Fr. David Michael’s tip for kids seeking God, and kids who aren’t

Our Aleteia community, like many others across the country, have benefitted from both the creativity and the insight of a young priest from the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Fr. David Michael Moses. Whether he’s using potato chips to reflect on the spiritual life, or breakdancing from the joys of hearing confessions, he’s great at finding relatable and funny ways to speak about big truths.

We had the chance to sit down with him at the National Eucharistic Congress — not really for an interview, but more for a conversation about some of the things that inspire him most, whether it be the joy of the priesthood, or the little taste of Heaven that music brings.

We will be sharing more of our conversation in the coming few days, but for now, we’d like to transmit the advice he had for young people seeking God’s will, and then on the flip side, his encouragement for parents who might be frustrated over their kids leaving aside the sacraments and life of the Church.

Of course, we have the assurance of his prayers, and the prayers of those at the Congress, for all of us, in the brief video above.

So first, we asked him what he would recommend to young people who are seeking God’s will.

His answer:

Well, first, I’m glad they’re asking; I’m glad they’re seeking, because too many young people aren’t seeking. They’re doing what they want to do. And discipleship starts — the call from Christ is, “Come, come follow me.” And you say, “Okay, I’ll follow you.”

You know, Jesus didn’t tell the people he encountered, the apostles, “Hey, go and do good things.” He said, “Follow me.”

We young people get a lot of options for good things to do, and good things are good things. But ultimately, being a disciple isn’t just doing good things. It’s following — doing what the Lord wants.

So I would encourage people to keep seeking, but to be generous in responding, and to trust that the Lord sees what you were made for much more clearly than you do. That’s part of the trust: You may just see the next step, but the Lord sees how it all turns out.

Nowadays, we have so many good, great resources for discernment — better than any time in human history. So don’t get too caught up in all the options, but just listen to the Lord and be generous in responding.

As Fr. David Michael acknowledged, a lot of people — young and old — are not even trying to hear God’s voice. For parents who’ve raised their kids Catholic, this can be a source of sorrow.

Particularly during and after an event and process like the Eucharistic Congress and Revival, this sorrow can be especially intense.

Fr. David Michael’s advice is to trust, but not to stop there. Here’s what he said:

You know, one of the beautiful things about the person of Jesus Christ is that he has gone before us through everything we will go through. He suffers with us.

In one of the [accounts] in the Gospel, Jesus goes home, and his friends and his family, his cousins –they don’t really take him seriously. And it says, he was not able to perform a mighty work in this place because of their lack of faith.

Know that even Jesus felt it was hard to convert his family, so to speak. So, one, Christ is there with you.

Then, I always tell people to rejoice in the fact that we are free. Your children are free. God leaves us free. A lot of times we want to — maybe with our family — to just shake them and make them, make them believe this. (Certainly with children, it’s good to make them go to Mass, of course.) But to say, “No, God doesn’t do that [forcing] with us and we don’t do that with others; freedom is the prerequisite for love. The precondition for love is that they’re freely choosing it.

If you’re a mom or dad who is struggling because your child is freely choosing to not serve God right now in an explicit way, just say, “Well, that’s what’s going to make it meaningful when they do choose to love God, because it was always a free choice.”

Also, I think we always have to start with ourselves: Am I the best possible witness to my loved one of who the person of Jesus Christ is for them? Am I the very best possible witness? Are there things I’m hanging on to? Are there things beneath the surface that I’m not allowing the Lord to heal, that I’m not letting go of, that — maybe it’s not explicitly known — but that is keeping me from being the best conduit of God’s grace for this person? To really start there.

And then lastly, I would say, trust God’s timing. You know, when Jesus was in the tomb, day one looked really bad. Day two looked really bad. Day three was looking really bad. Then suddenly everything was beautiful.

You never know, when you’ve been praying for your loved one for years and years and years and years, if you stopped praying and you were two days away from them saying, “You know what, I think I’m gonna give this a go again.” You know the two options are to pray until it works, or to stop praying. So pray until it works, and trust that God is working. He loves them a lot more than we do, even, and he’s working in his time.

Follow our coverage of the National Eucharistic Congress here.