This weekend, our Young Adult minister and core team members will be at all masses inviting young people to the ministry, both as leaders and participants. It is no secret anymore that in recent years, there has been an increasing number of young Catholics who have left the Church and become religiously unaffiliated. We want to search for them and bring them back home. We want to break the trend by accompanying our young people who still come to Church by providing them with opportunities to deepen their understanding of the faith and strengthen their love for God. We want to empower and send forth our young people to become fishers of men, inviting others to know and love Christ, proclaiming the truths of our faith to others, and becoming catalysts of change in the world.

In the Eucharist, we receive the Body and Blood of Christ. How does this happen? During the Eucharistic Prayer, Christ, through the priest, takes the bread and the cup of wine, and changes them into his body and blood, just as he did on the night before he died. Although they still look like bread and wine, Jesus changes them into his real body and blood through his divine power. We call this transubstantiation. The appearance remains but the substance is changed. How can we know this? Through Faith. This mystery, along with the mystery of the Divinity of Jesus, the Trinity and the Resurrection, can never be fully comprehended but we know they are true because we believe in the words of Jesus. Hence, the reception of the Eucharist really is an act of faith.

Easter is no doubt a beautiful and glorious season. It is tempting to bask in its glory and constantly look at the sky. We are reminded, however, of the day when Jesus ascended into heaven. While the disciples “were looking intently at the sky as [Jesus] was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?” (See Acts 1, 1-11). It was as if they were being told, “Don’t just stand there, move! Do what you are told to do!” It is the same with us. It is necessary that, now empowered by the Holy Spirit, we journey with the people of God and help them see that even in the ordinariness of lives, God is present and alive.

The great Solemnity of Pentecost, the conclusion of the season of Easter, signals the birth of the Church. Jesus promised his disciples before he ascended to the Father that they will be “clothed with power from on high” before they are sent out to “preach in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” (Lk. 24, 46- 49) And when the time of the fulfillment of this promise came, “there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind… and there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.” (Acts 2, 1-3)