Religious Education Congress Youth Mass 2023

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles

Religious Education Congress
Anaheim, California
February 23, 2023

My brothers and sisters in Christ,¹

As I was saying it is great to be with you today for this special celebration of the Holy Mass during Youth Day.

So as you know, it has been a very sad time for the family of God here in Los Angeles. We lost a good friend and a holy priest and bishop, Bishop David O’Connell.

I know that many of you knew him, he may have celebrated some of your Confirmations. We want to keep praying for the repose of his soul, and for the consolation of his family, and all of us in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and especially the diocese of the [ecclesiastical] province of Los Angeles.

We also want to celebrate his life. Because Bishop Dave was a man who loved Jesus Christ and gave his whole life to follow Jesus and to be his friend.

And this is what we all want. We are all born with the desire for happiness, to find love and joy and the meaning of our lives.

And the truth is that only when we know Jesus and follow him, just as Bishop Dave did, we do find happiness — that happiness we are looking for.

And this is what the readings of today’s Mass are all about.

As you know, we just began the holy season of Lent yesterday with Ash Wednesday. And Lent is a time for us to reflect on our lives and our relationship with Jesus Christ.

In the first reading we just heard, we heard the ancient words of Moses. And then he tells us: “Choose life!”

This is what God wants for each one of us. Life in all its fullness and richness. Life, and life abundant, Jesus said.²

God wants us, each one of us, to have a beautiful life. God wants you to have a blessed life, a life filled with love, and family, and friends. He wants you to share every step of your journey with him, and he wants you to make your own unique contribution to the kingdom he is building here on earth.

It’s real. It’s personal.

This is why the Father sent Jesus into the world — to reveal the human face of God, the face of love; and to show us the right path for us to travel.

And in our Gospel today, Jesus shows us that path. He tells us: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” 

So “choosing life” means loving the Lord and staying close to him; it means setting aside our own concerns and taking up our cross and walking in his footsteps; listening to his voice and keeping his commandments.

So my dear brothers and sisters, your happiness has only one name! The name of Jesus! Jesus is everything that you are looking for in life!

Those beautiful dreams and thoughts that you have, that you hold in your hearts — Jesus put them there!

Jesus wants you to grow and prosper, to use your talents and energies to change lives and change the world! He created you to do beautiful things with your life!

And with him — with his grace and his strength — you can do anything! All things are possible when we believe! All things are possible with Jesus!³

My dear young friends, no matter what the world tells you, following Jesus with all your heart will take nothing away from your life.

When we reflect on the Communion of Saints — we have so many pictures and paintings over there about some of the saints in the Church, it’s beautiful. And we also reflect on the ones, the young people that the Church has recognized — you see that the saints were beautiful, passionate, joyful, and creative people. They loved Jesus, and they loved life, and they lived life to the fullest!

You can think of young holy people like Blessed Chiara Badano — she loved dancing and playing tennis; Blessed Pier Frassati he was a hiker, he used to climbed mountains.

So the saints are our older brothers and sisters in Christ, and we can learn from them and lean on them. We have saints who were athletes, artists, poets, painters, and sculptors; great inventors and scientists, even politicians and leaders in business.

But the point is this: Never be afraid to trust Jesus. He will show you the way and he will never steer you wrong.

If you put your life in the hands of Jesus, your life will become a beautiful adventure, a road that leads to heaven.

So I was thinking that that’s exactly what it means to “strive for life,” as the theme for today says.

So the goal of our life is to become more like Jesus, and that means we need to keep getting to know him more and more.

So how do we do this? How do we get to know Jesus better? I always say “two words” — the Gospel and the Eucharist.

Because the Gospel is like the self-portrait of Jesus. We have his own words, we have the stories of his life. Those stories are told by those who first knew him and loved him. In the Gospels, Jesus is alive — healing and teaching, showing us how to live.

So my suggestion to all of you that might be useful to all of you is find the time every day, a couple of minutes of every day — a few minutes to read the Gospels, and listening to Jesus’ Words, pondering his Word in the quiet of our heart.

And then in the Eucharist, the celebration of the Holy Mass and receiving the Eucharist, we also have that encounter with Jesus. He is right there, just as real, just as present as he was present with his apostles two thousand years ago.

Jesus is with us in the celebration of Mass and in the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is the great sign of his love, and his love is never-ending. Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist to share his life with us in a beautiful friendship, and to be the food we need to make our way on life’s journey.

So the Gospels and the Eucharist. We need to try to continue to meet him as often as we can.

I can share with you one thing that helped me a lot when I was your age and growing up, was precisely that. For different reasons in my life, especially in my family, I decided to try to go to daily Mass and receive Jesus in the Eucharist. And that totally changed my life.

So at least on Sundays always, but whenever we can make a visit to a church, just to make a visit to the Blessed Sacrament. Or go to Mass and receive Communion. Just understand the beauty of knowing that Jesus is with us.

So, let’s keep growing in our faith, growing in our love, growing in our holiness, and in our likeness to Jesus. Let us keep becoming the people that God wants us to be!

And may Holy Mary Our Blessed Mother lead us always and help us to keep striving, to keep choosing life!