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Holy Week mission sees families, young adults evangelize, serve others
By Julie Filby
More than 70 young men and women, age 14-30, and families spent the Easter triduum serving as missionaries at four parish communities in the archdiocese: Holy Name in Englewood; and Holy Rosary, St. Joseph and St. Francis de Sales parishes in Denver.
“Local mission work is important because there are people needing Christ everywhere, there’s no need to travel,” said Mary Carmen Lopez Mota, a parishioner of
Light of the World Church in Littleton and one of the mission organizers. “Mission work helps us to live our Christian vocation, which is loving Christ through serving people and building his Church.”
The missionaries helped people prepare for Easter through door-to-door evangelization, assisting with humanitarian projects and participating in Holy Week liturgies.
“Here in Denver there are many people living in underprivileged circumstances that need the presence of Christ in their lives,” Lopez Mota said.
Holy Week missions were hosted by Mission Youth, an apostolate of Regnum Christi. Since its founding in 1995, Mission Youth has reached more than 200,000 people through 7,000 missionaries. In 2000 Mission Youth organized the first Holy Week missions in the Denver Archdiocese. The program has spread to eight dioceses in the United States and Canada.
Local Holy Week missions kicked off April 20 with commissioning at an opening Mass at Holy Name celebrated by retired Msgr. David Croak. The following day, the missionaries divided into teams: young men to St. Frances de Sales; young women to Holy Name and Holy Rosary parishes; and family missionaries to St. Joseph’s.
The missionaries delivered boxes of food and toiletries, prayed with families and invited them to liturgies, organized activities for children, and painted two classrooms at St. Joseph Church.
“What impacted me most was when we distributed food in unprivileged neighborhoods,” said Lopez Mota. “There were families who considered themselves blessed with what they had at the moment and asked us to give it to someone who needed it more.”
She and husband, Marcelo Garcia, and children: Marcela, 17; Daniel, 13 and Diego, 10, were touched by the isolation some people they visited experience.
“We realized how lonely and abandoned some people are, especially the elderly,” she said. “It was very humbling to see how grateful they were with us, just giving them our time and prayers. It is literally like taking Christ to them—they felt loved and cherished.”
Mary Sarah Ivers, a 16-year-old junior at Regis Jesuit High School Girls Division and parishioner of St. Mary Church in Littleton, has been involved in mission work, locally and abroad, for four years.
She joined the team working at Holy Rosary, which organized a camp to help children better understand the Easter season.
“I developed close relationships with the kids and witnessed how their lives were changed,” Ivers said. “I’ll never forget when two little boys told me they wanted to receive their first Communion and that they would go to Mass every Sunday—two boys, who before Holy Week, had never even been to Church.”
The next day the boys’ parents joined them at church and scheduled a meeting with the pastor to begin first Communion preparation.
Ivers plans to continue lifelong work in missions.
“It’s been so fulfilling and brought me much closer to Christ,” she said. “I will definitely continue Holy Week missions in Denver and hopefully in many other places as well. I encourage everyone to take part in some kind of mission.”
Jacob Kingsley, 17, a junior at Broomfield’s Holy Family High School and parishioner at St. Francis of Assisi in Longmont, was moved by the experience as well. He joined a team of nine young men working primarily at St. Frances de Sales and the surrounding community.
“It was interesting, especially talking with the homeless people,” he said. “Most of my interaction (with the homeless) has been from a distance, and being close up is different.”
After three days of fellowship, evangelization and hard work, the missionaries joined for a closing Mass on Easter Sunday at Holy Name. For more information, visit www.missionyouthmissions.com.
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