'Build a hope-filled future' - message at Young Adult 20th Anniversary Mass

Fr David Stewart SJ

On the Eve of the Feast of St Ignatius of Loyola, Fr David Stewart SJ returned to Farm Street parish in London to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Young Adult Mass. He had been there at its inception and delivered the following sermon with warmth and eloquence.

'Ignatius, when he was a young adult, Inygo, was a soldier, but he wasn't a very good one. He was a baptised Christian, but he wasn't a very good one. He'd received some fairly basic education, but as a student, well, he wasn't a very good one. His younger days were entirely heedless of God and probably heedless of other people; as he says in his later autobiography, his life was given over to soldiering.

But suddenly it all came crashing down when he was seriously wounded in a battle defending the castle at Pamplona from a French army. He failed to avoid a cannonball and sustained a serious leg-injury. His vanity took a blow too - the bone had reset badly and he'd have a permanent severe limp.

In those long tedious months of recuperation, he began to discover God for the first time and discovered the basics of what we now call discernment; learning to sift, to discern the different movements in the heart, the soul. He learned about the creative that draws us toward God and the good, to choose life; and the negative that leads us towards all that is not God, leading to discord, death in the soul. Those intense spiritual experiences led him to change his life completely; to choose life over death, and led, two decades later, to the founding, with the first companions - including Francis Xavier - of the innovative Society of Jesus, the Jesuits.

20 years ago, on Palm Sunday 2003, in this Jesuit church, we celebrated the young adult Mass for the first time. Some young adults and I had been in conversation, discerning, aware that Catholic young adults, defined as 20s & 30s, married or single, often felt that lack of any specific ministry provision in the Church. Youth ministry was and is something else altogether, responding to very different needs and inappropriate for younger adults, in the world of careers, further education, serious relationships, marriage. We felt that the Church broadly didn't have much to say to young adults.

I will never forget what one person, a highly qualified professional in her late 20s, said to me, just before we finally got started. With passion in her voice, she declared, "I'm fed up with people like you (meaning priests, religious older people) telling me that I'm the Church of tomorrow. Why can't I be the Church of today?" I'll never forget that moment. Soon after that, we got started; I'd hesitated, a bit unsure, but the young adults I'd come to know encouraged me. Twelve came here for the first-ever young adult Mass; we gathered in the Ignatius chapel. More people came, they brought friends, and we had to move into the main church.

After a few months, we knew we had an Ignatian Young Adult ministry and in this Mass tonight with you all I'm thanking God for that and for the countless graces we've all received as this has grown and developed.

One milestone in those 20 years was our participation in MAGiS, the Ignatian prelude to World Youth Days, in Sydney, Australia, 2008. Sixteen of us went; we raised funds for four young adults from a Jesuit parish in Tanzania to join us. Thus, it's wonderful that some of your community are right now at MAGiS in Portugal, praying in an Ignatian way, building community. I want to ask you also for your prayers for the new Ignatian Young Adult Ministry we've started about a year ago in Edinburgh, where I'm now based. They're celebrating the young adult Mass there right now.

Ignatius learned and recommended the prayerful art of contemplation; suggesting, in the Spiritual Exercises, that as we contemplate Christ, the Trinity contemplates us. He learned and recommended the practice of the daily awareness prayer, or Examen, taking time to spot where God was in our lives and maybe we didn't notice at the time.

In our Gospel for the Feast of Ignatius some followers of Jesus were asked, "Who do you say I am?" Ignatius would have us hear that question addressed personally to ourselves - Who do you say I am? What does the Trinity see, contemplating you here, gathered for worship? I reckon, or at least can hope, that the infinite mysterious God might see and love in us what God saw and loved in Christ; a people gathered, that same Christ present in your midst, young adults who are both the Church of the present and the Church of the future.

In our Mass today, we thank God for gathering us in this place and everywhere that young adults gather in Jesus's name. We pray that, with God's grace, we will be the people that God wants us to be; very good missionary disciples! In the words of the MAGiS 2023 motto, together let us build a hope-filled future.'

Edited by Dr Philip Crispin.