National Catholic Youth Conference
With a thundering roar, Lucas Oil Stadium comes alive. Some live nearby; others travelled far. Some have dark skin; others are pale. Some stand tall; others are short. And the aged stand next to those who haven’t seen much of the world.
So many different faces, so many different stories. But they stand there for one reason: Jesus Christ.
At the National Catholic Youth Conference, you’re not really sure what you’ll see.
You might see a girl in a full cow costume; a boy smiling under a princess hat. You might see a nun talking for a puppet – or even a bishop wearing a baseball cap. But there is one thing you are guaranteed to see: the light of Christ shining back at you in the faces of the young Church.
This is a place where you can completely be yourself. You can walk up to a random group of people and be met with only smiles and hugs. You will probably never see these people again; but for a few moments, they completely lit up your world.
In this day and age, it is so easy to get worried about the future – even the future of the Catholic Church. You look around at all the hatred and violence, the injustices and killing of innocents, the plummeting economy and the soaring prices of everything you need, and even the little differences that create bottomless caverns between you and your family and friends.
It is so easy to become hopeless about where the Church will stand on different issues and her beliefs in the future because when you look around you, all you see are the apathetic faces of the misguided lukewarm. They stare at you with their dead eyes and tell you they are so saved because they go to mass sometimes and Jesus loves them. You begin to believe that this is all that the world is made up of – that this is the future of the Catholic Church.
For once, you will find some comfort in learning that you are absolutely wrong.
There are good people out there who believe everything the Church teaches and will fight to defend our beloved faith. There are saints walking down Main Street, picking out food in the produce aisle, smiling at you as they cash a check. But these saints aren’t perfect people. They make big mistakes, just like you and me.
But there’s something about these holy men and women of God. When they fall down, they get back up. When they make mistakes and hurt others, they run to the little box with the light and confess their faults and failings. They might fall often, but they get back up immediately and try harder.
Jesus didn’t die for us on that cross just so we could all hold hands in a circle and sing Kumbayah.
He died so that we could confess our worst sins in the confessional. He died to open the gates of Heaven for us sinners who have fallen so far from grace. He is madly in love with each and every one of us.
He never gives up on us – not the woman caught in adultery; not the boy who can’t stop watching pornography; not the man who drinks too much and beats his children. He never gives up on you. He has complete faith in us even when we are so far from Him.
When we don’t believe in Him at all, He never stops believing in you.
It is so easy to experience an event like NCYC and feel like you never want to go back to the real world where people gossip about you behind your back and try their best to make you miserable. It is so difficult to share the hope you just breathed all weekend to a world that hungers for death and destruction and violence.
To be Catholic means to be countercultural – to swim upstream, to live the opposite way the world screams. If we don’t live the faith, it means absolutely nothing.
This world doesn’t need someone who is Catholic only on Sunday mornings. This world is asking for someone who will take them deeper than the skin. The whole world is begging for truth.
Will you give it to them? Can you stand up in your own life and be a witness for Christ? Ask Him to shape into the living, breathing, loving presence of Jesus Christ. You cannot repay His abounding and unconditional love for you. You can only pass it on. So give it away and give of yourself. His grace will be enough for you. Roll up your sleeves and get to work to change the world for the greater glory of God.
It starts with you.
