2025 Catechesis Supplement

Workshop helps teachers, youth ministers, coaches nurture hope in teens

Father Michael Keucher gives a presentation on hope to people who serve archdiocesan youths. The talk was part of the Into the Heart workshop, sponsored by the archdiocesan Office of Youth Ministry, held at Our Lady of the Greenwood Parish in Greenwood on Aug. 9. (Photo by Sean Gallagher)

By Sean Gallagher

GREENWOOD—As youths across central and southern Indiana began another year of school, youth ministry programming and athletic competition, adults who minister to them gathered on Aug. 9 at Our Lady of the Greenwood Parish in Greenwood to be encouraged and grow deeper in their service.

The archdiocesan Office of Youth Ministry sponsored its “Into the Heart” workshop that day to help staff members of Catholic schools, those involved in youth ministry and Catholic Youth Organization teams grow in their knowledge of the faith and how to help youths grow in their own relationship with Christ and the Church.

This year’s workshop focused on the theological virtue of hope, which is at the heart of the Church’s ongoing Jubilee Year of Hope.

Christ is ‘the ultimate Good Samaritan’

Father Michael Keucher, archdiocesan vocations director and pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Shelbyville and St. Vincent de Paul Parish in Shelby County, spoke at the workshop about how Christ is the foundation of a very specific hope of all believers.

Hope for Catholics, Father Keucher said, “is not just thinking better thoughts or being optimistic. It’s knowing that Jesus Christ is in charge and that Jesus Christ is love.”

Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37), Father Keucher said, is a dramatic and touching illustration of how Christ gives believers hope.

He described Christ as “the ultimate Good Samaritan” and said that every person is, in one way or another, like the man left half-dead in a ditch.

“He comes along this road and in great love, in humility, kneels down and says, ‘I am not going to leave you here.’ In love, he binds up our wounds,” Father Keucher said.

The oil that the Samaritan pours into the wounds of the man is symbolic of the sacraments, while the inn where the Samaritan took the wounded man is symbolic of the Church, Father Keucher explained.

Seeing Gospel passages like the parable of the Good Samaritan in this way can lead youths and those who minister to them into a deeper relationship with Christ.

“We are invited to this relationship with him that is personal, beautiful and wonderful,” Father Keucher said. “When we are best friends with Jesus, then we know that we will always have hope, because he is all that is good. He is love. He is beauty. He is safety. He is all these things. He is going to take us home one day, ultimately, to heaven.”

A key to foster a hope-filled relationship with Christ in youths, Father Keucher advised, is to take them to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

“If we take our kids in our youth groups, our teams, our classes to Jesus in the tabernacle, if we take our kids literally in front of Jesus, he will do the rest,” Father Keucher said. “He does incredible things. He will speak to their hearts. I know him because he has spoken to my heart in dark moments in my life.

“When we take our kids to Jesus, he will do the rest. He’ll restore hope.”

‘Count on hope’ to transform us

Later in the workshop, Jake Teitgen, director of communications and advancement at Our Lady of Grace Parish in Noblesville, Ind., in the Lafayette Diocese, reflected on how hope can transform the lives of youths and how teachers, youth ministers and coaches can be channels of such transforming hope.

He reminded his listeners of the “incredible privilege” they have in being a part of the lives of the young people they serve and simply observing their lives.

“Sometimes we can lose sight of just how much of a privilege that is,” Teitgen said. “Really, at the end of the day, having the opportunity to even notice young people and affirm the things that are going well in their life, to be a companion when things are not going well, is a tremendous opportunity.”

But while Teitgen encouraged those at the workshop to step back and be grateful for the blessing of observing the ever-changing lives of the youths whom they serve, he said they should also be mindful that they themselves are being watched, too.

“Christ is the one who gazes upon us,” said Teitgen. “And when we are gazed upon by Christ, we are transformed, and we see with a new perspective.”

Christ gazing upon adults gives them transforming hope that they can then pass it on to the youths that they serve.

“When we say that hope transforms, hope doesn’t transform God,” Teitgen said. “Hope doesn’t really even transform the very real problems of the world. The only thing we can really count on hope to transform is us. That the way we see things, the perspective we have, is transformed by hope.”

Teitgen also reminded his listeners that the work they do with youths in nurturing transforming hope in their lives might take a very long time to come to full flower.

To illustrate this reality, Teitgen told the story of Antonio Gaudi, the Spanish architect who designed the famous

La Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona and who died in 1926, during the early days of the church’s construction.

Teitgen told his listeners that Gaudi, whose cause for beatification and canonization is being considered by the Vatican, knew well that he would never see the completion of the great vision he had for the basilica.

“The reason he felt like he could do that is because he said that the patron of this project [God] was not in a hurry,” Teitgen said. “He had that vision of God gazing upon us and knowing it’s OK for us to play the long game and not see how this all plays out.”

Teitgen then encouraged his listeners to take the same approach with the youths they serve.

“Do we look at our young people as precious gifts in whom we hope and are willing to take our time?” he asked those at the workshop. “Do we believe that they can someday inspire awe at a glimpse of the divine? Do we believe that they are all masterpieces, still under work? Are we willing to start on that work that we will never see come to fruition? God has that kind of hope in us. Can we offer that kind of hope to others?”

Juanita Bruggeman is the office manager at St. Charles Borromeo School in Bloomington. When she saw that “hope” was the topic of the Into the Heart workshop, she knew that she wanted to attend.

“This is what we do every day,” said Bruggeman. “As Catholics, everything that we do, we do in faith, love and hope. So, hope is a very important part of our lives. If you don’t have hope, then you can’t expect a better future.”

She also acknowledged the importance for herself and her colleagues of nurturing hope in the students at St. Charles, knowing that they’ll leave the school after the eighth grade and will experience many changes in their lives afterward.

“They are still a work in progress, an unfinished masterpiece,” Bruggeman said. “That’s why we have to nurture hope in them. We might never see the end-result in our lifetime. You just hope that whatever seeds you plant in them will be enough.” †