Youth Ministry and the Epiphany

Four Gifts that make youth ministry an Epiphany

The title “Called to a noble adventure” comes from John Paul IIs words and they form the theme of the conference and the title of the vision statement for youth ministry in England and Wales.

Pope John Paul II invited young people to a noble and authentic adventure when speaking about the need for a church that is for young people[i]. A church that would challenge young people but only after it had given much to them. A church that would be built around a joyful Gospel and an experience of Eucharist that was understood as bigger than the mass.

The story of the wise men from today’s Gospel describes a noble adventure undertaken in hope through following a star that most other people had seen and yet not recognised. These wise men had woken up, they had “read the signs of the times” and they were looking for God’s a new experience of God in a new and a young life.

I want to suggest to you today that your star is already up and shining. Your star is calling you to a noble and an authentic adventure and into the presence of God hidden in the lives of the young. It is easy to lose sight of that star because it is different from the many other stars in the sky. It is not always the brightest or the most colourful. Nor is it the star that many other people choose to follow. But it exerts a pull on you, deep down. For some that pull is felt as curiosity about what life is about, for some it is the pull of relationships and belonging, for others it is the urge to change the world and for many it is the tug of a presence that never leaves us.

The experience of being pulled out of ourselves into action and into relationship is an experience of God. This is the God whose mystery links the family history I carry with the pattern of relationships I desire. It is the link between the sweep of evolution and the need for justice and peace. It links our inner world with the outer world and makes all people brothers and sisters in a communion of belonging that becomes eternal. This shy and profound presence, touched in relationships and experienced in silence, is the big story that young people need to experience before it is ever preached. In our work with young people this is the reality that we are opening up rather than explaining.

The vision document “Called to a Noble Adventure” offer us the tools to help young people find their star and with it an authentic experience of God. It is a gift to youth ministers in England and Wales that can be unpacked in many ways. I would like to introduce you to one way you can unpack this gift today by looking at the four goals it outlines for us as ministers to young adults.

The first gift and goal is an appreciation of the unique personal path to meaning that each young person must walk. On that personal path there will be experience, wisdom and gifts that often emerge from the pattern of love already embedded in life and from the patterns of the absence of love that make up each personal and unique story. The gift is an awareness in the youth minister, if not in the young person, that God is already present in the events of their unique authentic experience. That awareness leads the youth minister to take off their shoes because they are standing on the holy ground of God’s presence within the lives of the young. The youth minister’s role on the personal journey of a young person is to accompany and connect one unique journey with the lives of others without manipulation, without pressure and with great respect for the way that God may be working in their lives. Accompanying young people needs us to be in touch with where we are on our own authentic journey because if we are not sensitive to God’s presence in our own lives how can we sense the Spirit of God moving in the experiences of young people. That is why youth ministers need to have the awareness of mystics as well as the words that open up relationships.

The second gift is the Gospel – the good news of Jesus- lived with joy. Both of those words are important: lived and joy. You can be good news for others if you are not authentic- living what you believe- you will just be a hypocrite. Neither can you be good news if you constantly give way to sadness, pessimism, fear or anxiety. You may well struggle with all of those things and the struggle becomes good news for others because you keep going. Both your gifts and your weaknesses can serve the Gospel of joy because they remind you that you are incomplete, that you need others and above all your life depends more and more on God in order to make any sense. The story of Jesus, his struggle with meaning, with religion, with hypocrisy reveals a deep pattern in experience that leads to life. Struggle leads to inner strength and cross leads to resurrection when one is faithful to the spirit within us that calls out Abba Father. The pattern of Jesus’ life reveals the way that God is at work in all lives. The Gospel is the second gift.

The third gift is community. We have a personal and authentic journey, we have a Gospel map to guide our personal choices but the third gift is the pattern of relationships that surround the journey and the map. The Church, for all its faults, is the community that surrounds our personal Gospel journey with friendship, guidance and prayer. The church is a network of relationships and not a building. It is not simply parishes and dioceses. They are the visible aspects of church that, like an iceberg, conceal a deep sense of searching and a hunger for meaning in the culture. The church can emerge when the conversation in the pub changes and people share their hopes and fears. The church emerges when a communal tragedy draws us together in mutual grief and questioning. The church emerges when those in need are supported and those who serve are celebrated. Each retreat centre is a church, each small group becomes a sacred space where God’s presence is touched. It is within the pattern of relationships that God’s love is experienced, God’s wisdom shared and in that pattern of relationships that we are accepted and forgiven for the mistakes on out journey.

The fourth gift is simply a job. The job is to give people an impression of God’s love. To hear God speaking in the cry of the poor. (To build a better world) To sense God’s presence in the giftedness of young people and call those gifts to life. (To guide) To defend the rights of young people where they are threatened especially within the church. (To Advocate) To open up your experience as a support to others. (To witness) To celebrate life and build deeper relationships. (Community building)  To build up the church as a place of welcome and hospitality for all through letting young people know that they are loved, especially the young and the poor.

