Given at SPEC Retreat Centre in Pinner during a Mass to start the new year and bless the retreat leaders, on 7th September 2021.
I hope you find these readings affirming, not only of your Mission Statement but of the whole vision you work out of. Luke’s account (Luke 6: 12-16) of Jesus going out into the hills to pray, then call the Twelve, reminds me of something Pope Benedict said about seminarians. He said seminaries are a sign that the Lord is still calling from the hills. Of course, you, representing as you do a diversity of ways of contributing to Westminster diocese’s youth ministry, are a sign that it is not just seminarians and priests who are called.
But the point I wish to make is that an intrinsic part of what the Diocese of Westminster Youth Ministry is about is to call young people to vocational awareness. It was Pope Benedict’s predecessor, Pope St John Paul II, who said, ‘Vocation is the answer to the question, “Who am I?”’ I am sure, if we had the opportunity to listen to each one of you, we would be deeply touched to hear the profound experience of call, of vocation, which brought you to be here, here in Waxwell in September 2021, ready for another year of mission.
Paul’s more nuanced Letter to the Colossians also speaks deeply of the reality out of which, and into, you work. You are only too well aware of the malign influence that so many ‘second-hand, empty philosoph(ies) based on the principles of this world instead of on Christ’ (Colossians 2:8) have had on the hearts and minds and souls of the young people in your care. You acknowledge in your Strategic Plan the reality that, ‘Many young people … have already established barriers to (a) relationship (with Christ).’ What you call them to is a relationship which transcends the barriers they and others have created to Him.
Which brings me to my last point. Relationship with Christ is the beginning and end of all we are about. ‘Live your whole life according to the Christ you have received’, says St Paul. ‘Be rooted in him and built on him.’ (Colossians 2: 6-7) Paul is talking not just to the young people in your care but to you, to me. We need, for our work to be in the least bit effective, to root ourselves in Him.
I had the joy of making a retreat in Lisieux just ten days ago. There I was reminded of something St Therese had written on the wall of her cell: ‘Jesu est mon unique amour’; Jesus is my unique love; Jesus is the one I love. There it is, at its simplest and fullest, the core of what we need to be about: relationship with Him; doing everything we can to deepen our relationship with Him; and, with His help, seeking, each of us, to communicate it.