Long Overdue

It's nearly 3 weeks since my last post, and like that one, the last ordination we are having this year was a really good weekend.

Basically it was our parish Sec 2 camp, from saturday to monday. I won't really talk about the camp itself, but must say that this bunch of sec 2s really surprise me. It has ignited a spark within them, a hunger to know Christ better. Quite a number of them have been coming for evening mass everyday. During the school holidays straight after the camp, the church has seen a huge number of youths coming for daily mass. Lionel came on his birthday and was shocked to see the back half rows of the church packed with youths. He jokingly asked "Today youth mass ah?" But yah that day we had the sec 2s, sec 3s, LOG, YV and some not so young MSC members.

But that was all during the school holidays, so I thought that once school starts sure dwindle...but for the past 2 weeks, everyday there are a good number of sec 2s. Gracemary and Rachel, my group members, said they will come every tues and fri, cos the other days they can't. Quite amazing.

We really need to look at ways to help these young ones, walk in their faith journey, grow in the love of Christ and of others. Cracking my head to think of something for them during the hols. Really brings alive the words from Matt 9:37-38, "The harvest is plenty, but the labourers are few." And I guess, the answer really lies in the second part. "Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers for His harvest". Praying for 2 specifically, but yah...need many more.

Was just talking to Dennis too about his Sec 1 & 2 camp. And how the youths not knowing about the Holy Spirit, and catechism being boring, teaching about the "modern church". The real question of youth ministry is how to inspire them about Jesus as a living, loving person.I saw one of the youths carrying this book "Live like a Jesus Freak". And just as I went to amazon to download the picture of the book, I found out that this book is a follow up of the first book "Jesus Freaks: DC Talk and The Voice of the Martyrs - Stories of Those Who Stood For Jesus, the Ultimate Jesus Freaks". This reminds me of the talk that Jude gave on the first night of the camp. And I think for most of the youths, yah it really challenged them. Why were these people willing to die for their faith? Why did they do things that doesn't make sense? Were they crazy? Delusional? Freaks??? Then Jude showed me yesterday something he found on the web, a collection of stories that priests wrote of their experience during Sept 11 2001, some risking lives, going out of the way, beyond "human duty" to carry out their ministry. WHY???

One conclusion that I've come to is that we are in a different generation from our parents. Sociology has the terms Generation X and Generation Y to discribe the different "mentality" of the different generations. For me, in terms of the faith, our parents come from the Generation X, where the X was a BIG NO! The church says "No this", "No that", and our parents just followed. Whereas our current generation, the Generation WHY, is all about "Why not", "Why can't". This is not just about the faith, but we just question (or rebel) anything that wants to have authority over our lives.

So we do question, why should we follow? Why should we believe? And the answers of our parents sometimes do not suffice, cos some of them themselves don't know the answer. Not sure if I blog this before, but the answer is really in what our Holy Father Benedict said to the young people before he left for Germany. To discover the faith as not about the laws of the church, but of the person of Christ, just as the Magi searched for the Saviour.

Wah really long post... Must be the verbal diarrohea from not blogging so often. Wanted to post another one, but shall do that tomorrow.