Here’s the deal: YOU matter to the Church, and you matter a lot! Regardless of your age, personality, grade, school, the activities you do, the skills you have – you have something to offer to the Catholic Church, to offer to this church, and to offer to our community. Our youth ministry is about helping you to discover your place in our church and community.

 

But it goes beyond that.

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Faith isn’t just a fad. It’s not just something we do on Sunday mornings. It’s not just our way to be a ‘good person’, though it’s certainly helpful to that! Faith is life-changing, world-defining. Faith is what inspired the apostles to preach the Gospel to the ends of the Earth, even though this meant dying a martyr’s death. Faith is what inspires social activists around the world to give bread to the hungry, clothe the naked, and see all people as our brothers and sisters. Faith is what gave strength to saints like Teresa of Calcutta, who spent every day serving the poorest of the poor in India, and every morning praying before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

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So what is this faith? What do we believe? That God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that all who believe in him may not perish but have eternal life. That God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

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We believe in One God, in Three Persons – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe that love isn’t just a characteristic of God – we believe that God IS love. We believe that this love is so powerful and so overwhelming that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, into our messed up world of sin and war and disease and hatred, and this Son like a light, shined in the darkness, and the darkness could not overcome it. And when death swallowed that light, when that Son’s arms were outstretched on the instrument of torture that was the cross, when the sky turned black and the ground shook, that love was not vanquished, nor did that light disappear. Because three days later, it shined ever brighter, and the power of death was overthrown, the veil to the temple torn open, the gates to heaven unlocked, and that Son who died on the cross returned to his apostles to declare, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And behold, I will be with you always, until the end of the age.”

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Jesus is with us. Jesus is still with us. That’s why the Church exists. That’s why we have the sacraments. That’s why we call the Mass a celebration – because our faith is worth celebrating.  

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Jeffrey Kremer

Director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry