We have a little more than a month to go before the Year of Faith, proclaimed by Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI, concludes on the Feast of Christ the King, Sunday, Nov. 24.
But it is fair to say that in the Diocese of Rockford, the Year of Faith is going out strong.
This past Sunday, another important element of our Year of Faith took place at the Holmes Student Center at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Young people from all over the diocese gathered to take part in a Catholic Youth Summit.
That gathering, of which there are numerous pictures and fine reporting elsewhere in The Observer, brought together a full house of 1,400 of our Catholic young people along with numerous priests of the diocese, religious educators, youth ministers and chaperones.
A number of things were very evident.
First, there was an extremely positive spirit among the young people present. It was apparent immediately that the young people came to express their Catholic faith, to strengthen it, and to share it with others.
Many had to get up early on a Sunday morning to get to DeKalb by 9 a.m. for the start of the summit. But no one displayed any sense of being either tired or out of sorts. Instead the young people displayed enthusiasm for the Catholic Church, for their parishes and for their faith.
It is typical for such gatherings to utilize contemporary music and even bands that have experience in providing that sort of religious music. The summit was no exception.
The music and the commentary throughout the day raised the spirits of the participants but also helped them to adopt a prayerful and reflective spirit both during the Mass and the eucharistic adoration that concluded the long day.
The faith, the spiritual formation that our diocesan young people have received, and their own recognition of the True Presence of Jesus were expressed in a special reverence for the Blessed Sacrament.
Two other moments stood out that gave me great encouragement as the bishop of these young people.
The first was the opportunity for individual confession. A number of our priests made time on their busy Sunday to be available to hear the confessions, and the young people took advantage.
Lines of the participants waited patiently for their chance to hear those words, “I absolve you from your sins” and to come away with that renewed sense of closeness to God’s mercy.
Seeing all of those quiet conversations taking place between priests and young penitents was a great witness to the vitality of the faith of the next generation.
The other moment was a session of question and answer between the participants and me.
While some of the young people hustled to get a good position in line at the microphone to ask a question, those who simply watched demonstrated a great interest and eagerness to hear a discussion of their faith, a conversation that covered a variety of topics.
One might ask what was the impression that I took away from the Youth Summit.
It would be this: we, the adults, work hard to pass on the faith to the young. We owe them our best effort to give them the love and knowledge of Jesus and the Catholic faith with which we have been blessed.
In response, our young people give back to us a profound encouragement and reminder of why we, the adults, have taken the faith into our hearts. The witness of the faith of our young people has a vibrancy and purity that reminds all of us about why Christ has said that all of us must become like children before his loving Father.
To all who organized and participated in the summit, a word of thanks! Well done!