Pressing Needs to Youth & Young Adults - Loyola Institute for Ministry

What do you see to be the most pressing pastoral care concerns (issues/challenges) the youth and/or young adults in your ministry context facing today? What from our course material helps and/or challenges you in your ministry with the young people you know? Which spiritual direction resources did you find helpful for your ministry context and how does this inform your ministry?

The Particular Nominal Youth & Young Adult Needs

With a particular young adult, "M", whom I have befriended and started mentoring I find like Parks says that he is in a “spiritual quest”, “renegotiating questions of [his] personal future, happiness, God [and] the ethical dimensions of [his] choices” (198). It’s very comforting to me that he sees me as one of his guides. Besides church, I have personally invited him into my home for lunch, jamming and practice, and he has found community and belonging alongside us at church, some of his area around the music scene, and me just sharing memes with him to laugh.

Parks says, “Young adults look for places where they can truly be at home. If they are conscious of their own spiritual search and commitments, they seek places of belonging that can embrace the whole self as it is emerging in its new integrity” (202). "M" has opened up to me about things about his family, his personal life, his struggles that he hasn’t been able to speak to anyone about. Finding me at a time in his life of loneliness and struggle he has been comforted that I send him daily scripture verses and has asked for more and advice. And he has also been comfortable enough to not just play music with me but ask for help even when it came to legal circumstances, as well as asked a lot of faith based questions and even borrowed books. He doesn’t feel alone anymore. In me, he has “identified someone, lay or ordained, who singled them out in their young adult years and conferred a deepened sense of trust in [his] own potential and gave form to their Dream” (204). As he and God grow closer in worship & a personal relationship, I know and trust Him with all my heart and understanding that I have helped plant a seed. I was a little blown away yesterday when he told me he really liked and needs those daily scripture verses. He even discusses them with his dad.

Holy Father Francis says in Christus Vivit, “ he knows how to cherish and nurture the seeds of goodness sown in the hearts of the young. Each young person’s heart should thus be considered “holy ground”, a bearer of seeds of divine life, before which we must “take off our shoes” in order to draw near and enter more deeply into the Mystery” (67). In this way he will be enabled to be enriched in God’s love for him. I would say because of this class, and people like him, he is my success story 1 out of 99 sheep come home. B) Spiritual/Pastoral Guidance Texts (488 Words) I find today that the quest for Spirituality in its highest form is the biggest concern in my ministry regarding pastoral care and also spiritual direction amongst youth and young adults. They are turned on to lights, cameras, photos, amazing graphics, and deep lyrical and moving music and that “quest for fame”, but if it seems too religious they are thrown off to the institutional norms and want to know “What does that mean? How did it originate? Why? And how can it apply to them?”.

It is easier in bits or pieces but chunks they can’t swallow, as if they only could handle spiritual milk and not Solid Food. David Tacey says, “Those of us who are free of religious or secular prejudice and who are receptive to the signs of the times can see that spirituality is innate in the human person and does not necessarily belong to any specific tradition. Some of us have been brainwashed into believing that religion produces spirituality, but it seems that it works the other way around. Spirituality is the primary element in human society and personality” (66). This new post-modern spirituality can either have walls that block the person we are trying to reach from understanding the message of Christ as the ultimate form of Spirit as we engage them or open them up to new avenues upon which they can build a solid foundation of Relationship with God that most young adults and youth just don’t have as they see the world and society now. That is exactly how I see my ministry still reaching out for the lost to be found, the found to be free, and for the free to be at peace in their spirituality.

From Russo on the statistical and research topic of loneliness I have concurred that throughout my later half of my life as a young adult I did experience unfortunate bouts of loneliness and what it seems external exile. But more than that, this has given me a chance to better myself away from the world’s standards, society’s measure of success, and many times the big "C"church's ideas about how I should live my life for them and instead grow in God's vision He gave me. This growth in God that has led to my own established self-employed music ministry and outreach to those personally and yes, digitally, has found that the lonely are most attracted to my messages of hope, my songs of love and freedom and exploration, and my persona of Jesus within me and with me on my Journey. They have reached out as I have grown up and about, and they are not afraid to ask questions, be emotional, challenge norms, and challenge the status quo. Their understanding of social justice mirrors the Jesuit ideals of solidarity and the real thought process behind all things Catholic Social Thought beyond the USCCB and into an international foyer of independence, nuance, and justice for all of mankind. Russo says, “You learn to move through the world and reach out,” she says through tears, “but loneliness stinks” (2,3). This loneliness I have honed in my craft of Christ to master and to not let myself down has helped others as I have been a hopeful anchor to those that look to me for inspiration, for hope, and to God that is for me, an honorable statistical and tangible love and support that I do not boast about enough.

Rev, Dr. Father Tom Ryan, SJ

Dr. Tracey LaMont

Rev. Br. Wilton McKinley Glenn, SJ MA Ps. - Youth & Young Adult Spirituality

Independent Study

Loyola New Orleans

Loyola Institute of Ministry