Going out to the lost: Keeping up with Pope Francis on the family and young adultsPaul Jarzembowski, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB)

April 19, 2016Transcript © 2016

I’d like to speak today about this concept of laity, marriage, family life, and young people because those are some of the issues that have risen up with the papacy of Pope Francis. In particular we are going to look at the document, Amoris Laetitia.

I know all of you have probably read it cover to cover already. No, you shouldn’t have, because as Pope Francis says in the introduction: you shouldn’t do a rushed reading of this.

Let’s first look at Amoris Laetitia, the name itself, “The Joy of Love.”

I find it fascinating because the word “laetitia,” or “joy,” is different than “The Joy of the Gospel” which we got in Evangelii Gaudium. Here we have Laetitia and Gaudium. I did some thinking about the difference between the “joy” presented in this exhortation and the joy of the Gospel in Pope Francis’ other exhortation, and I think the difference is the same as the distinction between Laetare Sunday and Gaudete Sunday in our parishes. Laetitia is more of an external, contagious, or fruitful joy, whereas Gaudium is more of an internal source of joy. And I think that is incredibly telling about this particular document and what it is supposed to be about.

As Pope Francis says in the first line, “the joy of love (the ‘laetitia’ of love) experienced by families is also the joy (or ‘laetitia’) of the Church.”1 This external joy in our family is the external, contagious joy in the whole Church. What we’re going to do, then, is unpack those nine chapters over the next few minutes in a spirit of contagious joy. It may be the quickest book study you’ve ever been a part of.

Many people have written about Amoris Laetitia already. We know many journalists have spent many, many days poring over their embargoed copies. You have probably already read articles about it. Our bishops have come out and said some things individually and collectively through the USCCB. So it is not my intention to rehash what they have said, as you can read that for yourselves and the bishops have said many things above and beyond my poor power to do so.

But what I would like to do is get a sense of what this might mean in the context of your work in the parishes and in your dioceses. And in particular, because my focus at the USCCB focuses in on youth and young adults, I would like to share some insights on that.

1 Pope Francis, Amoris Laetitia, 1.

Just a bit of clarification of terms: When we say “youth,” we are referring to those in junior high and high school. When we say “young adults,” we mean those women and men who are in college and in their 20s and 30s. Amoris Laetitia very much intersects with the work we do in both of these areas because many of the people who are confronting the issues related to marriage and family today, perhaps the ones Pope Francis is talking about throughout the document, are our youth and especially our young adults. So I invite you to join me in looking at this apostolic exhortation through that lens so that we can look more deeply at the Holy Father’s words in the context of our parish and diocesan communities.

The family, then, is the source of those communities, the communio. The domestic church, as Pope Francis says at the end of the document, is a pathway to an encounter with God2. This is a fascinating way of describing the family and it is a wonderful thing for our families to see. (Of course, when we think about the families we know or even the ones we are a part of, we might chuckle at this notion – but Pope Francis still calls us to see our families, imperfect as we are, as a pathway to God, at least that is the ideal we strive towards).

In Chapter 1, Pope Francis unpacks some of the Scriptural passages on family and marriage. He talks about this image as presented to us in the Scriptures. And he is very quick to remind us that this image is not an abstract. It is a source of comfort and companionship (as in paragraph 22), but he has an eye on the reality of today. He’s not giving us a “pie in the sky” image of the family – but something that is very real, and has been real since the time of the Scriptures.

We know, especially today, that the family is incomplete. We know that there is fracturing. We know that detachment is high in our communities. Disengagement is so prevalent in our Church. In Amoris Laetitia, the Holy Father outlines some of the symptoms and realities. He says that a lot of this is connected to the trends of isolationism and “extreme individualism which weakens family bonds… today’s fast pace of life… stress…a widespread uncertainty and ambiguity.”3 “Loneliness… and the fragility of relationships” are part of it, and there is “a general feeling of powerlessness in the face of socio-economic realities that oftentimes end up crushing families.”4 In addition, Pope Francis notes that people feel a lack of dignity – in their work, in their homes, in their communities, and even within their families.5 He goes on to reference the many issues related to migration, poverty, and simply being exhausted within the family.6 This, he says, is the reality of many families today, and our experiences shows us this is the reality for many youth and young adults in the United States and especially around the world.

2 “A positive experience of family communion is a truth path to daily sanctification and mystical growth, a means for deeper union with God,” Amoris Laetitia, 316.3 ibid, 33.4 ibid, 43.5 cf. Amoris Laetitia, 44.6 cf. Amoris Laetitia, 46, 47, 49, 50.

