Faith

Friday, March 14, 2025Faith

Submit a Letter to the Editor

These missionaries helped me enter into Lent with a new perspective -- they "focused" me on the heart of this season.

A few days before the beginning of Lent, I had the opportunity to celebrate Holy Mass and spend time with the FOCUS missionaries who serve here in the Archdiocese of Boston.
FOCUS (Fellowship of Catholic University Students) was founded in Denver after the 1993 visit of Pope St. John Paul II for World Youth Day. The Holy Father's visit was something of a spiritual earthquake, inspiring many new lay-led initiatives. A group of young adults led by Curtis Martin responded to the promptings of the Holy Spirit and sought to engage ministry with university students. That humble beginning of a dozen young people has grown exponentially over the last few decades. Hundreds of missionaries are leading tens of thousands of students in Bible study, prayer, and deepening their Catholic faith.
The methodology of FOCUS is simple. The missionaries strive to share the Gospel through friendship. They do not seek to convert dozens at a time; rather, they engage one or two at a time. The "secret sauce" is that their witnessing in friendship inspires others to do the same. One missionary makes two friends for the Lord, and those two each make two, and so on, until there are the tens of thousands that now gather at the annual FOCUS conferences.

FOCUS missionaries are passionate and committed disciples of the Lord Jesus. In addition to the missionaries serving at present, there are now missionary "alumni" scattered among the dioceses and parishes of the United States. Here in Boston, with our very large student population, FOCUS missionaries are essential to our mission. For this reason, I wanted the opportunity to pray and speak with our missionaries.
After Mass, during our wide-ranging conversation, I asked the missionaries for their advice to a still new archbishop. The first piece of advice they gave came from their own missionary experience: they spoke of the importance of authenticity. They explained that young people want to know that those who proclaim the Gospel live it authentically. While this may not be a revolutionary new insight, it was made powerful, but the truth is that these young missionaries are themselves such authentic witnesses to Jesus Christ.
One of the missionaries also recommended focusing on my prayer life. He spoke of the importance of prayer and the importance of teaching the young to pray. He explained that it was important to him to know that the pastors of the Church are themselves prayerful.
We went on to discuss the need for creative and wide-ranging communications and engagement in social media, and the missionaries offered good suggestions for my own communications and those of the archdiocese. They made it clear that the advice on communications was set against their experience of the deep longing for meaning and purpose that they are experiencing among the young. There is a real evangelical moment right now among college students. Despite all the reports of young people abandoning the practice of the faith, there is a rising sense that the culture is empty and does not have anything other than materialism and shallow ideology. If I might offer my own understanding of their message, it was a version of "if you build it, they will come."
I share the fruits of this conversation with you as I believe the advice that I received is, in fact, good advice for all serious disciples of the Lord Jesus. These missionaries helped me enter into Lent with a new perspective -- they "focused" me on the heart of this season. Lent calls us to deepen our friendship with the Lord Jesus, to live His call more authentically, to speak to and listen to Him in prayer, and to seek to share what we have received. I will continue to seek the wisdom and insights of our FOCUS missionaries, and I will continue to encourage and support their beautiful ministry.

- Archbishop Richard G. Henning is the Archbishop of Boston