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Homilies | Saturday, August 19, 2017

A convincing answer to young people's thirst for happiness

Archbishop Wenski's homily at Mass with Encuentros Juveniles

Archbishop Thomas Wenski preached this homily at St. Kevin Church, Aug. 18, 2017, at a Mass with members of Encuentros Juveniles marking their 200th weekend retreat.

Yo quiero ser feliz, yo quiero ser feliz,
Llenar mi vida de una nueva luz,
Cristo esa luz será, que en mi alma brillará
Y alumbrará toda mi juventud.

This was the anthem of the Encuentros Juveniles when I made my Encuentro when I was still a seminarian in the early 1970s. Yo quiero ser feliz. I want to be happy!

People are made for happiness. We thirst for happiness. But there are in the world – this fallen world of fragile peace and broken promises – many false paths to that happiness we all are looking for. Drugs, the easy sex of the today’s “hook-up” culture, clothes, material possessions, popularity are just some of those false paths that promise happiness but never really deliver it.

The Encuentros Juveniles offered us a different path – the path of the Gospel, the path of faith in Jesus Christ. Cristo esa luz será, que en mi alma brillará….

As both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have insisted, Christianity is not about an ideology, it is not about an idea or even a moral system. As Pope Benedict wrote in Deus Caritas Est: Being a Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but an encounter with an event, a person which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction… it is the response to the gift of love with which God draws near to us.

And this is the “mistica” of the Encuentros Juveniles. The weekend was about helping the encuentrista “encounter” that event, that person: Jesus Christ. And not just Jesus Christ who lived once 2,000 years ago but Christ who is alive today in both Word and Sacrament.

Yes, queremos ser felices – and Christ has the answer to our search for happiness. He is the answer. During the Encuentros – in a retreat offered by youth and for youth – what today we would call “peer ministry” – we met that person. Of course, he does ask us to trust in him, to accept what he says, even when what he says runs contrary to what others are saying.

Today’s Gospel is sometimes described as part of the “hard sayings” of Jesus. These “hard sayings” set forth before us a difficult path to follow. The path of the Gospel, the path of faith in Jesus, might ask of us a long and difficult struggle. But it is a sure path to the happiness we seek.

There is another important aspect of this particular “peer ministry” – I said that the Encuentros are retreats offered by young people and for young people – but perhaps I should also qualify that to add “by young Hispanics for young Hispanics.” And in proposing to us that path to happiness, the Gospel doesn’t ask us to change our culture, or our language – but our hearts.

The Encuentros gave us the opportunity to be with Jesus, to encounter him as he truly is, to know him, to look at him and in doing so to learn what it means to be happy – or to use a more “biblical” word for happy – to be blessed, bienaventurado. During his Sermon on the Mount Jesus tells us that “happy” or “blessed” are the poor in spirit, happy – blessed – are the meek, the merciful. And in encountering Jesus, we learn what it means to be poor, to be meek, to be merciful; we learn what it means to seek justice, to be pure in heart, to be peacemakers. For the crucifix we received at the Clausura reminds us that we are to be the arms and hands of Jesus today.

The Encuentros Juveniles has recognized – from its beginning – what that great apostle of young people, St. John Paul II, also understood about young people when he wrote in Novo Milenio Ineunte: “young people, whatever their possible ambiguities, have a profound longing for those genuine values which find their fullness in Christ. Is not Christ the secret of true freedom and profound joy of heart? Is not Christ the supreme friend and the teacher of all genuine friendship? If Christ is presented to young people as he really is, they experience him as an answer that is convincing and they can accept his message, even when it is demanding and bears the mark of the Cross.”

The secret of the past success of the Encuentros Juveniles and the key to its future success, is to present Christ to young people as he really is. If we continue to do that, future encuentristas will experience him and his message as a convincing answer to their thirst for happiness.

Yo quiero ser feliz, yo quiero ser feliz,
Llenar mi vida de una nueva luz,
Cristo esa luz será, que en mi alma brillará
Y alumbrará toda mi juventud.

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