The image of family we’re confronted with in our communities is a family that is just struggling to live, to pay the bills, and to make it to tomorrow, and as the Holy Father noted, “parents come home exhausted, not wanting to talk, and many families no longer even share a common meal. Distractions abound...aggravated by fears about steady employment, finances, and the future of children.”7 Pope Francis, in this exhortation, has laid this all out for us to reflect upon in our work and ministry. He indicates that it’s not a perfect situation, but this is the landscape of family life we have been given and that we are called to encounter within our communities.

And all of these things swirl around issues we’ve heard about from many studies – things that our friends at the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), the Pew Research Center, Gallup, and several other researchers have provided in recent years.

In one study, we have the measures of Catholic lifestyle. We see that the number of baptisms are down, the number of Church marriages are down, and funerals are starting to dip as well. The U.S. population has, for the most part, remained level but some of our markers of family life are starting to drop, as many of us have experienced in our local Catholic communities.

Another one of the frightening trends is the rise of the “nones” (and I don’t mean the religious sisters), which denotes those who are not affiliated with any religious tradition. We have seen that 34% of young millennials today have no religious affiliation whatsoever. Let that sink in: one out of every three people in their twenties today has no connection to a religious community whatsoever. And we’re not talking about people who say “yeah I’m Catholic, but I just don’t go.” We are talking about people who don’t have a connection to anything at all.

That number is growing, and it’s rising very quickly, too. Older millennials were 30% unaffiliated, the Gen Xers were 21% unaffiliated, compared to 34% of millennials in their 20s.8 In a few years, as that number creeps up, it will certainly be a crisis for our churches. That is one of the reasons why I want to contextualize the Holy Father’s exhortation on the family with what’s happening with young adults. If the Church does not have its young people, it won’t have families. The two are intricately connected. They are symbiotic. This, then, calls us to be alert.

As we look at another study specifically focused on Catholic identity (or people who self-identify as Catholic). Here we see the numbers for the millennial generation (currently between ages 18-35), the age where marriage is a large part of conversation: we see that only 17% are coming to church for Mass on a weekly basis.9 That, then, means that 83% of self-identified Catholic young adults are in our communities on a weekly basis.

7 Amoris Laetitia, 50.8 “Nones” on the Rise: One-in-Five Adults Have No Religious Affiliation. Pew Research Center – The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life: Washington, DC, October 2012.9 Sacraments Today: Belief and Practice among U.S. Catholics, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University (CARA): Washington, DC, April 2008.

Much of this you know firsthand, as you look out at your congregations and see that. You probably have family members who have detached from the practice of the faith or who only come on a semi-regular basis. These are not the “nones,” but people who identify with being Roman Catholic. So even within our own population, there is certainly reason for concern.

Amoris Laetitia goes through a number of issues like this, and like the good Jesuit teacher that Pope Francis is, he starts by laying out the foundation: the reality in which we work. Luckily, like this presentation, the bad news it at the front.

The Holy Father says, regarding our response to the situation, “we have often sometimes been on the defensive, wasting pastoral energy on denouncing the decadent world without being proactive in proposing ways of finding true happiness.”10 This is a challenge, and especially for its leaders. And all this is understandable. When over one-third of young adults are not self-identifying with religion anymore, our knee-jerk reaction may be defensive and Pope Francis knows this. He reminds us, “Many people feel that the Church’s message on marriage and the family does not clearly reflect the preaching and attitudes of Jesus, who set forth a demanding ideal yet never failed to show compassion and closeness…”11

He’s not saying, “Well, let me just throw out the ideal,” but rather let us learn to live in the mix – how do we present both (the ideal and the reality) and walk with our young people and with our families as we navigate that path? This is what he lays out in Amoris Laetitia.

We see that, many times today, with young people who say they are “spiritual but not religious”; they like Jesus, but not so much the Church. Pope Francis understands this reality, that there are people out there who see this message of Christ and the Gospel, but yet they don’t see it lived out by those who preach his name.

Going forward, though, I would like to use one of Pope Francis’ favorite Scriptural responses to all of this: the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15. What I would like to do is read the rest of Amoris Laetitia by overlaying it with the three parables of Jesus found in Luke 15: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the father of two lost sons.

