The youth are our hope

Seminarians Luis Lozano, Jr. and Javier Ebertowski share personal accounts from their seminarian formations and why they believe youth are the hope and future of the Church.
 

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LOZANO — As part of my seminarian formation, I volunteer every Sunday at the Vietnamese Martyrs Catholic Church in San Antonio. This parish is unique not only because it’s a national parish for Vietnamese people living in the San Antonio area but because the parish is so young and vibrant. I teach the faith to eighth-graders whose parents are Vietnamese and, for the most part, born in the United States.

I was recently asked, “where do I find hope?” I considered the question for a while, and what first came to mind was seeing the faith of these Vietnamese people in the parish. In many ways, they are like average American teenagers, but one thing I have found profoundly uplifting is their involvement in their church and parish activities.

The youths and children run around a shared space: parish hall and temporary chapel, where they hold religious education classes. They vastly outnumber the adults in the parish. These youths are engaged. When I asked them to write down their favorite thing about Sundays, to my surprise, nearly all of them wrote down “participating in their local parish youth group.”

Sometimes we get the impression that teenagers don’t like to do churchy stuff. However, these youths are involved in an international organization that began in Vietnam, the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement. Today it is part of their everyday life and the Catholic expression of their culture for many Vietnamese in the United States. For them, it connects them to the generations of faith that have been passed down to them, and it unites them with peers their own age who often attend different middle schools and high schools across the city.

These motivated youths come together with their focus on Christ to celebrate and share the beauty of their faith in the Eucharist and learn from each other virtues and values from their culture and their Catholic faith that will sustain them through life.

I am thankful to be able to learn their culture and values firsthand. Not only do I participate in the Vietnamese Eucharistic Youth Movement gatherings, but I’ve begun taking Vietnamese language classes with the teenagers to learn their language and culture. For them being Vietnamese goes hand in hand with being Catholic.

It may be easy for us in these times of the 24-hour news cycle to over-focus on all the negative things in the world: wars breaking out, disease and loss of faith that we can easily despair if we do not find hope.

When we are united in Christ, we can help restore the Kingdom He established while He was on earth. He is where I find hope because He is where these youths find their hope, their joy and their strength.
 

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EBERTOWSKI — On October 22, 1978, after his first angelus, Pope John Paul II addressed many young people: “You are the future of the world, the hope of the Church. You are my hope”.

Today’s youths crave communion: Communion with God and communion with others. I have seen it in places as remote as border-town countries in Central America to university students living in Rome. The youth today are hungry for something more.

Sure, some youths and young adults are still preoccupied with phone and social media addictions. Still, many are seeking faith-filled, joyful communities and seeking to live out their Catholic faith in such a counter-cultural way that it leaves me nothing less than inspired and hopeful.

I saw an example of inspiration and hope while serving on a mission in Mexico a couple of years ago, where a handful of freshly graduated high-school boys gave up a year of their lives to serve the poor, lonely and forgotten. They didn’t care about “getting ahead” or trying to chase some materialistic dream. They wanted communion. They wanted to give and receive love —and they were not alone.

Here in Rome, I had the privilege of serving students from Ave Maria University and found something similar. Often, when we would walk onto the campus, we saw students gathered, laughing, studying, talking or just sitting with each other.

On one occasion, one of the students mentioned to me how she couldn’t wait to graduate from college and start working at a pro-life organization. Pro-life organization?

When I was in college, all I thought about was how I could get a great job and make lots of money. These young people are impressive, and they encourage me to keep up the good fight, especially when things seem bleak —in the Church, the culture, or even our personal lives.

As I grow older and experience more of the Church in her different countries and cultures, I must agree with Pope St. John Paul II that the youths give me hope for the Church today.