Why Youth Apostles?

Tuesday nights are my community nights with Youth Apostles and they range from us gathering for presentations on youth ministry, Christian formation, adoration of the blessed sacrament, sharing in our small groups, and then occasionally gathering as a community and sharing some of the bigger inspirations about what has been happening or the vision of where community is headed.

Tonight I was asked to be one of the members to present a reflection of why I've made my recent commitment to Youth Apostles. When I first had this question run through my head I was thinking that it was asking if not Youth Apostles then what community would I have chosen to become a part of. I thought about that for a little bit and couldn't really come up with a line of thought that really could fill up up 2 or 3 minutes of time or seemed very relevant or interesting. My answer to that would have been I wasn't really looking for more community to be involved in. I have a very large and loving family unit and grew up in a very active parish and with in the Knights of Columbus community there.

The directions that my thoughts lead me was to think of how did I come to know and want to be a part of Youth Apostles and why have I stuck around? My story starts in my senior year of High School when the post conformation religious ed at All Saints turned into a youth group lead by a couple Youth Apostles (Rob Tessier, Rod Kresge, and Dave Brisow) that were new to the parish. At the time I was a very shy/reserved kinda guy; an obedient and somewhat faith filled Catholic, but with plenty of my own hangups and imperfections. I wasn't the type to divulge information about myself so that people would know who I am unless I was asked about it and I kept to myself and observed a lot more then I interacted.

That senior year in High School I signed up to go with the youth group on the pilgrimage to World Youth Day in Toronto, Canada and I'll admit the motivation was more self-centered then it was purely motivated from wanting an experience with other Catholics to be excited to celebrate my faith and dive in more deeply. I desired to meet Pope John Paul II and to travel to some place new and to be even a little edgy by going somewhere without my parents that wasn't simply just walking down the streets to visit friends. I met a few more Youth Apostles on that trip by name and observation, noting to myself that these guys were decent fun people, but that is about as far as that thought process went at the time. I went off to my first year of college at Virginia Tech and returned that summer to work on building the sets for the theater ministry that started up the summer prior that I enjoyed doing the previous year.

That summer I also went to my first couple Youth Apostles meetings and got to see the community in a bit more of a full on setting. Later in the fall of that year Fr. David gave me a call saying that he was going to be in Blacksburg visiting some people and invited me to have dinner. We shared some good conversation and he invited me to come on a retreat that the community was having that winter break. I was open to the idea and so there I was just after the New Years celebration of 2004 on my first silent retreat with a bunch of other guys taking sometime to get to know ourselves and God in a fairly intense way; it was an Ignatian retreat after all. That first retreat was hard with getting use to the silence and the schedule that was fairly rigorous 7am-11pm, but it really opened my eyes to what this community was about. These guys were serious about their faith, their love for one another, and their service to the youth. To me that was very inspiring at the time, even with my difficulties of focusing on that first retreat and getting into the methodology of it.

In my reflection last weekend while I was with the GMU CCM on beach retreat, what came to mind more and more was why I've stuck around with Youth Apostles. Like I said that first retreat was very inspiring to me and in the years that I was a candidate I learned more of the communities charisms and vision for ministry and community. It's always been very clear and natural to me that I belong here and this is the path that God has created for me. I'm still discerning my vocation, but I feel that through community, formation, and ministry with Youth Apostles that it will be made perfectly clear to me. It hasn't been easy for me, but that's because I've been relying on myself all too much and I need to depend more on Him.

Recently in my formation I've been studying about the spiritual aspects of the evangelical counsels. The disciplines as I'm to live them in Youth Apostles are easy to understand and they're layed out in black and white for me in the guidelines, but the spiritual way of living them is more of a gospel way of living my life and has more to do with how God has been calling me to live them though the example of Jesus Christ.

Looking at the counsels the one that I see as the biggest gut check for me has been chastity and not for the obvious conclusions that are drawn with no dating, marriage, or sex. Those 3 things certainly are very good and very appealing, and no doubt will cause me trouble, but the way the light bulb went off the other day to inform me was that to live chastity is to love like Christ loved. Christ loved everyone very specifically with an undivided heart, accepted all of their hangups, loved them where they were at the time, and called them out through his love to a life much greater and life giving. I can be a loving guy, but yikes I'm going to need some serious help and accountability to even be mistaken for being in the same arena as Christ.

I see this community as offering to me the challenge and accountability to live a Christ like celibacy by supporting me in an open, honest, and upfront way. My brothers show their love for me and they also give me an example of how to love others in the way they live and minister.