Youth are urged to meet Christ in the sacraments
August 1st, 2008 by Fr. Gabriel Gillen, O.P.
By Joseph Duerr, Editor of The Record
The Newspaper for the Archdiocese of Louisville.
“Do we want to meet Christ? Do we want him to meet us?”
These questions were asked by Dominican Father Aquinas Guilbeau of more than 300 people attending an opening session of the Ignite Your Torch Youth Conference last week at Bellarmine University.
In response to the questions, Father Guilbeau, who is assigned to St. Vincent Ferrer Church in New York City, encouraged the youth to pray and to take advantage of the opportunities given them during the July 24-27 conference.
“Christ will come to you in the sacraments,” he said. “Pray the Lord will open the eyes of your heart to greet him and to say yes” to him.
Father Gulbeau’s talk on July 24 centered on Christ and the sacraments - how we meet him” and “how he meets us.”
And, he said, “to understand the sacraments properly, to believe in them fully, to benefit from them, we have to have a really deep and strong understanding of Christ and the Incarnation and be over-awed at who and what Christ is.”
In communicating to us, God “took on our own human nature,” the priest said. “His sacred humanity becomes the point of contact between God and the world, between God and his creation.”
Father Guilbeau told young people, “As Catholics, from the moment of our baptism we are introduced, made participants in this great mystery, this fundamental mystery of our faith: that God became man, lived among us and communicated himself to us.”
He said we see Christ’s “sacred humanity” revealed in the Gospels.
Christ preaches, and in his preaching “we hear God’s truth,” he said. Christ teaches; he performs miracles (healing people of their afflictions); he forgives sins; and he dies willingly on the cross for us.
“This is how God saves us,” Father Guilbeau said. “God saves us from sin, he saves us from death and becomes one of us, beginning to restore us in his preaching, healing and forgiveness. He completes that mission by dying for us.”
And, the priest noted, Christ “reveals to us our destiny” in his resurrection on Easter.
How do we today hear Christ’s teaching, receive his healing and forgiveness, and participate in his passion?
Christ prepared for us, Father Guilbeau said. He shared his power and authority with his disciples to preach, teach, perform miracles and forgive sins, and at the Last Supper he gave us the Eucharist. And this continues in the church.
In baptism, “we are brought into his mystery,” he said. In confession, Christ heals us of our sins; in the sacrament of anointing, we receive Christ’s healing; and in the Eucharist, “we are brought to Calvary” and “we receive all the graces and merits of Christ’s death for us.
“Transformed by this life, transformed by the Eucharist, we go out, apostles ourselves, to share this same mystery with others to bring them into the life of the church,” the priest said.
In his talk, Father Guilbeau also noted that the Ignite Torch conference was held shortly after World Youth Day in Australia, which ended July 20. In particular, he mentioned Pope Benedict XVI’s talks to young people.
“The pope has a great love for young people,” the priest said. “He has great confidence in the minds and hearts of the young to receive the Gospel in its full truth.”
Father Guilbeau noted that in trips to the United States last April and to Australia, Pope Benedict “gave his toughest critiques” of culture, materialism, consumerism and violence in talks to young people.
The pope “saved those critiques for the young, because he knows the kind of open hearts, open ears and open minds” young people have to the “fullness of the Gospel,” Father Guilbeau said.
