Youth Day kicked off the 2007 Los Angeles Religious Education Congress March 1 with three Eucharistic liturgies, 13 workshops and a closing decibel-destroying rally at the Anaheim Convention Center.
The all-day happening, whose theme was "Live Out Love," drew 15,434 teenagers and chaperons from 510 different youth groups across the archdiocese and state. At a morning liturgy in the packed arena, Cardinal Roger Mahony called Youth Day a "great joy" because it brought together so many thousands of young men and women committed to the Lord Jesus Christ.
During an innovative three-part homily, teenagers from St. Louis of France Church in La Puente shared reflections on how the day's Scripture readings pertained to their own lives. Luis Arvizu said he'd grown apart from his two sisters after his mother died a few years ago. But after his sisters, along with a friend, confronted him about his recent behavior, he started praying about the growing family split and realized how much his mother would want the family to stay close.
"I'm supposed to love and care for my sisters - make them laugh when they're down, care for them and protect them," Luis said. "Ever since my friend helped me out, I understood that I had to change my ways. Now I've been spending more time with them, talking to them whenever they need someone to talk to and making them laugh whenever they're down.
"My sisters are the core of my life," he stressed, "and without them I wouldn't be anybody."
'He loves you'
Marcy Torres talked about what it really meant to be a friend. She said the hardest thing to do was loving somebody and having the courage to let them love you back. Love meant being able to stop whatever you were doing, at any time, day or night, to help another.
"Real love is when you care about someone more than you care about yourself," she explained. "I'm only 17 years old, so I'm probably as old or younger than most of you guys here today. But God has chosen me to stand in front of all of you today and tell you that he loves you, and don't give up on him as he hasn't given up on you."
Cardinal Mahony said it was great to hear teenagers talk so openly about how God was working in their lives. Both accounts, he pointed out, spoke of what Jesus said in the day's Gospel: "Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will open for you."
The cardinal then reminded the students they had their own experiences to deal with. "Sometimes we try to go it alone, as I think Luis and Marcy said they tried for awhile," he pointed out. "But it doesn't work, and it shouldn't work. Because we have the power of Our Lord Jesus Christ there from our baptism and confirmation, walking with us, strengthening us day after day.
"So as they have had the courage to go to Our Lord Jesus Christ, I just invite each of you, regardless of your experience - whatever good times or difficult times - Our Lord is there waiting for you to invite him ever more deeply into your lives."
At the end of Mass, Cardinal Mahony surprised - and delighted - the youthful congregation by sitting down with a laptop computer and inputting: "What's up boss? So I attended Youth Day and it was awesome. It was great! All these kids on fire."
Stenzel on Sex
Workshops ranged from "Caring for Others" and "Becoming the Best-Version-of-Yourself" to "Internet Responsibility and Media Mindfulness" and "Being Christian to Your Family - It Can Be Done!" The most popular session, which almost filled the arena, was about that old teenage bugaboo: sex.
In "Sex Still Has a Price Tag," former crisis pregnancy counselor Pam Stenzel laid out in no-nonsense detail the medical, psychological, economic and moral consequences of having sex outside of marriage.
"Since God created sex, it's awesome," the Minnesota mother declared, stalking across the stage like a female version of the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger. "It was God's idea, not yours. God wants you to have great sex. He does!"
Then she abruptly stopped, adding, "But he created it with a boundary. And when sex happens within the boundary for which it was created, sex is truly awesome. When it happens outside of that boundary, it's horribly, horribly destructive."
For the next hour, Stenzel pointed out that the number of known STDs (Sexually Transmitted Diseases) has grown from five in the 1950s to more than 30 today. She noted how infertility rises dramatically with a woman's number of sexual partners. Moreover, she reported that the number one indicator of poverty in the United States is single-parent households, along with how young the mother is when she begins parenting alone.
"I think sex is more than a biological act to fill a biological need," Stenzel stressed. "I'm actually so stupid that I think sex involves a little bit more than a few body parts touching. I'm so old, such a dinosaur, that I actually think sex involves your heart, your soul."
Youth-planned, youth-run
In the 11 years that Mike Norman, associate director of the Office of Religious Education, has been coordinating Youth Day, the number of students attending the event has increased from around 10,000 to more than 15,000. This year, in fact, nearly 2,000 youths had to be turned away.
"A long time ago, our intention was to make it youth-planned and youth-run," Norman told The Tidings. "And so, literally, a group of high school students with their chaperons or coordinators meets over the year to plan everything from the logo to the liturgies. So it's really youth-run, and I think that is what's made us successful."
A first for Youth Day was the "Companion on the Journey Awards" to annually honor adults who minister to and with young people. Recipients for 2007 were Adolfo Nunez and Tricia Tembreull of St. Columban Church, Garden Grove; Bill Duckett of St. Monica Church, Santa Monica; Nancy Longo of St. Bernard Church, Bellflower; and Dawn and Frank Ponnet of Holy Family Church, South Pasadena.
Alesia Holt, a youth minister at St. Patrick Church in Moreno Valley, helped chaperon 55 students at Youth Day. The group started out on a bus at 5:25 a.m. to make sure they got seats in the arena near the stage.
"I started like tearing up earlier because I see how much it's changed the kids who have come," the 22-year-old senior at Cal State Fullerton confided. "I think it really strengthens the faith they already have. Because it gives them confidence to not be afraid of what they already feel but they're a little self-conscious to express openly.
"But when they see 7,000 teens in here acting crazy and on fire for the Lord," she said, "it's totally fine."
The on-fire teens from St. Patrick's, decked out in bright green T-shirts and cheering like they were at a rock concert, agreed.
"It was so fun and amazing the first time I came, I just decided to come back again," said 16-year-old Anthony Vargas. "I love the spirit that everybody has. Everybody just feels the same way. We're all here for one thing - our love for the Lord."
Standing nearby, Kelsey Perez, 16, was grinning and nodding. "There's a lot of emotion; there's a lot of excitement," she said. "This is amazing. And all of it is very inspirational and useful for our everyday life as teenagers. I'm definitely living out my love for the Lord."
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