Are devotions making a comeback?

By Tomasz Juszczak, immediate past director of the Office of Youth Evangelisation

I want you to imagine someone praying the rosary. Does your mind automatically turn to an elderly lady sitting in the front of a Catholic church, rosary beads in hand, muttering the prayers monotonously? Whatever it may be, my guess is that you probably don’t see a room full of hundreds of vibrant youth, meditating on the mysteries as they pray the rosary in unison. The interesting thing is that the latter happens to be a lived reality amongst many of today’s Australian Catholic youth.

While many older people I’ve spoken to believe that devotions such as the rosary, Eucharistic adoration and First Friday Masses are a dead art, such devotions are starting to become increasingly popular among today’s youth. After attending the recent ACYF in Perth, one of the most common highlights cited by the young people was Eucharistic adoration. In fact, you’d be hard pressed to go to World Youth Day or any other Catholic conference or festival without experiencing Eucharistic adoration. Praying the rosary is also something the youth are doing regularly – even daily – after experiencing the power of such prayers at Catholic events. One of the highlights at the annual Immaculata Mission School is the daily prayer of the rosary in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

So what’s the go with this apparent revival of old-school prayer? Based on feedback from young people and my own observations, it has to do with the fact that these types of devotions offer something the young people no longer get in today’s culture: silence, contemplation, and especially depth of relationship. Young people are encountering God in ways that take them deeper and fulfil the yearnings in their hearts. They are experiencing the love of Christ in a new way and are pining for a connection that goes beyond the surface level. To put it simply, young people want their hearts to be filled, and such devotions do exactly that.

It’s no surprise that young people are making the rosary part of their daily routines and that they regularly want to sit with Jesus in Eucharistic adoration. They are no longer satisfied with surface-level piety. They want the real deal. They want depth. They want God.

Photo: Iceberg Media