Convocation with Parish Youth Ministers and Confirmation Coordinators

Most Reverend José H. Gomez
Archbishop of Los Angeles 
 
Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels 
Los Angeles, California 
March 29, 2025
 
Greetings my friends!
 
It’s great to be with you all!
 
I was thinking that we are having a special time this year having many people coming to Church and looking for the presence of God in their lives.
 
I’m sure that many of you were at the REC Youth Day. It was an amazing turnout! I was overwhelmed to see so many young people.
 
Then, as you know, we had the Rite of Election and the Rite of Continued Conversion here at the Cathedral and in Santa Barbara and we had more than 5,000 people. Again, it was amazing!
 
And I have to say: You all are doing great work!
 
The faith is alive in so many people in the Archdiocese; you can feel their energy and excitement about Jesus and about being Catholics!
 
So, let’s keep ministering to them, building up their knowledge of the faith! Let’s help them keep going deeper in their friendship with Jesus and their commitment to being disciples in the Church!
 
I’m excited about this Jubilee Year. I hope you are, too.
 
And as I have been saying for a couple of years now: the Holy Spirit is doing a “new thing” in our time.
 
The Holy Spirit is moving people’s hearts, helping them understand that living in a secular society can never satisfy our deepest longings and desires.
 
The Holy Spirit is waking people up to the reality of God’s love and the sure hope that we have in the salvation won for us by Jesus.
 
So, this is a beautiful time to be alive and to be Catholic and to have this great privilege to be walking with Jesus and forming young people to know him and to walk with him in their lives.
 
As I said at Congress and Youth Day, we are called to be makers of saints. So, when you fill out your tax forms this year, you can list your occupation as “Saint-maker.” How’s that?   
 
And it’s true!
 
Of course, only God makes saints, but we are God’s co-workers, and we have an essential role to play in working with our Lord to inspire and form the souls of the young men and women we serve.
 
And as I said at the Congress: Catechists, teachers, pastors, and ministers. They’ve always been the unsung heroes of Church history.
 
Because for every saint that we celebrate, there were people in the background of their lives, men and women who first taught them to know and love Jesus, who first taught them the meaning and cost of discipleship.
 
That’s you, my friends! That’s what we’re trying to do. It is a holy and noble vocation that you have.
 
In this Jubilee Year, the Holy Father is calling us in a special way to become “pilgrims of hope.”
 
That’s a helpful way for us to think about our ministries.
 
First of all, we are pilgrims.
 
We know this world is not our home, as the apostles used to say. We know that we are pilgrims on the road to the Father’s house, that we are walking with our brothers and sisters in the Church, following Jesus, who is leading us on the road to heaven.
 
And second, we are people of hope, a people who know that we are made to go to heaven.
 
Heaven is our hope! That’s what we’re living for as Catholics! Life everlasting in the love that never ends, in the kingdom of heaven.
 
And we have a sure foundation for our hope in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and in his constant presence with us now, as we continue the journey of our life.
 
This Jubilee Year is all about rediscovering our hope.
 
And Pope Francis wants us to remember that sharing our hope is an important dimension of being apostles, of being missionary disciples.
 
St. Peter used to say: Always be ready to share “the reason for your hope … with gentleness and reverence.”
 
That’s good advice for us to reflect on in this Jubilee Year.
 
How can we help our young people to really know the hope that we all have in Jesus?
 
So, I think we need to keep talking to our young people about the reality of heaven, about what happiness really means.
 
We think we need to keep reminding them that they are made by God and made for God, and that their life has that beautiful purpose of becoming saints on earth and living forever with God.
 
One more point before I go:
 
I want to remind you again that in this Jubilee Year we have a powerful example for our young people in Blessed Carlo Acutis, our first millennial saint, who Pope Francis will canonize on April 27.
 
I hope you saw the article we shared in Always Forward on Thursday. It’s a report from Assisi, in Italy, about how thousands of young people are flocking to pray at Blessed Carlo’s tomb there.
 
This young saint has captured their imaginations, and he has helped them to see new possibilities for their lives, living for Jesus, as he did.
 
In the article, Blessed Carlo’s mother says something beautiful.
 
She says: “Carlo … was a normal person. But if a life is illuminated by the light of Christ, a life becomes extraordinary.”
 
She said this too: “We always pray to the saints, and in the end, what did the saints do? They opened the doors of their lives to Christ.”
 
This is our task, my friends!
 
Let’s keep working together to make saints! Let’s keep helping our young people to open the door of their hearts to Jesus and allow the light of Christ to illuminate their lives.
 
Thank you again for your ministries.
 
I wish you the continued blessings of Lent and a joyful Easter with your families and in your parishes and ministries.