July 28, 2010

1,750 teens celebrate new life in Christ at youth conference

By Anna Maria Basquez

Starting anew was on the mind of 16-year-old Dylann Bralish July 17 as she stood to embrace friend Shannon Feely after talking in a large glass pane corner of the Colorado Convention Center during a break at the Steubenville of the Rockies conference. 

It was speaker Kate Barta’s messages that morning that hit home, she said.

“It renewed me,” Bralish said through tears.

Feely said to her, “It makes all things new, is that what you mean?”  Feely nodded, saying to her with conviction, “It does.”

Feely said the messages from Barta’s talk she wants to repeat to the youth of her parish over and over again include those of “Dignity, worth and the ability to start all over and fresh. That’s what God wants for us.”

Barta, formerly a youth minister in Littleton who now lives in California, spoke to 1,750 teens from Catholic parishes from Texas, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Kansas, New Mexico and Colorado among others. Her talk included a critical look at popular music of teenage culture, teen’s idea of love and words of encouragement on how to live better in day-to-day life.

“We have this desire for romantic love,” Barta said. “Sexual love in the context of love is the most powerful way we can share God’s love. The hang-up is this: We are in the midst of a battle. If Satan can distract us from speaking the language of God’s love, he’s won.

“I’ve been listening to that song, ‘California Girls’… everybody’s singing it,” she said. “They’re all about revving your engines. I watched the video and it has Katy Perry and her little minions with candy all over their bodies.”
Rapper Snoop Dogg, she said, takes a role giving the impression of a pimp in the video.

The messages teens might easily take from that video, she said, include, “‘Girls, you’re nothing but candy. If you don’t look like a supermodel you’re not worthy. And guys, you’re nothing but animals.’ The battle that is going on takes place in that video.”

She told the story of how in her own life, learning about Pope John Paul II’s theology of the body spoke directly to her heart even after the toughest circumstances played out in her own family. Barta confided to the teens that one night she woke to her parents screaming at one another because one of them found a love letter indicating the other had been having an affair.

“I knew,” she said, “… my existence had been shaken to its core.” 

“Jesus was just stained glass on a wall,” she said, until she joined a youth group, invited by a parent’s divorce lawyer who was also a youth leader. “Jesus Christ, who had always been a pipe dream or a cartoon took flesh in my life and he said, ‘… your fate isn’t wrapped up in the sins of your parents. If you want … I will show you the way.’

“God fulfilled desire in my heart,” Barta added. “Love is real and love can be beautifully expressed.”

Barta lives with her husband and two children now in Ventura, Calif., where she still works in various ministries.

“So many young men and women start out in this purity,” she said. “Then they start to doubt. But the enemy is subtle. He’s going to give you all sorts of distractions, all sorts of ‘California Girls.’ Slowly but surely, we lose parts of ourselves. We lose our dignity.”

Barta said she was on a pilgrimage in Italy at a miracle sight where she prayed when she heard Jesus whisper to her heart: “The Lord showed me in that little moment, saying, ‘I am going to go inside. I am going to make all things new.’”
“Jesus is alive right now … He’s constantly beckoning us saying ‘Trust me. You are good no matter what you have done. I make all things new,’” Barta said. “Jesus shows us you’re going to suffer.”

She said just in day-to-day living, it will be in getting away from tempting situations that the teens will find the things that God has in mind for them.  

By avoiding all types of tempting situations, she said, “… by getting off the Internet when you are tempted, you are working at that moment to love better, to be better prepared for what God has planned for you. Get ready for battle but know who you’re going to follow.”

Freddie Martinez, 17, of Holy Trinity Church in Westminster said he had been in the spot where he thought he was doing well and then he ran into a lot of distractions.

“I was trying to make it work with a girl. But I never put God into it. I never let faith into it. I realized today that’s what’s been missing this whole time,” Martinez said.

Auxiliary Bishop James Conley gave a homily focusing on self sacrifice.

During it, he said making the sacrifice to be cordial to someone a person might not like can be considered a sacrifice.

“No one knows that sacrifice but God. He uses those little sacrifices not only to increase holiness, but to sanctify the world,” he said.

Bishop Conley paid tribute to the feast of July 17 honoring the Carmelite Nuns of Compiegne. On that day in 1792 a group of 16 nuns were beheaded during the French Revolution. They sang the “Salve Regina” right up to their moments of death.

Instead of the cheering and wine drinking that usually took place during beheadings in those days, a dead silence came over the crowd as the last of the nuns died. 

“That sacrifice put an end to the French Revolution,” Bishop Conley said. “Every time we come to Mass, Christ invites us to give ourselves. We are all called to give ourselves. Let us pray we will always have that strength. God will use that to conquer evil in the world and the evil in our lives.”

In addition to being inspired by a host of dynamic speakers, the youths also enjoyed praise and worship music, skits, and had the opportunity to go to confession and to participate in eucharistic adoration.