Dare To Be Different

On Saturday, Bishop Paul Hendricks will confirm our young people and they will receive a full outpouring of the Holy Spirit. On Sunday, our children will receive Jesus in Holy Communion for the first time. I ask myself: ‘What do I wish for our young people this weekend?’

I wish that those who are to be confirmed and making their first Holy Communion will experience and come to know Jesus as a real person. Pope Francis in his early days as Pope invited all Christians, everywhere, to a renewed personal encounter with Jesus Christ — or at least, an openness to letting Jesus encounter them. My great wish for our young people is that they do this unfailingly each day. Encountering Jesus in these sacraments is his invitation to a life of grace and intimacy with him. My wish is that our young people experience God’s love for them. May they never doubt this, whatever happens in their life. At this moment they are infinitely loved.

They will come, in time, to know that God has special work for them; may they experience what it truly means to be led by the Spirit. May our young people be truly people of prayer, and not afraid to acknowledge Jesus as their Lord. On this day and the days after, they will know that their lives are changed. I ask them to dare to be different. May their lives be lives of generosity, service, purity, perseverance, forgiveness and faithfulness to what God is calling them to be.

May they love the Mass as the source and summit of the Christian life. Jesus shares his very self with us: thus He is the food of life, the nourishment that we need. The people as they journeyed in the wilderness (as we hear in the first reading for Corpus Christi) were fed by manna. The Eucharist is our nourishment. In celebrating Mass, we grow as a community; we grow as the people of God; we experience what it means to be part of the church. We come to a deeper understanding what it means to be Catholic.

I will end with the words of Pope Francis:

‘Dear young people, my joyful hope is to see you keep running the race before you, outstripping all those who are slow or fearful. Keep running, attracted by the face of Christ, whom we love so much, whom we adore in the Holy Eucharist and acknowledge in the flesh of our suffering brothers and sisters. May the Holy Spirit urge you on as you run this race. The Church needs your momentum, your intuitions, your faith. We need them! And when you arrive where we have not yet reached, have the patience to wait for us.’

Canon Father Anthony Charlton
Canon Father Anthony CharltonParish Priest