It is here, in these “parables devoted to mercy” where Pope Francis says “we find the core of the Gospel and our faith…” That is quite an endorsement of one particular chapter of the Gospels. Why? Pope Francis says “because mercy is presented as a force that overcomes everything.”12 So in the Holy Father’s mind, there is indeed a response to everything we just reviewed, all the struggles for families, for young people, and for the Church.

10 Amoris Laetitia, 38.11 ibid, 38.12 Pope Francis, Misericordiae Vultus, 9.

And that response is Luke 15.

Pope Francis has spoken on these parables on a number of occasions. He laid it out in Misericordia Vultus, the decree on the Jubilee of Mercy; but he also made it apparent in his message to young adults in advance of World Youth Day 2016 in Krakow. He brought the young pilgrims to encounter the Lord’s words in Luke 15. And he keeps coming back to those particular stories in other messages and conversations. Even the imagery of the Jubilee of Mercy is that of the father and shepherd, carrying us on his arms, connected to the parables of the lost sheep and the father of the lost sons in Luke 15. All of this means we must pay attention to these critical Gospel passages and see how they dance with his words in this apostolic exhortation.

So let’s start with the first one: the parable of the lost sheep.13

Jesus asks, “Who among you have a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until you found it?” (Lk 15:4) I love that image of Christ: the shepherd tirelessly chasing after the lost sheep, going through all these difficult measures for one sheep. One could actually say that, based on the statistics we discussed earlier, if only 17% of self-identified Catholic millennial “sheep” are coming to Mass on a weekly basis, we have 83 sheep that are missing. Yet even so, we sometimes find it difficult to go out in search of those 83 because we seem to be just happy with the others who have remained with us. As we know, Jesus wasn’t satisfied with 99; so why should we be satisfied with 17?

Going back to Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis lays the foundation for the family in the Church in the first three chapters. And then we have chapters 4 and 5 (and I actually hope that somewhere a publisher will say “Let’s take out chapters 4 and 5 from this document and publish it as a standalone piece to give to couples, families, and our young people.”) In these chapters, Pope Francis, our own shepherd, is speaking to them, to us, to everyone. When Pope Francis defines “family” in this document, he’s not just talking about the parents with kids; he also talking to singles, to young couples, to couples with and without children, to older families, and to those who have lost a spouse due to divorce or death. He’s talking to those active in the faith and those who are less engaged. He’s speaking to all the people in the family. He is speaking to the entire flock – all one-hundred, not just a few here or there.

Chapter 4 looks at the concept of love and Chapter 5 looks at how to share that love. Again, we get back to the title – Amoris Laetitia, a fruitful love. In Chapter 5, appropriately titled “love made fruitful,” he essentially lays out that timeless cliché: “if you love something, give it away, if it returns back to you it was meant to be.” He talks about how love is fully realized when it is fruitful, when it is contagious, when it is passed on, when it is given away. He gives different

13 Luke 15:1-7.

dimensions of how love is given away, how we do that, how we pass it on to our children, but also how it goes beyond one’s core family.

Pope Francis explains, especially in chapter five, about how the family should not keep their love contained within themselves. Even families that are doing a good job of loving each other may slip and still remain in isolation and individually-focused because they may just be loving within their small family unit, but not anyone outside their immediate family. Pope Francis, like the Holy Fathers before him, define “family” as going beyond our standard definition. It is fruitful, contagious, and communal. It is the entire flock.

Pope Francis is one who has taken on the mantle of the good shepherd from Luke 15. He even wears it as his pectoral cross. It is the image of his leadership. Pope Francis, in his role of the shepherd of our global flock, is going after people across the world through his words here. He reaches out like the shepherd reaching out to his sheep.

In the exhortation’s fifth chapter, Pope Francis says that the fruitful love he wants everyone to have should be within their families and externally beyond their families. And he wants that love to be one that never gives up, even in the darkest hour. As seen in those statistics, this is a dark hour for our society and our Church, as young adults and families and so many others are disengaging like never before. This contagious family love, he says, “…is a love that never gives up, even in the darkest hour. It shows a certain dogged heroism, a power to resist every current, an irrepressible commitment to goodness.”14 What wonderful language, very dramatic: and such times like this call for an epic exhortation that Pope Francis calls all of us to follow.

He’s challenging couples and families, especially those active in their faith, to themselves become shepherds to others who are lost, and others who are marginalized. And he essentially says this: that no one is unimportant or excluded from God’s love; so we must go out to them.

