Thoughts for Deacon Pat...

My friend, Deacon Pat (a man my age I met several years back who is now a mere 7 months away away from being ordained a priest!) e-mailed me while I was in Italy and asked me for some input about being a Catholic young adult in the world today.

I assume it's for a paper he may be working on for a class or the like, but he really didn't say. I e-mailed him some thoughts and thought I'd post them here as well. I've stated a lot of this here and there, but this is kind of me "in a nutshell" over these past several years.

As a Catholic young adult who is truly trying to live a wholly Catholic life (as best as I can, that is), I think my experience is much different from others in my age group who consider themselves Catholic and attend mass, but do not take their faith experience much further than that. For young adults that fall into that latter category, I doubt they would notice that they weren't being "supported" by the Church, ie, they wouldn't necessarily expect the homilies to speak to them, they wouldn't expect any programs or ministries for anyone other than the "old people," etc, so on some levels, I feel like a committed Catholic young adult has it harder than most because we actually KNOW we are SUPPOSED to expect more!

At my particular parish, I was blessed beyond measure for the past 3 years because of my pastor, Fr Pat, who is very orthodox and faithful. His homilies spoke to everyone, they were very easy to follow and they taught the truth of the Catholic church in a firm but loving way. I do believe that many priests today are sometimes timid about teaching the real truth of what the church teaches, and I think we all suffer as a result of not being fed the truth, no matter what out age group.

I ran a young adult group at my parish for about 2 years or so (it ended about 2-3 years ago now) and only one young adult from my parish ever came to it! Luckily, I did advertise at other parishes in my county and I had a few faithful folks come to join me on a regular basis, but we were a very small group and I found that even among that group they were mostly seeking out social interaction and only secondarily seeking a closer relationship with Christ or a deeper understanding of His word, but, I realize this is also very common among my age group and the social aspect is an important part of drawing people out to come to learn more about the faith, especially those who may not feel like they know very much about it.

In general, I do feel isolated in parish life. This is not the fault of the church or a parish directly. It's the fault of all of us, in that we have raised a generation of poorly catechized, secular young adults who no longer hold the Church or her teachings in a high regard. I can only thank God that I heard Him call me into a deeper relationship with Him when I did--I did not attend Catholic school, I was not catechized in any deep or complete fashion, and I was living a pretty secular life when He found me. Once I responded to Him, my life was never the same. I praise God it happened when I was a young adult, so I can spend the rest of my life trying to glorify Him! So, if being the youngest face in the room at events and having difficulty finding a like-minded man of my age group to share a life with are my current by-products of living a life in Christ, so be it. At the end of the day, I'm the happiest I have ever been!