Meet the Need

In the spring, I teach a sacramental preparation class, which basically means that I get to prepare a handful of my youth to receive God’s graces more fully within His Church. Best job ever!... But seriously, I love every minute of it. For these classes, I go in with an outline of topics and information that needs to be covered based off of the curriculum we use. The first night is groundwork: basic vocabulary. We define words that the Church throws out all the time, but that don’t come up in the average American home, so terms like: grace, sin, sacrament and Trinity. We break them open and talk about what they actually mean, until the youth understand them, not just until they’ve memorized a definition.
And I go in with… let me count… 11 words, expecting to run out of time. And then it takes 2 weeks to cover those 11 words. 3 hours of class time to go through 11 words! Why? Because, for the first time, maybe ever, these youth are being invited to really consider what the Church teaches, and in the middle of their thinking, I make it very clear that they are welcome to voice any question that pops into their head. I encourage them to ask, which does get us off topic. But it’s worth it. I want to do everything I can to meet them where they’re at. I want to meet the need. We’ll get all the vocab words covered eventually, but if someone asks a question, say about morality, or sexuality, or something from a song or show that conflicts with the way Jesus is calling us to live… we’re gonna take the time to talk about it.
Now, a few weeks into classes, someone asked a question about marriage. I was ready and excited to share with them God’s plan for this self-giving love that is a reflection of the love within the Trinity. I made a reference to Genesis, where God designs and blesses the union of Adam and Eve – and the youth jumped on it. They grabbed the Bibles on the table and were searching for what I was talking about. It was like they’d never heard it before. In my head: red flags… lots of red flags. 
                                     
Then, just to test out the accuracy of my red flags, I made some other references to the creation story – blank stares – and then a reference to Abraham – more blank stares. I’d definitely stumbled across a need. These youth did not know the basic stories of salvation history. So the next week when we met, I tabled the discussion that we were scheduled to have. Instead, we dove into scripture, into the powerful ways that God has worked throughout the human experience to draw man back to Himself. It’s a beautiful, true story! It’s their story, and they deserved to hear it.    
Was tabling my sacramental topics difficult? Yes. It would have been much easier to cover the basic elements of baptism than to cover thousands of years of history, relate it to God’s plan that comes to fulfillment in Christ, and show them that all these things are relevant to their lives. It was definitely not the easy path. They lost focus at times. There were moments where they just wanted to get back to learning only what they needed to know in order to receive their sacraments. Because it was hard, did I have second thoughts? Yes. But after some reflection and prayer, here’s what I realized: in this class, God was calling me to strive for something more.
When it came to these young people, God wanted me to lay the foundation for a relationship with Him, by showing them just how much He loves them. That’s what salvation history is. It is the way that God is continuously reaching out to us, to bring us back to Himself in love. These youth deserve to know this! Our identity as human beings depends on this! In a homily at World Youth Day in Toronto, Saint Pope John Paul II said, “We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures; we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of his Son.” We owe it to these young people to let them know how much God has done and is doing to love them, so that they can have the chance to know Him and enter into relationship with Him. Harder? For sure. In the topic outline? Not necessarily. But it’s what they need and it’s what God wants for them.
So I challenge you – don’t just settle for what’s easy or what’s surface. Meet the needs of your youth. Know them, talk to them, listen to them, and ask God to show you what it is they need from you. It might not already be in your curriculum, in fact it probably isn’t. And it might be difficult, a topic you’ll have to learn more about or something that’s going to take a while to explain. But it’s your job as a minister to find the needs of your young people and connect them to Christ. And the crazy thing is, that through the power of the Holy Spirit and grace within us, we get to be that bridge, between the needs of our youth and God. What a blessing! What an experience… that is…. if you’re open to it.
Don’t settle. Meet the need.
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