When we stand up to communicate to a group of teenagers (or anyone, for that matter), we need to understand two things: context and content. The context is the state of the audience receiving the message.
From scrubbing dirty dishes to refilling cups of lemonade at least a hundred times during dinner, it was God’s grace alone that proved to be far greater than any glory or attention I thought I needed from my peers.
I thought about what a youth night or small group looks like in many parishes. I recalled conversations with youth ministers about how hard it was to recruit male core members and encourage male teenagers to participate in youth ministry. Most of our youth groups don't look like that picture of the 90s grunge scene in Seattle, but they could. We just need to adjust our thinking about how we reach young men.
Everyone loves Top 10 lists so here is a list of some of my favorite practical tools and strategies to help you get started or improve (or start) your prayer life (in no particular order).
I always feel a tinge of guilt when my mind suddenly wanders off or my hand goes towards my phone in the middle of prayer. But by God’s mercy and grace, He has led me to different tools that I can use to have a deeper and more meaningful time spent in prayer.
Imagine setting off on a long journey over dusty roads to imprison and kill the members of a radical group who threatened your way of life; people who actually thought they could change the way you worshiped. They had to be stopped, everywhere, and there’s nothing on this earth that […]
You can learn a lot about people by stalking their social media or asking their friends about them, but you can’t actually get to know someone until you spend time with him or her. The saints are no different — they’re not people to be observed from afar, but holy pals we can actually have a relationship with.
But my stomach sank at those words.
Just because I am a young Catholic woman, devoted to God, does that mean I’m obviously supposed to be a sister?
See, when I moved to the United States from Perú at the age of 13, I didn’t realize how ingrained my religion was in me. Whenever I had a form that asked me to check a box for “religion,” it was an easy answer — Catholic.
