On Sunday the 18th of August, 2024, months of background preparation and efforts came to fruition as we held our first ever Youth Led Mass. It was just before the start of Summer that Louise, Kat and I (Sean) spoke to Fr. Uchenna and created our plan to encourage young people to take on ministry roles within our parish.
After months of careful planning and dialogue with young people, we were ready to launch out Youth Mass initiative to offer young people the opportunities to explore ministry and service to God together.
Scripture tells us to "Remember to serve God while you are young. He is the one who made you." [Ecclesiastes 12:1]. This serves as a reminder to us that God calls us to serve him where we are able to. Pope Francis said "We really need young people who are at the ready, eager to respond to God's dream, to care about others, young people who discover the joy and beauty of a life spent for Christ in service to others [...]."
I was truly humbled and pleased to see our young people today take on their ministries with such reverence and professionalism. They really are a credit to our parish! Many parishioners commented after Mass at how lovely it was to see our young people serving God and how well each and every one of them did so. There was high praise for our choir and organist and our readers who represented the youngest of our youth community.
I was also really inspired to see many young people attend Mass today, to support their brothers and sisters in this special way. I hope that they felt strengthened by this experience and called to serve God in their own way as we continue with our initiative on a monthly basis.
There are lots of people who need a thank you today.
Firstly our young people - you have all made your parish community proud today and many are looking forward to seeing you grow in your ministries which we hope you continue.
Thank you to Fr, Uchenna for supporting and guiding us with this project, we really could not have done this without his unwavering care and support.
Thank you to Fr. Bernard for leading us in such a lovely Mass for our first one and Deacon Willie for helping support our ministries throughout Mass.
Louise our organist, and Kat our Choirs director also put a phenomenal amount of work into the music ministries and they did a tremendous job - thank you ladies for all you continue to do for the young people in our parish.
Finally, a huge thank you has to go to our whole parish community for supporting our initiative and our young people. We could feel the love and care you showed each young person who was serving today and thank you also for all your lovely comments.
Our next Youth Led Mass is Sunday, 22nd of September and it will be led by Bishop Dougan - our Diocesan Bishop. We are very excited to have him join us and we look forward to letting him experience how our young people serve God in these special and important roles. We hope you can all join us too!
If you missed the Youth Led Mass, or indeed wish to experience it again and/or share with others, please follow the link below.
I hope you also enjoy these pictures, courtesy of Joan Smith.
Sean,
On behalf of St. Teresa's Youth Ministry Team.
Σχόλια