Smiley faces, peace signs and a sea of tie-dye. Welcome to the new summer of love — the 2007 Catholic Youth Convention.
Some 540 youth from 38 parishes around Arkansas, accompanied by dozens of adult chaperones and youth directors, convened at the Doubletree Hotel and Robinson Convention Center for the three-day event May 11-13.
Inspired by John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give you,” the diocesan Youth Advisory Council suggested the theme “Peace, Love and Christ,” for the conference — a theme that will be carried through all youth activities for the year, said Liz Tingquist, diocesan youth director.
The theme could just as easily have been “energy.”
The conference included two keynote speakers. Friday night featured Doug Brummel, whose “Lighten Up!” ministries delivers family centered evangelism with a comedic touch. Saturday was given over to the “Bible Geek” Mark Hart of Life Teen, a nationwide youth ministry program.
Despite the 12:30 a.m. Saturday curfew, there was no sleeping in Saturday morning with energizers scheduled for 9 a.m. at a basement exhibition hall at Robinson Center. The group from Our Lady of Hope Church in Hope, couldn’t wait to get in.
“Our kids are in the second row, if that tells you anything,” said Ellen Haywood, youth minister. “They got here early to get up front.”
Team Jesus, the praise and worship band from Christ the King Parish in Little Rock, didn’t take long to get the crowd on its feet. A few minutes and a few dance steps evolved into a conga line that pulsated around the room.
“It lets you feel all the energy and feel Christ with you — present,” said Heather Durbin, 18, who attends St. John the Baptist in Engelberg.
“This is a very good experience,” she said. “It makes you more open to really knowing Jesus in your heart and life.”
In the relative quiet outside the performance hall, Vince Maniace of Little Rock reflected on attending his fifth conference, four with his daughter and one with his son.
“I love the energy,” he said. In the background, the music still throbbed, somewhat muffled by the exit doors. “Look at the future of (Catholicism in) our state and they’re right there, today and tomorrow.”
Hart kept his Saturday morning audience rapt with anecdotes about his life and his continual discovery of the depth of faith and the meaning of reconciliation and Communion. It took coming face to face with death — a real possibility when a flight of his made an emergency landing at a tiny airport — that brought home to Hart the real meaning of reconciliation.
Reconciliation is more than just obtaining a “get out of Hell free card,” he said. “Part of reconciliation is being contrite,” Hart said. In the past, “I was full of crap … I intended to keep purity ’til Friday.”
But this day was different.
Upon a safe landing, Hart said all he wanted to do was make confession. Wandering into a terminal with a baggage carousel the size of a grocery checker’s conveyor belt, he saw the unimaginable: “20 feet away, was a priest,” Hart said, adding with amazement. “God has style.”
After the Irish priest confided that he’d never done reconciliation in an airport, Hart let whatever he kept inside out — both good and bad.
“It was all the stuff that made me human and all the stuff that makes me horrible,” he said. “It all came out.”
Hart urged his audience to take seriously reconciliation and Communion, gifts from “God, who loves you so much, he’d rather die than spend eternity without you.”
Hart also reminded the teens that their priest is not merely a stand-in for Christ, but is in persona Christi Capitis, (in the person of Christ the head), which gives priests the ability to offer absolution of sins. When it comes to the Eucharist, “that’s why he says ’this is my body,’ not ’this is Jesus’ body’,” he said.
After his closing prayer, the audience rose for a standing ovation.
Kevin Jones, 18, drummer for Team Jesus, said being with his peers made for a more comfortable worship experience.
“Seeing them all is inspiring to me,” he said of the youths gathered in the crowd. Being with people his age and “being with all my friends, lets me act more myself and express what I really feel about my faith.”