Recall that so many people, so many of the reasons Pope Francis gave for why these crises exist is because people are responding to loneliness, brokenness, fragile relationships; they’re exhausted; they’re overwhelmed. This is the reality of our families, this is the reality of our young people, and this is reality of so many people today. So he’s encouraging us to become missionaries to one another. He himself is being a good shepherd and he is encouraging families to become good and faithful shepherds to the countless others who may be lost or afraid.

One of the blessings of my work is that I get to work with the World Youth Day experience. The United States is taking well over 37,000 young people to Krakow in a couple of months. In Rio de Janiero in July 2013, about 3.7 million people gathered on Copacabana Beach. This is a beach party like none other. They’re expecting 2.5 million people to crowd into Krakow this summer.

14 Amoris Laetitia, 118.

International gatherings like this are great images of the shepherd and his flock, where Pope Francis, like Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI before him, call the young people of the world together – both in those special locations like Rio and Krakow, but also in dioceses around the world where young people celebrate in solidarity with those who have the means to travel. World Youth Day is supposed to be meant for the world, which means that pilgrimage can also take place at home and even digitally. Especially with technology and the help of social media, a lot of young adults and families will be able to participate in World Youth Day. 37,000 may be going overseas, but I would say ten times that will be participating in one way or another here in the U.S. Now that is truly a beautiful image of the shepherd drawing the sheep to himself.

And all these young adults, all these sheep, stand together as one. They do not stand alone. This is a snapshot of the solution to the concerns Pope Francis brings up in Amoris Laetitia and Evaneglii Gaudium: the sense of loneliness, isolation, and individualism. The response is community – and in a very large way, I am blessed to see a glimpse of that through World Youth Day. My prayer is that this experience impacts the pilgrims as they enter family life now and into the future – and that it may be contagious and fruitful wherever they go from here.

Now onto the second parable, it’s a very short account of the lost coin.15

In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis briefly reinterprets this parable a little bit. “Jesus himself was born into a modest family that soon had to flee to a foreign land… He is also sensitive to…the anxiety of a poor family over the loss of a coin.”16 In this, he reimagines the woman who lost her coin as an impoverished family searching for the last coin they might have. If we were this poor and had only one penny left and lost it, we would do everything we could to find that money. I thought this was a fascinating way to read this parable. It really speaks to the desperate search that the woman in the parable goes through.

What I would like us to do is look at this as the hidden treasures in our own midst. Our hidden treasures, I would propose, are the active young adults, couples, and active families in our midst. In the first parable, we hear about going out to the periphery to find the lost sheep, but in this story, we are challenged to seek out the ones right in front us – the ones active in our churches.

In much the same way, in Amoris Laetitia, chapters 6 and 7, Pope Francis speaks directly to pastors and pastoral leaders in the parish, the family of families. Here he talks about pastoral ministry and good faith formation to the active families in our midst. He talks about the education of children, intentional ministry to singles, couples, parents, and all members of the community. He is talking about the active and the semi-active (that is, those who show up) and how we can engage them. These are the hidden treasures in our midst. And Pope Francis wants

15 Luke 15:8-10.16 Amoris Laetitia, 21.

us to search them out like the impoverished family desperate for the coin. He wants us to seek after them as if they were our last coin, our great hope – because in some respects, they are.

It is also interesting, practically speaking, that Pope Francis spends twelve paragraphs in Amoris Laetitia on marriage preparation17 and fourteen paragraphs18 on ministry with young married couples. We ask ourselves: how many parishes have marriage preparation programs? Quite a bit. And how many have ministries for couples in the first five or ten years of marriage? Not very many. However, by Pope Francis offering us twelve paragraphs on marriage prep and fourteen paragraphs on the first years of marriage, we are challenged to listen up. We are encouraged to ask ourselves: What are we doing for couples after they have left the altar? How are we supporting them in the first five or ten years of marriage when things are so fragile, with so many winds trying to blow them over from the direction of society and culture? And what can we do if nothing is currently being offered in our communities?

Pope Francis tells us, “It is not enough to show generic concern for the family in pastoral planning. Enabling families to take up their active role as active agents of the family apostolate calls for ‘an effort at evangelization and catechesis inside the family.’” 19 He’s calling on us to raise up our active couples, especially our active young adult couples. He’s calling our attention to develop an intentional and collaborative ministry with the laity as a support for our families.

