Vocational Week 2024 • The Augustinian-Recollect Youth (ARY) is a space where Young people can carry out vocational discernment in an environment that promotes their own prominence and decision-making capacity.
By Ivana Serrano, ARY
Youth Ministry must have the young person as the center, architect, recipient, and protagonist; it is for young people and young people. They are not only the main agents of evangelization of other young people but also, simply passive recipients of activities reflected in an itinerary or schedule. Being a disciple of Christ involves learning to be an apostle, and this is truly learned by doing, walking, moving.
The Manual of the Augustinian-Recollect Youth, when referring to the profile of the young Augustinian Recollect, details that the young person must aspire to build a life project capable of responding to a vocation, putting their gifts at the service of others.
Vocation is a calling; a call from God to the heart of the human being. And whenever God calls, it demands an answer: you have to decide and choose. With his grace, God equips us for the mission that he entrusts us if we say yes. Now, if we say no, he respects our freedom.
Does young ARY know this? Are you aware that the vocation is the dream that God dreams for you and with Him? Vocational ministry is, in this context, the pastoral care of all those questions that every young person should be able to answer:
- What do I like?
- At what moments do I experience that my time flies?
- What am I passionate about?
- What makes me smile and fills my spirit with generosity?
- How do I get over my tiredness?
- What does my heart vibrate with?
- Do I live fully?
- Do I taste life?
- Do I enjoy every day?
- Do I wake up with energy?
- What do I dream about…?
Within the ARY we must challenge our young people and invite them to put themselves before God to from what these questions move within them. This will allow them to make their dreams more their own, precisely because they will be rooted in the dream of God who seeks in a unique and personal way. God beats in their lives and, in his heartbeat, what He wants them to live fully. But this can be overwhelming for a young person today. You run the risk of seeing yourself as a poetic and romantic concept; in an attack on reality itself.
For this reason, we often find young people who give up on their dreams, or become discouraged from continuing dreaming; because dreaming is very big and the new generations feel vertigo and anxiety when faced with what is too big.
Solution route? Well, the search for that happiness that dreams contain begins its journey through the small, through the simple. That is, what makes you smile differently, when you read words, you see at first glance that they are loaded with meaning, the looks that make you feel loved and welcomed, sincere and simple joy…
God’s desire is a project to be discovered and is discovered from small daily dreams that motivate us, that set us on our path, in coherence before God himself.
Through desire, we experience that our life beats with meaning, with passion, with strength, and with surrender. For this reason, a youth ministry that is not vocational will not touch the young people. Let us work so that in the communities the Youth Ministry encourages the young ARY to give answers to their questions, and to always dream with their eyes wide open and their hearts on fire.
