Sampling Prayer: Why Catholic Young Adults Don't Pray

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

ThinkStockPhotos.com

“Why should I care?”, Ben asked about the statement on the billboard. We had been discussing the phrase it advertised: JESUS LOVES YOU.

“Knowing it does nothing for me. People need to stop telling me that Jesus loves me,” Ben complained. He told me that Christians should be more concerned with helping others realize that they are loved by God instead of simply broadcasting it so matter-of-factly. “I want to feel Jesus' love. I want to feel it in my heart. How do I do that?”

"Faith and Froth", a Match Made in Heaven

By Artur Suski, S.J.

Credit: http://lexingtoncatholic.org

Most of you don’t have beer on your minds these days as we progress through Lent toward Easter. I am also in the same boat. That being said, I have just completed a successful first year of ‘Theology on Tap’ here in Guelph, and I’d like to share with you some of my reflections from the four events that we’ve hosted.

The project began in the spring of 2013 when a member of a Catholic parish in Guelph felt called to do something for the Year of Faith, more specifically, for evangelization. He proceeded to assemble “the team” – a committee of people from the Catholic school system, other Catholic parishes, and the University community, of which I am the contact. Essentially, the goal was to reach out to young people (from nineteen to forty years old) who are “un-churched” and who definitely will not step into a Church on their own. That, at least, was the goal.

Helping to Germinate the Kingdom of God: Young Adults and the Mystery of the Church

By Santiago Rodriguez, S.J.

Photo: http://catholicnews.com

“The Church is not a country club for saints, but a hospital for sinners!” I have pondered this statement many times. I have considered it as I think about what the Church is and is not. The Church is neither a club or a hospital. It is not a sacrament dispenser, a spiritual service provider or a Sunday show. The Church is the Body of Christ, “a people made one with the unity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Eph 1:4-5). As the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (LG) of the Second Vatican Council stated, the mystery of the Church is manifested in its own foundation. The Lord Jesus set the Church to build the kingdom of God, which began with him, and continues to germinate and grow in all nations. The Church is not an end in itself. As our Pope Emeritus has often said, the mission of the Church is to carry on what Jesus started, to act as Jesus would act. As Lumen Gentium expresses, the Church is a sheepfold whose one and indispensable door is Christ (LG 26).

I recently began to ask young adults about how well the Church is living out such a mission: what they perceive as the Church's strengths and limits; the ways they have experienced consolation and desolation through the Church, that is, an increase or decreased in faith, hope and love. This question came as a I prayed with the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. In the First Exercise of the First Week, or the first phase of the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius invites us to contemplate: “What I have done for Christ, what I am doing for Christ, and what I ought to do for Christ?” This contemplation led me to ask the same of the Church.