Give youth avenues for evangelization — Socrates Villegas

DAGUPAN CITY, Philippines  —   The youth must be given avenues to participate in the mission of evangelization in the parish, Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas said yesterday.

In his pastoral letter for Jan. 1 and released yesterday, Villegas said that as Catholic Philippines observes 2019 as Year of the Youth looking forward to the 500th anniversary of the first baptism and first mass in the Philippines, “we in Lingayen-Dagupan offer to our youth the Church as companion, kalakbay. TABIN (guide).”

“It has been said that the face of God is mercy. Today, we say that at the forefront of the Church of mercy are the faces of the young,” he added.

The prelate also urged the faithful to give the Church a young face.

“Let us give the youth a space to be heard because true love listens. The first step to walking with the youth is listening to them,” he said.

Villegas noted that there is a healthy kind of restlessness among the youth “which we cannot just dismiss in the parishes, schools and families.”

Restlessness, according to the archbishop, can inject greater dynamism to the parishes that oftentimes favors the status quo more than the missionary passion.

Villegas encouraged priests and educators, parents and guardians to allow the youth to express this creative restlessness with an encouraging welcome and a respectful accompaniment.

“Oftentimes, we Church elders engender impatience among the youth because of our slow, domineering and dragging pastoral approaches,” he said, adding that when the young criticize priests, he exhorts his brother priests “to listen to their young voices as the voice of Christ himself calling us to conversion and renewal.”

For the prelate, all young people are in God’s heart even if some of them do not share their visions of life.

“An attitude of humility and willingness to listen will open new avenues of renewal for us,” he said.   – With Evelyn Macairan