The Synod of Bishops on Young People, Faith and Vocational Discernment held last October holds particular importance for Jesuits who deal with young people in their schools and parishes.
“The Pope wants the Church to become a discerning Church, so that means our schools, our parishes have to be discerning institutions that help people learn how to discern, to teach people how to listen to the Holy Spirit in their hearts,” said Fr Tom Reese SJ in a video posted on the new Jesuits global website.
Fr Tom Reese SJ
Fr Reese, a Senior Analyst at Religion News Service, says that young people desire a sense of community, to connect with friends who share the same values as they do.
“They want to be able to express themselves in a welcoming community and I think the Church needs to provide the atmosphere in which that can happen,” he said.
One way to make young people feel what a Christian community is about is to bring them together around the scriptures through the Spiritual Exercises. Fr Reese said not to spoon feed, “but to have a group of young people together who say, ‘This is what I think Jesus was talking about’, and somebody else say, ‘I see it a different way’, and learn from the way the Spirit is speaking to each of them”.
The importance of Christian communities was highlighted by Fr General Arturo Sosa SJ in his intervention at the Synod.
“The Christian faith is lived in community and it is the community that guarantees this accompaniment of the process of maturation in faith,” he said.
In his speech focused on the second part of the Instrumentum Laboris, which seeks to deepen insight into the reality of youth and the challenges of the Church in relation to them, Fr Sosa invited the members of the Synod to hear in secularism a call from God.
“In a society that has already become secular, many people want to know more about religion and to have an experience of faith,” he said. “Out of curiosity many young people come close to a faith community in order to see what they can discover and learn.”
“This is what Jesuits are supposed to be all about,” said Fr Reese. “We’re supposed to be about discernment and helping people to discern.”
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/synod2018