The Holy Father goes on to say, “Young love needs to keep dancing toward the future with immense hope…Thus pastoral accompaniment needs to go beyond the actual celebration of the sacrament.”20 These words, as evidenced by the number of marriage ministry initiatives in our parishes, are a challenge to us. He calls on the Church and her leaders to accompany families to be active agents of the Gospel and to step up and become active in their faith.

Here, too, is grounds for hope. Active young adults and young couples are indeed taking up various forms of ministry. One of the other blessings in my work is to be able to look out at the young adult landscape of our Church and the good news is that there are many youth and young adults engaged in volunteer and mission work, many of them in initiatives beyond the work of the Church such as Peace Corps or AmeriCorps. In Evangelii Gaudium, Pope Francis talks about how, “despite the present crisis of commitment, many young people are taking up various forms of activism and volunteer work. How beautiful it is to see that young people are street preachers, joyfully bringing Jesus to every street…every corner of the earth!”21

17 In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis speaks about preparing young people for marriage in paragraphs 205-216.18 In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis speaks about ministry with young married couples in paragraphs 217-230.19 Amoris Laetitia, 200.20 Amoris Laetitia, 219, 223.21 Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 108.

The Catholic Volunteer Network (CVN) and the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) recently looked at what happens after young people have a very active, very intense experience with their faith in regards to volunteer work. This again is more good news. When asked about how often they attend religious services today, we see that 60% of people who did a year or more of volunteer work continue to stay active in their faith.22 That is much more than the 17% of self-identified Catholics, and more than the national averages of all generations. As we look it is, we get a sense of how that compares. That is good news.

Looking again at participation in faith groups, here we see that, if people have an experience of being active in the Church, of being active Catholics, they continue to be involved. This is good news. On the marriage front, when asked “have you ever been divorced,” the average U.S. divorce rate is 31%, but amongst those who are active in volunteer programs the rate is only 9%.23 That is very good news indeed. That means the experience of being active in volunteering and in the Church has a direct tie-in with marriages and families. That stability in commitment to the Church equals stability in commitment to the marriage.

Even Pope Francis said to the World Youth Day volunteers in Rio de Janeiero in 2013, “Today there are those who say that marriage is out of fashion, they say that it is not worth making a lifelong commitment, making a definitive decision forever because we do not know what tomorrow will bring. I ask you to be revolutionaries, I ask you to swim against the tide.”24 To him, being “revolutionary” means committing, being connected, and being married. And as we can see from our statistics, volunteers have responded to this with great affirmation.

So Amoris Laetitia, and all of Pope Francis’ words on this, seem to ask us to invest in our ministries to young adults and to young couples. Imagine what we could do in our communities if we intentionally engaged our young adults and young couples. These men and women can be “an agent of great pastoral activity,” and they can be involved in works of justice, “witness, namely solidarity…openness…protection of creation…promotion of the common good…and the transformation of unjust structures.” 25

Pope Francis, in Amoris Laetitia, is telling us: once we invest in our families, especially in our young families and young adults, the world and the apostolate of the laity becomes further enriched. Ministries beget ministries. These young disciples are really that untapped treasure, hidden in plain sight. It goes back to that image of the lost coin. Let us then be like the poor mother desperately looking for these active young adults.

22 Volunteer Introspective: A Survey of Former Volunteers of the Catholic Volunteer Network, Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University (CARA) and the Catholic Volunteer Network (CVN): Washington, DC, 2013.23 Ibid.24 Pope Francis. Address to the World Youth Day volunteers, Rio de Janeiro, July 28, 2013.25 Amoris Laetitia, 290.

They are there, by the way. They are in our parishes, they are interested in our stuff. All we need to do is search them out, engage them, support them, and invite them to join us in our work on behalf of their brothers and sisters.

Speaking of which, now we come to the third and final parable: the prodigal sons.26

And yes, I said prodigal sons because this is the story of a family in crisis. There are two prodigal sons, not just one; we sometimes just lay that title on the wayward one who goes off with the hogs and the ladies, but the other one is prodigal, too. As much as the younger son, the older brother has much room to grow and be transformed.

In particular, I love the line in the Gospel – and we often don’t dwell enough on the language of these rich stories of faith: “While he was still a long way off, the father caught sight of his son and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him.” (Lk 15:20)

I love the imagery in this parable and I think it connects well with what Pope Francis is talking about in Amoris Laetitia, in Evangelii Gaudium, and in so much of what he has shared with us.

