Holy Family youth group seeks grace and fellowship on pilgrimage

A group of 22 Holy Family Connectors* and four youth from other parishes embarked on a one day pilgrimage to the Diocese of Brownsville to visit the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle and Catholic Charities Respite Center on Dec. 8. According to Youth Minister Bea Romo, the group started their journey at 6:30 a.m. that morning. She said that from the outset, they reminded each other that they were leaving behind their everyday comforts in search of graces that God had in store for them, and a deeper relationship with him and with his mother, Nuestra Señora de San Juan del Valle.

The group encouraged each other to be attentive and look out for the different ways they could encounter God, keeping in mind what Jesus said, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Mt 18:20).
 
“We promised to make mutual love the foundation of all we did during the day. We were able to reflect on the richness of our beautiful faith and amazing Church,” Romo said. “It was a day full of meaningful moments: bilingual Mass with mariachis in the beautiful basilica, packed to capacity; the way of the cross prayed by the life-size statues on the shrine’s grounds and experienced lots of fellowship.”
 
“It is not often that we have the opportunity to experience something like this. It is amazing to see how many Catholics come from different places to be there. It shows a great example of how universal our faith is,” shared Jazlein Medina Valadez, one of the teens from Connect.
 
The last stop of their pilgrimage was the Catholic Charities Respite Center in McAllen. The group toured the facility and met with some of the refugees who were being given a short reprieve until they could get the help they needed. According to Romo most of the refugees were from Africa and Haiti. There was a group of small children who had arrived a few days earlier. “When they saw our teens, they ran to them and wanted to hug them all. Their love and joy touched us,” Romo said. “Surprisingly, for many teens, this visit to Catholic Charities was the highlight of their day.”
 
Fernanda Valadez shared how this experience had opened her eyes to other people’s suffering and how it helped her put into perspective her own needs. “I always hear about these situations, but today they became real for me,” she said.
 
Arriving back at Holy Family Parish at almost 7 p.m. The group, though tired, were happy and immensely grateful for the abundant graces they had received, both individually and as a community. “We were renewed by the presence of Christ in his Church,” Romo said.
 

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*Connect is the Holy Family Parish youth group based on a spirituality of communion. Pope St. John Paul II said, “A spirituality of communion implies the ability to see what is positive in others, to welcome it and prize it as a gift from God: not only as a gift for the brother or sister who has received it directly but also as a ‘gift for me.’ A spirituality of communion means, finally, to know how to ‘make room’ for our brothers and sisters, bearing ‘each other’s burdens’ (Gal 6:2) and resisting the selfish temptations which constantly beset us and provoke competition, careerism, distrust, and jealousy. Let us have no illusions: unless we follow this spiritual path, external structures of communion will serve very little purpose. They would become mechanisms without a soul, ‘masks’ of communion rather than its means of expression and growth” (NMI 43).