12-4-09 THE BISHOP'S VOICE: God is working through our young people
Bishop Michael Sheridan, STD
Dec 10, 2009 4:00 PM
Recently I participated in two different events in the course of one week. The first was the Fall Assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore. The second was the National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) in Kansas City, Mo.

The bishops of the United States

meet twice a year to discuss and give approval to a variety of documents, initiatives and programs. At our recent meeting we gave approval to the final translations of the Roman Missal. We promulgated a national pastoral letter on marriage as part of our ongoing initiative to teach the truth about marriage, as well as give support to married couples and to those preparing for marriage. We issued a brief statement of clarification regarding the use of certain technologies (e.g., in-vitro fertilization, surrogacy) for the purpose of producing children. And, as usual, we dealt with budgetary issues.

All of these are important in their own ways, but being locked away for days at a time, buried in bureaucratic structures, I often wonder if all that we do as bishops bears any real fruit among the faithful in our country. The answer to that question came when I went from Baltimore to Kansas City to take part in NCYC, a gathering of Catholic teens from around the country that takes place every two years. This year, more than 21,000 young people converged on Kansas City with one purpose in mind — to deepen their faith and give praise to God. And that they did!

With a variety of speakers and musicians to inspire them, the teens spent long hours in prayer and learning. The highlight of the gathering (in my opinion and that of many teens with whom I spoke) was the time of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. Imagine 21,000 teens in one place — in absolute silence before the Lord. Following the period of adoration, all of the young people followed the Blessed Sacrament carried in procession through the streets of downtown Kansas City. I have never witnessed anything like it — and neither had the people who live there. Even the police who were there for crowd control were amazed at the reverence and devotion evident in the teens. Anyone who is tempted to think that eucharistic adoration is something of the past should talk to one of those young people.

Besides being with the group of teens from our diocese (more than 120 of them), I had the great privilege of having several meetings with groups of young people from different parts of the country. The young participants were invited to spend time with the bishops who attended the conference. In three different 90-minute periods, I spoke with teens from Cleveland, Knoxville, Tenn., Denver and a dozen other cities. They asked me questions and spoke candidly of the their joys and struggles as the young Catholic Church. One thing was so very clear to me and to the other bishops who were there: These young people take their faith and their Catholic responsibilities very seriously.

One young man wanted to delve more deeply into the mystery of the holy Trinity, while another was hoping to get some help in defending his faith against the attacks made on it by some of his friends. One young lady was looking for the right words to use in describing how she felt when she was in the presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. Another wanted to know how she could contribute better to the life of the church. Even though these young people expressed their gratitude to me for spending time with them, it was I who came away far more edified than they.

At the end of one of these meetings, as the group was dispersing, a young man came up to me, reached into his pocket and pulled out a dog-eared photograph of a beautiful, young girl. He placed the photo in my hand. "This is my sister, bishop," he said. "Please pray for her." I immediately assumed that she was ill or that perhaps she had died. The young man went on. "She no longer practices her Catholic faith, the faith that means everything to me." There were tears in his eyes, and I knew that he was as devastated as he would have been if, in fact, she had died. I promised him my prayers, and I keep that photograph in my chapel as a reminder of that promise.

There is much cause for discouragement in our world, but there is much more cause for hope. Those 21,000 young men and women, and the countless others like them who were not able to attend NCYC, are all the proof I need that the Holy Spirit of God is at work in our young church. These are the leaders of tomorrow, and our world and church could not be in better hands.

The meetings I have with other bishops and with the good people of my own staff here in the diocese will go on, but it is worth all the hours spent because I know that the real work of God is going on every day in all the places where our young people live and work and play. Thank you, young church, for reminding me that, in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, God has, indeed, given us "a future full of hope."