The lesson of this parable is that we go out with mercy to the lost. We don’t just tap our feet at the church door and say “it’s about time you showed up.” Rather, we go out with compassion. In Amoris Laetitia in particular, Pope Francis echoes the Lord when he says, “The Church must accompany with attention and care the weakest of her children and show signs of a wounded and troubled love by restoring in them hope and confidence to enlighten those who have lost their way or who are in the midst of a storm.”27

This means that we are called to be merciful like the father. That is the image Pope Francis is holding up for church leaders in Amoris Laetitia – namely, that the Church should be like the father, not the elder son. The Church should move with compassionate impulse, not reluctance, jealousy, or stubbornness. Not with anger or anxiety, but with love and mercy and kindness.

Chapter 8, which is incredibly rich in its depth, could be read as a companion piece to the parable of the father and his prodigal sons. Pope Francis, not unlike the father of the story, has opened the dialogue on accompanying couples and families who fall short and who struggle. He proposes an “unmerited, unconditional, and gratuitous” mercy for everyone.28

He goes on to say: “No one can be condemned forever, that is not the logic of the Gospel.”29 I love that phrasing. He says, “A pastor cannot feel it is simply enough to apply moral laws to

26 Luke 15:11-32.27 Amoris Laetitia, 291.28 cf. Amoris Laetitia, 297.29 ibid, 297.

those living in irregular situations as if they were stones to throw at people’s lives.”30 That conjures up that imagery in the Scriptures, of the woman caught in adultery. It causes us to step back and wonder if we have thrown stones like the Pharisees, like the elder son in the parable.

Amoris Laetitia, like the story of the prodigal sons, asks pastors to look at people and families with all their complexities and listen to their people, discerning how they might respond with compassion like the father. He also speaks a lot of discernment in these later chapters, as if to encourage us to slow down and pause before we jump. We know there are situations out there that are troublesome, that fall short of perfection, but before we move forward, we are called to first embrace and love those who have faltered, even if they cannot see it themselves, just like the father in the story. Before we lift a stone, before we get angry like the elder son, we are called to discern, and to see the whole story, to listen to the circumstances of those before us. Pope Francis asks us to patiently discern.

Perhaps that is what this eighth chapter can do for the whole Church: to ask us to stop, listen, discern, and act with compassion. Quoting Augustine, Pope Francis goes on to say: “We must respond to the fire of this crisis of sin with the fountain of mercy.”31 Furthermore, he talks about how people are sons and daughters of God, not to be pigeonholed or fit into rigid classifications. Rather the Holy Father reminds us that every person before us are to be treated as a child of God, each with their own unique story.

He challenges those of us in church work: “Often it is better simply to slow down… to stop rushing from one thing to another, and to remain with someone who has faltered along the way. We have to be like the father of the prodigal son, who always keeps his door open.”32 That’s from Evangelii Gaudium, but it is echoed so much throughout Amoris Laetitia, and in a special way, chapter 8, inviting us to slow down and be open to hearing the stories of our people.

Perhaps Pope Francis, through his exhortations to the faithful (and in a special way to the leaders of the Church), is talking to us as the elder sons of the family. Like him (cf. Lk 15:29-30), we might be praying to God saying, “I never left you. I’ve been faithful, I’ve been a good guy, and yet there are all these people in irregular situations being welcomed home.” Perhaps this is what we’ve said to ourselves. It is very tempting to do so. Yet Pope Francis looks to us, too, with compassion. He looks to us with compassion as fellow leaders in the Church and he looks with compassion to all who minister in the name of the Church. Like the father (cf. Lk 15:31-32), Pope Francis says to you and me: “You’ve been with me all the time, all that I have that is mine is yours. But now come and rejoice, for your sons and daughters who have been lost have been found again.” This chapter, then, is an opportunity for us to rejoice with boundless mercy.

30 ibid, 305.31 ibid, 306.32 Evangelii Gaudium, 46.

If we overlay the parable of the prodigal sons and this Jubilee of Mercy with chapter 8 of Amoris Laetitia, let us think about how that sits in our heads and hearts – and what that means for us as leaders in the Church.

Pope Francis says “It’s true that many couples drop out of the Christian community once married, often we ourselves do not take advantage of those occasions when they do return… pastoral care for families has to be fundamentally missionary, going out to where people are.”33 He’s telling us in Amoris Laetitia that part of the way that we are to act like the father is to literally go out there and keep our eyes attuned for those moments of return.

