A Call to Arms

            There are a few questions I want to ask all you Catholic teens and young adults reading this.
            How many of you and your peers get together to have movie nights? How many of you get together just to hang out and have fun? I reckon that many people have raised their hands.
            OK. I have another question. How many of you get together to pray on a regular basis? I hope someone raises his hand.
            I ask this because I've noticed something over the past few years that is not at all encouraging.
            When my friends and I get together, (we're all Catholics) we usually watch a movie, or take a walk, or play some games, or talk, or act weird, or hike, or, failing all other options, lay around wondering what to do next. It all just goes to show that our lives are lacking something important. My circle of friends is important to me, yes, and I am important to them, but I'm frustrated because all of us are trying to be happy (and failing), and forgetting one very important truth: we need God above all, and nothing else will make us happy--literally.
            I have also noticed something over the past few years that is just as bad. We (my friends and I) are all Catholics and we all go to mass together. But what do we talk about 99 percent of the time? The latest movies, or our recent experiences and some other things. Those things are fine, yes. But what about God? Doesn't God deserve a bigger place in our lives? Doesn't God want so much more from us, especially during these turbulent times?
            I do not exempt myself from any of these charges, but I lay them out before everyone. These are sins of ommission, and they appear pretty harmless at first glance. But what happens when we allow them to stay? We lose our identity as Catholics. We lose our strength as a unified force in the world--simply because we do not care enough to band together for our faith.
            Here, I think, is the crux of the matter. Whether we like it or not, we are in a battle between God and Satan, and we must choose sides. We cannot sit idly by, stuck in our own little worlds, refusing to emerge. If we do this, we are simply submitting to the Enemy.
            I am writing this partly because I am frustrated and partly because I must get myself up to fight and partly because I see that we Catholics youth must unite in some real concrete way. We are the future of our country. We get to shape our country's history when our parents are gone.  If we open the door to God--even a crack--won't he shower us with grace? I'm sure he will. We just need to do it, and keep opening the door wider. But we need to do it together!
            Now, what do we do, exactly? At the moment, there is only one solution I can think of: pray! Not just alone. Yes, it is very good to pray alone, and I do not pretend to know how much any of you prays alone, but we must pray in groups as well! Pray the Rosary especially, and the Fatima intentions that go along with it. We and our country and the world are greatly in need of God's grace. I am sure that if all of us Catholic youth commit to pray the Rosary together in our own circles, all other designs that God wishes to set in motion will follow.
            I'm sorry if this article strikes you as a little angry, and I hope I have hurt no one, but I must say all this. I'm writing this for my own benefit as well as yours because I am in just as much need of reform as any of you, and I need to band together my own friends to fight this fight in prayer together. Not that I have recruted all the people I need yet, but I will soon. I just feel that we are in the middle of the desert at an oasis--which we ignore when we could so easily draw from it. This oasis will give us the strength to fight on in this dry world--it is as easy as stooping down and drinking. But, as my pastor always says, "It is as simple and as difficult as that."
            Catholics, to arms! God help us to be faithful!