“We need to build local communities of faith where our social teaching is central, not fringe; where social ministry is integral, not optional; where it is the work of every believer, not just the mission of a few committed people and committees.”
(U.S. Catholic bishops statement Communities of Salt and Light, 1993)

After presenting a workshop entitled “The Universal Church Meets the Broken World” at a Christian Leadership Institute, I asked the young people to name four Catholic organizations they belonged to whose mission is to address the broken world. With a little urging someone named the Society of St. Vincent De Paul, then Catholic Charities, and with a good deal of coaxing someone identified Catholic Relief Services. “What about that other community?” I persisted. “The one we participate in every Sunday?” The silence spoke loudly, begging the question: “What is the mission of our parish communities…if not to forgive us, to feed us, to form us, and then to send us out together, to address the hopes and hungers of God’s people?”

When we listen to young people, we become conscious of the hopes and hungers within them. Like many people in our parishes, they are seeking a deeper experience of community. And just like us, young Catholics are looking for meaningful ways to connect with the world around them. They, like us, are starving for a faith that is relevant (that reveals God’s love where it is most needed) and thirsty for spirituality that engages them with the needs of our world.

Ask the right questions, and young people will readily share their awareness of the sin of our maladjusted world. But perhaps our social justice formation is so well-versed in the critique and analysis of what is wrong, that we tend to teach about injustice rather than invite young people to embrace and experience God’s compassionate justice at work in us. So mesmerized are we by the all-pervasive structures of sin in our lives, that we find it hard to explain or point out what justice is, and where God’s reign is breaking in. Could it be that we have forgotten the reign of God is a proclamation not a condemnation?

If we present God’s promise of justice in the negative—a world filled with insurmountable problems to fix—we can lead young people into the small-hearted polemics that focus on issues, making it easier for them to condemn than to involve themselves in the loving restoration of God’s world. We who are ministers of God’s love must remember that God’s justice is never to be confused with our judgment. As John Paul II reminded us, “Love is the soul of justice!”

Conversion, that ongoing widening of our lives, happens when we open our hearts to a different set of formative questions. What questions are we asking by our lives? What questions do young people bring to us because of the choices, friendships, and lifestyle we have integrated and witnessed to them? What mission are we inviting the young church into?

Prophets do not tell us what to do. Rather, they show us how to care, what to care about, and who to care for. Let’s together invite young people to become the prophets our God has called them to be for these darkened times. Then perhaps, with our help as “prophet-raisers,” we can nurture communities of engaged, compassionate young people to be leaven that expands our capacity to care, and leads our church to live into original mission.