During the 52 weeks of the year in our churches, our average attendance is around 26% (of self-identified Catholics) and fluctuates very little from week to week. However, there are a couple of spikes in attendance – and two of them are well known: Christmas and Easter. But there is a third great moment in church engagement: Ash Wednesday.34 These are the moments of return.

If we drill down further, to look closer at the season of Lent, we get another snapshot. If we observe the numbers related to abstaining from meat during Lent, and focus in particular on the millennial generation, we will notice that, while 17% of this age group are going to Mass weekly, 61% are fasting every Friday in Lent and 51% receive ashes on Ash Wednesday every year. On a side note, another interesting trend is that 46% of millennials give up things each Lent while only 33% of the eldest generation alive today give things up during that season.35 This is what we would call a statistical anomaly and it is well-worth paying attention to. During Lent, the pastoral engagement of young people is on the rise. Again, these are moments of return.

As you can see, each of these moments is more than the average experience. A lot of young couples, young adults, and families are coming back and engaging during Lent.

As a pastoral leader, what opportunities do we have to respond? This is a very practical thing to go home and think about: what are we doing for Ash Wednesday and Lent next year? How are we attracting, in a particular way, those people that Pope Francis is talking about in chapter 8? And, we have to ask ourselves: might the strong connection to Ash Wednesday and Lent be also connected to the brokenness that we are talking about, that brokenness these young adults and young families are experiencing, that unease, that fragile relationship, the overwhelmed, the anxiety, and the stress that Pope Francis speaks about as some of the causes for their detachment? Is Lent, and in special way Ash Wednesday, the time of year when we allow the families and young people with whom we are called to minister a chance to unburden and refresh and renew themselves? Because this is a time when we accompany them very carefully through

33 Amoris Laetitia, 230.34 “Average estimated percentage of U.S. self-identified Catholics attending Mass by week,” Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University: Washington, DC, 2013.35 “Lenten Practices,” Sacraments Today, CARA: Washington, DC, 2008.

the process of Lent, it may be no wonder that they come back to us at this time of year. This is one particular and practical way to respond affirmatively to Pope Francis’ invitation to us.

Let us also consider weddings and funerals: the happy and sad moments of return. How many other young couples are there at weddings and baptisms in our community? How are we accompanying them? How are we evangelizing and engaging young adults and young families when they come for their friends’ weddings and funerals?

This, too, is a great opportunity that Pope Francis actually talks about in Amoris Laetitia.36 So what are we doing in our local communities on those wonderful occasions of return and re-engagement? Do we look at our baptisms and our weddings, even our funerals, as occasions for evangelization for everyone present, or just the couple or immediate family at hand? Might these moments, too, be ways for us to accompany these men and women like the good shepherd and the lost sheep, like the woman and her lost coin, or like the father and his two lost sons?

One of the images young people and families are looking for in our Church is the image of Christ in Mt 11:28-29. Now Pope Francis doesn’t say this, but in our experience with ministry with young adults in the United States, this Scriptural image seems to encapsulate what Pope Francis is taking about in those moments of return:

“Come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am meek and humble in heart and you will find rest for yourselves.” (Mt 11:28-29)

This is that embracing imagery that Pope Francis speaks of in the early part of Amoris Laetitia. In paragraphs 27-30 of the exhortation, he speaks of this divine embrace of the father to his families and then of families to their young people and to the world. That notion of the father embracing his family and then the family embracing the world reflects the imagery of Christ saying, “Come to me… and you will find rest for yourselves.” Perhaps this is why the Holy Father is so popular with so many people today, especially those who are struggling. Perhaps because he is embodying the good shepherd who says to his people: “Come to me…”

We have asked young adults what they would do if they were to meet Pope Francis at World Youth Day, and many young adults tell us: I don’t want to say a thing. I just want a hug. Think about yourselves: if you were to meet Pope Francis, what would you want to say or do? Maybe some of us are thinking the same as those young adults: Just give me a hug. Just let me know it’s

36 In Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis specifically says of these opportunities and moments of return: “Often, however, we ourselves do not take advantage of those occasions when they do return, to remind them of the beautiful ideal of Christian marriage and the support that our parishes can offer them. I think, for example, of the Baptism and First Holy Communion of their children, or the funerals or weddings of their relatives or friends. Almost all married couples reappear on those occasions, and we should take greater advantage of this.” (230).

going to be alright. Perhaps that’s what a lot of the young adults and the families Amoris Laetitia speaks about simply want from the Church and those who minister in her name.

