It’s great to see situations unfold where you see how the Holy Spirit works in this ministry. About a month back we planned to have a night on the Eucharist with our High School youth group. But we later decided that it was too heavy of a topic for the youth we currently had coming out. We wanted to keep more on the level of the lowest person in the group, so we decided instead to do a night on whether or not God exists. When the night finally came, something sort of funny and amazing happened. A man wandered into our night looking for and AA meeting and instead found our group. We invited him to stay and he played a bit of ping pong with us and even participated in our group game. Most of us didn't know who he was at that point, but he also agreed to stay and listen to the talk. It’s funny, because the first thing he said to one of the Franciscan sisters that help at our nights was that he didn't believe in God’s existence. (Thank goodness we never did a night on the Eucharist!)
So on our night went. The talk was very philosophical and structured on Saint Thomas Aquinas’s Five Proofs of God’s Existence. About five minutes into the talk this man began to interrupt and at first we were afraid he was going to start an argument. He was very curious and had a lot of questions. So his hand shot up every few minutes to discuss more. After the talk was over he had so many more questions that what would have been time for an ELA (experiential learning activity) became a big group discussion. I was worried at first that the youth at our night would be uncomfortable with this because they were so quiet for a lot of the discussion. But I was very surprised that eventually even some of the youth and young volunteers we’re training began to defend the faith and explain things to this man, who was very accepting of their answers. This man decided afterwards to join the boys small group as well.
Later in the night we wrote letters to burn after. Either written to God or yourself, with your thoughts or offering up to God your problems or asking him to show you his existence. This man was the first to begin writing and even helped us to light the letters. We spoke with him afterwards and he told us that he walks by our parish all the time and this time he felt as though he should come in, so he did. He said it was God messing with him, but it was amazing to see, and he admitted to believing in some form of God later on and in a historical Jesus, he just has a problem with believing in parts of the Bible and a “physical God”. But at least a few of his misconceptions of Catholics were shown to be wrong by the end of the night, and he said he felt very loved by all of us. He told us he would love to come back. We also had a teens mom there to help us that night, and she gave him more resources and information about programs going on in the Church in case he was interested.
It was a strange turn of events where nothing at all went according to plan for our youth night, but it turned out to be so much more beneficial. The youth were talking a lot in their small groups and were able to see firsthand what they need to be witnesses to in the world.
It was a cool experience!
Kyley,
Infuse Team 3
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