Want a sure bet? The best discounts on televisions will take place every January like clockwork? Check. Fish fries will abound in Lent? Count on it. The sun will come up tomorrow? Bet your bottom dollar it will. All of these things are sure bets.
Another sure bet is that more young adults will walk into your church this Ash Wednesday than any typical Sunday. You can bet on it! There is statistical evidence to support this phenomenon, but you don’t need it because you can verify it with your own eyes.
What’s even more remarkable is that Ash Wednesday isn’t even a holy day of obligation! There’s something special about Ash Wednesday. Perhaps it’s because the church “gives” us something physical (see Palm Sunday). Perhaps it’s ingrained in our Catholic seasonal life patterns like birds flying south each winter. For inactive Catholics, perhaps it’s an easy baby step towards re-engaging with a community of faith. There are as many reasons as there are young adults. But the sure fact is that you will have more young adults at your Ash Wednesday Masses than usual.
Each of us knows friends and family members who are no longer engaged with the faith of their childhood. As a church, we have much work to do in this area, especially in the area of intentional, systematic outreach to our inactive brothers and sisters. But astonishingly, there are occurrences when young adults are coming back to our churches without any outreach at all.
Many inactive Catholic young adults still want to be married in the church. Many want their children to be baptized and raised Catholic. And many young adults feel called to Ash Wednesday services despite the inactivity in their faith lives.
So, as your parish prepares for Ash Wednesday and Lent, you need to ask yourself what intentional actions you and your fellow parishioners will take to leverage this “moment of return.”
First, I hope that you say a silent prayer in thanksgiving for each and every young adult who enters your church that day.
And then, how will you warmly welcome them? What if every young adult was showered with hellos and sincere introductions? Just being noticed is the first step to feeling welcome into a community (see Evangelization 101).
What else does your parish have to offer young adults? Don’t assume that the young adults at Ash Wednesday Mass know much about your parish calendar. Of course, a personal invitation is always the most effective method of invitation. But besides personal invitations, will you have fliers, posters, QR codes and pulpit announcements to invite these young adults to other activities at your parish? And what if your parish has no organized young adult ministry at this time? Well, you still have plenty of parish activities that you can invite young adults to attend.
And if you find that there’s not enough time to do much for this Ash Wednesday, then perhaps Lent is a perfect time to start reflecting on how your parish will welcome young adults at other moments of return, including this Easter Sunday.
Michal Horace is the director of the Archdiocese of Louisville’s Office of Youth and Young Adults.
