and youth to continue praying together.
To our youth and their parents, I say: “Set out into the deep, together! Build a life of family prayer that will bind you more closely to one another, and to the Lord Jesus, Who Himself grew up within the family circle at Nazareth.”