These are the four gifts that the noble adventure offers to you. Use them wisely and well and they will become an epiphany; a revelation of God’s presence among us. On this feast of the Epiphany then let’s commit ourselves to open up this gift of a youth vision in 2014. May it bring us joy, stamina, deeper friendships and above all, a sense of the abiding presence of God in all of life.

Swanwick January 5^th 2013

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[i] World day of prayer for vocations 1995

a new year meditation

A new year is a pause at the top of a hill. A chance to draw breath and to look back at the way that you have traveled through a year of experience. As you look back at the journey you have made do so with compassion and a gentleness, even for the experiences which still carry a sting or a shiver for your spirit. Let it all be and resist the temptation to analyse. Just look back and say to yourself “that’s what happened” without letting anger or sadness get a foothold because it is already in the past. It is now just experience and it is rich in a wisdom that is deeper than any analysis can reveal. Let it lie and leave every negative in the hands of your God who, in time, will easter it all into new life.

Instead allow your mind’s eye to scan the year for good memories, good people and the ordinary joys of being alive. Let your mind cherry pick your best moments; the conversations that opened up new potential, the stillness of moments of peace, the transfigurations of joy and the meals that have celebrated life. Re-live those life-giving moments that still sparkle on the journey of the last year even with the distance of time. Allow those joys and blessings to rouse up in your mind the gratitude that has made the year of 2013 a gift.

Do not turn too quickly to 2014 but spend some time unwrapping the gift that this passing year has become. Let your heart dwell with these memories and cherish the joys and consolations they contain. Pray that those things that are unfinished may continue to be eastered into new life by the hidden hands of God healing your history.

Open your hands and give the year back to God with gratitude.

Then, put your hand into the hand of God and walk into the adventure of 2014.

Happy new year!

The mess in your life is the manger where Christ is re-born

The first Christmas was a bit of a shambles;

Mary and Joseph were away from home

Accommodation wasn’t arranged

The place they found was makeshift

There were question marks over Mary’s pregnancy

Herod was plotting to kill their child

People kept disturbing their peace- like shepherds and later wise men

They had to become refugees soon after the birth.
It wasn't romantic, hygienic and it probably smelled a lot!

Politics, travel problems, domestic mess, strangers at the door, threats of violence, tiredness, gossip and uncertainty.

God came into a mess- it didn’t put him off and he didn’t miraculously sort it out.

He came to be God-with-us.  Emmanuel in the mess

We are messy creatures and that is how God made us

He knows that we are easily upset, want everything perfect and that we want to be appreciated

He knows that we can sulk and be adolescent at any age.

He knows that Christmas catches us out with tiredness, tensions and high expectations

And God wants to be with us in our fun, in our rest, in our upset and in our arguments this Christmas

Make room for Christ this Christmas in the joys and tensions of a family Christmas.

Take Christ out of your Christmas and all you have left is m and s

Emmanuel- God is with us- as one like us- not far away but in the mess

God is with us as one of us.

He teaches us from the messy manger that we are brothers and sisters

Whether we have a happy or a hellish Christmas God is equally with the sulker and with the saint.
The only difference is that the saint may be more aware of God in the mess.

We belong to each other in a communion of saints- 

a family of saints that extends deep into the mystery of God
who loves us unconditionally.

There is no such thing as a perfect Christmas-

There is always a messy Christmas and in the mess are the stirrings of new life.

The mess in your life is the manger within which your relationship with Jesus is being re-born

I will leave you with Pope Emeritus Benedict’s words on this theme:

Most of us in the world today live far from Jesus Christ, the incarnate God who came to dwell amongst us. We live our lives by philosophies, amid worldly affairs and occupations that totally absorb us and thus are a great distance from the manger. In all kinds of ways, God has to prod us and reach out to us again and again, so that we can manage to escape from the muddle of our thoughts and activities to discover the way that leads to him. God comes to us as man so that we might become truly human. (Benedict 16^th)

Mass with Thomas in mind

Tonight we said mass for Thomas who is not well and living in the Czech Republic. His sister joined us and we celebrated the mass at the same time as the family was celebrating mass in the Czech Republic. What was happening in that double celebration and in what sense were we connecting with Thomas? As we gathered at the altar it seemed to me that there is a sense in which we step into a timeless space and also a 'placeless space.' This celebration, happening at the same time in two places, reminds us of the deep reality of the risen Jesus who is present in all places and in all times. Therefore by being "In Christ" at the mass we are deeply connected to both the past and the future as well as to every place.