Exactly how we do all this in our parishes and dioceses will depend on our local realities. Pope Francis reminds us of that, noting “Each country or region, moreover, can seek solutions better suited to its culture and sensitive to its traditions and local needs.”37 So think about your specific circumstances, your dioceses, your parishes, and your communities: What are the unique ways in which you can embrace and accompany the young adults and families God has put before you?

Near the end of Amoris Laetitia, Pope Francis challenges us. He says, “I encourage the Church’s pastors to listen to them [meaning the people of God before us in our local communities, especially those people who are fragile, broken, and struggling], listen to them with sensitivity and serenity, [how often do we listen in our offices instead of constantly doing something? How often do we really listen and reflect on the people’s needs with serenity in the parish office?] with a sincere desire to understand their plight and their point of view in order to help them live better lives and help them to recognize their place within the Church.”38 Here he is reminding us to remind them: Everyone has a home here. Everyone has a community here in the Church.

Pope Francis closes the document by reminding us that, after going through all this, no one is perfect, no pastor or parish is perfect, and no family is going to be perfect. “No family drops down from heaven perfectly formed. All of us are called to keep striving towards something greater than ourselves and our families…let us keep walking together…What we have been promised is greater than we can imagine.”39

Here he’s not just talking to the families, he’s talking to us as church leaders. We are not perfect ministers, and our parish’s families are not perfect families, whatever that means. But together we walk forward and we strive for something greater than ourselves, so let’s keep walking together and remember that what we’ve been promised is greater than we can imagine.

And we do this together. That’s one of the other things Pope Francis speaks of: do all this in collaboration, accompanied by our bishops, our fellow leaders, your fellow priests, fellow lay leaders who work in our parishes and our dioceses, the active Catholics in our communities, our dioceses and diocesan offices and leaders, and even those of us at the USCCB in Washington, DC… for we walk with you, too. We’re not perfect either, but we walk with you in this. We journey towards that something “greater” in solidarity with one another.

Again, I go back to the World Youth Day phenomenon. It a wonderful example, an embodiment of that voyage of encounter, accompaniment, and lifelong pilgrimage. Many people in the

37 Amoris Laetitia, 3.38 Amoris Laetitia, 312.39 Amoris Laetitia, 325.

Middle Ages would often make a pilgrimage by themselves. But Pope John Paul II, when he created the concept of World Youth Day, said we make a pilgrimage together. It’s a twist on an ancient concept: we don’t make this journey alone. In Rio de Janeiro, 3.7 million people made the journey together. In Krakow, probably over 2 million people will embark on the pilgrimage, united as one community, supporting and encouraging one another. What a great image for the Church to see as it struggles and wrestles with what to do with this apostolic exhortation: we unpack it and understand it together, under the leadership of our shepherds and pastors.

I’m going to leave you with a quote. Perhaps it is a quote that causes us some heartburn. But if we want to keep up with Pope Francis, we need keep up with all that he says, even those things that challenge us and make us uncomfortable.

At the end of World Youth Day in 2013, he said this about his hopes for the outcome: “I hope there will be a noise…” [and some people have translated this, “I hope there will be a mess.”] Here in Rio there will be plenty of noise no doubt, but I want you to make yourselves heard in your dioceses, I want the noise to go out. I want the Church to go out in to the streets, I want us to resist everything worldly, everything static. Resist everything comfortable, everything to do with clericalism, everything that might make us closed in on ourselves. The parishes, the schools, and the institutions are made for going out. So may the bishops and priests forgive me if you make a bit of confusion afterwards. That’s my advice, thanks for whatever you can do.”40

We love Pope Francis’ style, as he just lays it out there and he’s encouraging our young people to go forward with energy and gusto. This summer, too, hopefully we will send you many young people who come back from Krakow or their stateside celebrations excited to make a difference. Please receive them, for those are the lost coins we might otherwise miss. With them, let us go and search for the lost sheep. And when it comes to those who are far off and who are struggling, let us be like the father, helping our elder sons and daughters who are active in our parishes be more compassionate and merciful towards those who are lost, and going out to meet the younger sons and daughters and then, welcome them home with a loving embrace.

It seems like a great challenge. But I believe it’s a challenge we can keep up with, as we join him in witnessing the message of mercy and love for the lost in our world today. God bless you all in this great work ahead of us. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your service.

40 Pope Francis. Address to the young people of Argentina, Rio de Janeiro, July 25, 2013.