Letter
Message from Bishop Nelson Perez for the National Summit for Ministries with Youth and Young Adults (2019)
Message from Bishop Nelson J. Perez, Chair, Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church, for the National Summit for Ministries with Youth and Young Adults, July 8, 2019
I wish I could be present with all of you for this National Summit for Ministries with Youth and Young Adults, but previous commitments have not made it possible. However, I am so happy to have been invited to write to you as you gather to share your voice and vision for the world and the Church. If there is one message that I would like to share with you, it is one that I proclaim to young people all over the Diocese of Cleveland, where I serve as their Bishop: Never, never, never underestimate the power of the Spirit of God working in you, through you, and despite you . . . and most of the time, unbeknownst to you! It is the same powerful Spirit of God that gave birth to the Church and has guided, nurtured, and accompanied us through thick and thin, moments of holiness and sin, times of peace and turmoil, throughout of collective and personal histories.
Attention to the diversity of circumstances, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, religious and social upbringing of the young people we are called to work with, will help us recognize where they are in their journey of life and faith, so that we can be more effective in our work with them and the guidance we provide, but also more attentive, to discover and put to work the many gifts and talents God has given them for the benefit of the Church. This encounter, particularly the more we move towards the existential peripheries of church and society, will probably also lead us to realize that different circumstances may require different approaches, and even processes, for the mission. May the Holy Spirit effect within us the necessary pastoral conversion, and grant us the missionary zeal, patience and holy imagination needed for the work of evangelization with all youth and young adults in the United States today.
The task, then, and our challenge is how do we continue to create times and places of encounter to share about these truths in a way that is accessible to those we so passionately serve —our youth and young adults — in a way that goes beyond just knowledge, but in a manner that reaches their hearts, and never underestimating the power of the spirit of God working in us, through us, and despite us, and often times, unbeknownst to us!