Greetings!! It's been a while. The Pope sent out his first tweet today on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and so what better day to begin posting again on our blog? And with this new beginning, a new look. Don't let the silence fool you. Holy Family's Youth Ministry has been busier than ever. We were trying to send our Youth Group to WYD 2013, raising funds like crazy. Well, we're on track to send a small group--not the whole group, unfortunately, but it's a good start.
Today on this great feast, we want to give a huge shout out to young Mexican Catholics, and pray that they continue devoted to Our Lady and her mission to bring Christ into the world. What message does Our Lady have for the youth of today. I think of those words of hers: "No temas. ¿No estoy yo aquí, que soy tu Madre?" ["Don't be afraid. Am I not here, I, your mother?"] Mothers, and all those maternal figures in our lives, grandmothers, aunts, godmothers--they are such gifts and we take them for granted when we're young. Recently, a member of our youth group lost his grandmother. Our prayers go out for him. In the same week, breast cancer took away a woman I knew, someone's aunt, and in a way, she was the aunt of every young person that knew her. And then there's another friend who must face possibly losing her mother early. These people remind me of all those young people who grow up without mothers, without parents, without family. Or who having mothers and family, don't have them, who live in their neglect. There's a Spanish television show, La Rosa de Guadalupe, and the episode today was about such a kid, a teenager whose parents ignored him and who lost the only person who gave him maternal affection, his grandmother. He is different from his classmates at school and gets mercilessly abused by teachers and classmates alike, growing more angry and hateful by the day. He stumbles on a website of similarly angry young people and find out how to gain access to firearms. He and a misfit comrade decide to plan a school shooting. As he's holding a gun to one of his classmates' head he sees a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe and he remembers his grandmothers' words about how the tender gaze of the Blessed Mother looks with love on all her children and he has a change of heart. It's a fictional story, but the transformative power of a mother's love is real. How fortunate we are as Catholics that we never have to worry about being motherless. As our Lord promised us, "I will not leave you orphans."
Pray today for those children, those young people who do not have their mothers or who have lost maternal figures they love, for those whose relationships with their mothers are not good. We pray for those young people who are lonely, neglected, angry, hateful, that they might feel the transformative power of Our Blessed Mother's love, the hope that she gives us in the promise of that new birth, the fruit of her womb, our Savior Jesus Christ.
Lastly, we're not yet on Twitter (the Pope beat us to the punch) but Like us on Facebook.
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