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March 30, 2008

Young people take on a mission for God

By Michelle Martin

ASSISTANT EDITOR

It’s a chilly morning, and the eight young women in the former convent at Our Lady of Victory Parish are off to a slow start. After morning prayer and breakfast, they are seated in a circle to talk about the day ahead, when they will take the Gospel to the streets.

They are among several dozen young people dispersed to about a dozen parishes in Chicago for a Holy Week “Youth Mission,” organized by Regnum Christi, an apostolic movement affiliated with the Legionaries of Christ.

Julia Ready, 18, stands in front of the group in jeans and a black hoodie, roleplaying and offering advice on how to respond to people when they go door-to-door in this Northwest Side neighborhood.

“They might say they used to be Catholic, but they were confused about some things,” she said, suggesting the girls — Chicagoarea teens — use the information about Catholic teaching in their small, spiral-bound handbooks. “If they’re not Catholic, it doesn’t mean their bad or anything like that.”

“The most important thing is your testimony of joy and faith,” said Mary Maher, a consecrated member of Regnum Christi who is serving as chaperone. “We need to show a lot of love for these people.”

Ready is a Regnum Christi “coworker,” spending one year living and working with consecrated Regnum Christi women.

Regnum Christi has been organizing Holy Week youth missions for about four years, said Mary Hague, who helps pull them together in Chicago. The young people — some from Chicago, some from other areas of the Midwest — met Holy Wednesday evening for a commissioning Mass at St. Pius X in Stickney. After three days of going door-to-door, organizing “K4J” (“Kids for Jesus”) youth activities and their own prayer and reflection time, the young people attended Easter Mass celebrated by Bishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller at St. Alphonsus Parish in Chicago.

Stacy Hague, 18, has been on youth missions since Regnum Christi started organizing them five years ago in the United States, when the first Holy Week mission was held in Atlanta.

The first time she went door-to-door wasn’t exactly scary, she said.

“It was more awkward,” she said. “I didn’t really know what to say. And I had to speak Spanish sometimes.”

About 10 miles south, Father Robert DeCesare walks with teams of young men in Chinatown, bearing information about services at St. Therese Chinese Catholic Mission. As the young men ring doorbells and call “Ne How,” their phonetically written Chinese translation of hello, they get few responses. It’s the middle of a weekday, and many people are at work. Those who are at home don’t seem to want to talk, or don’t speak English.

But still the small group, including Jim Dillenmberg, 14, of Lemont; Llyod Fojas, 29, from Orland Park; George Calvino, 16, Downers Grove; and Dominique Ruypin, 22, from France, persist.

As Fojas, a Regnum Christi volunteer, conducts a conversation through a closed door, DeCesare says the missionary effort is probably of more benefit to the missioners than those they are trying to reach.

“It gives them the opportunity to share their faith,” he said. “And faith is strengthened when you share it.”