By engaging with the risen Christ at mass we also touch the places where the cross and resurrection are moving as an invitation to life. That flow of Easter energy connects people to those who have yet to be born, to those in need at present and to those who have gone before to the fullness of resurrection. Therefore the mass takes us all into a different dimension where space and time collapse to a single point in Christ and where we are one with each other and with the Risen Christ. As the host is raised up, the bread broken and the wine is poured all of creation is drawn up into that drama of dying and rising. Standing around the altar as a community that night it was as if we had discovered roots that ran deep into a common reality in Christ. We belonged together around the altar but we also belonged with all people of all time and forever.

So in focussing on Thomas and a simultaneous mass in the Czech Republic we were only making specific something that happens mystically in every mass; we were connecting with all life and creation. It's just that this time it was with Thomas in mind.

Temptation

Jesus was tempted by celebrity, self interest and power for 40 days. In this culture these temptations are as lively as ever. We can all be seduced from being ourselves by these three influential forces. Often we are not even  aware that our motives have been hijacked. To be faithful to our vocation is then to have made many u turns. The path is not the hero path but a humble process of trial and error. The one who finds their way learns to trust the road rather than himself or herself.
The temptation is to take short cuts, to avoid conflicts, questions and uncertainty. But it is precisely in these unknowns and in the diversions that our lives become shaped by events and God's touch is experienced on the faith journey.

Choose well how you fast this lent

Today's Gospel deals with the practice of fasting recalling the comments of Jesus that fasting does not happen when the bridegroom is still around. That is an interesting connection: linking fasting with the absence of God. Perhaps that is a way to discern why and how we might fast in a secular and individualised culture.
If fasting has to be related to an absence of God the link with the Lenten period becomes stronger; fasting becomes more than just self-denial or self control, it becomes a specific way of growth on the faith journey of the individual and the world.

When an awareness of the absence of God becomes a criteria for fasting it helps us as both individuals and communities to focus our fasting and link it to the paschal mystery in a more concrete way. For example a person may realise that their married relationship is a place where God has largely become absent. That then becomes the place where the "bridegroom is no longer with them" and therefore the place where fasting might be focused  In a community context a person may conclude that the office workspace where they spend much of their day is a Godless environment and that may become the focus for their fasting. A young person may look at their life and feel that God is absent because they never stop to think deeply and that absence of reflection is something that needs fasting from.
The definition of fasting that is implied by these reflections may well expand to include aspects of alms-giving and prayer, the other two disciplines of lent.  The fasting element is that of self denial "agere contra" going against one's self. So the married person may well decide that switching the television off and sitting with their partner for half an hour three nights a week might be a good way to fast from a self-centred lifestyle. This might include giving up soap operas or football matches which could be seen as a form of fasting. The person working in a Godless office space might well decide to pray quietly at their desk for five minutes at lunchtime as a way of resisting the relentless tide of gossip and back-biting sweeping through the workspace. In this situation prayer and self-control form a type of fasting that might help to change the world of the office for all concerned. The young person realising that they never stop to think might pick up the challenge of a silent face-book which +cafod is promoting at present.
If fasting was seen as focused around an absence of God in our world it has the ability to draw together the other two elements of Lenten discipline (prayer and alms-giving) into a single resolution that leads to life for the individual and the community in which people live. On a wider scale fasting has the same focus when family fast day comes around. Dorothy Day began a fast during Vatican II to raise awareness among bishops of the need for peace. Gandhi fasted in a similar way to bring God back into an increasingly Godless and unjust culture.
Choosing how to fast this lent can be the most significant choice for the whole year. It can bring God into the shadows of our lives as a messiah.  It can give us the courage to feel the emptiness and desert areas of our lives and realise that it is the only place where we can meet Christ because that is where he is waiting to heal us and our world.

Pope Benedict resigns

The news of Pope Benedict's resignation comes as a shock to many simply because it has happened so rarely in the history of the church. His predecessor, John Paul II, deliberately lived out the infirmity of his old age in the glare of publicity in order to highlight the importance of the struggles of later life. Pope  Benedict seems to have a very different motivation for going that is equally humble and rational. Here is what he said:

In today's world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognise my incapacity to adequately fulfil the ministry entrusted to me.

Knowing when to let go of a role, especially one of high profile, takes as much wisdom as it does courage. We have seen how both Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher stayed too long in their roles. Perhaps that happens because those who fill those roles are drawn into a kind of grandiosity in their thinking that clouds the reality of their fallibility. That is not the case with Benedict, he seems to be acutely aware of his fallibility in guiding the church.

All of these thoughts seem to pale into insignificance before the fact that Benedict is already 85 years old. He should be tucked up by the fire with a blanket and some good reading. Above all he should not be exploited by a curial system that seems resistant to change and at times insensitive to individual needs. There is a danger that the curial system in the Vatican will be the rock on which the church will founder unless the next pontiff organises a good re-fit of the whole curial system. Perhaps that will be Benedicts greatest legacy; that if the church can develop its thinking in regard to the resignation of a pope what else might be able to change?