Announcing:
Saint Mary's Press winner for the week of May 31, 2011!

Congratulations to Carole Romanini!

Carole will receive a copy of The Catholic Family Connections Bible, a $26.95 value.

The Catholic Family Connections Bible helps families connect to:

- Each other- through family faith conversations
- Faith through practices of prayer and devotion
- Community-through participating in Christian service together

The Catholic Family Connections Bible uses the New American Bible text and is woven around the core content of the bestselling Catholic Youth Bible® (loved by nearly two million Catholic young people), which includes:

- Over 700 lively articles help you Pray It! Study It! Live It!®
- Catholic Connection" articles provide a presentation of key Catholic doctrine
- 28 articles address the seven principles of Catholic social teaching
- 75 inspirational illustrations
- Helpful index to life and faith issues
- Easy-to-use glossary of Scripture-related terms
- Sunday Lectionary readings for all three cycles
- "Catholic Connections" index
- "Sacraments Connections" index

The Catholic Family Connections Bible
ISBN: 978-1-59982-088-0, paper, 1968 pages

In this week’s Servant Leader, I would like to address a few things. First, I want to let you know that The Servant Leader will be switching to its "summer schedule" for the next few months. For June and July, The Servant Leader will be coming out once a month (June 13 and July 11). We will return to our regular weekly schedule on August 15.

We have been doing this weekly newsletter for almost a year, and I would like to thank each one of you for making it a great year. The response has been tremendous. At this time we have over 3,600 subscribers. As I did a few months ago, I would again like to invite you to submit ideas for future issues of The Servant Leader. If there is a particular topic, question, or need you would like us to address, please let me know by sending it in an e-mail to this address: smpress@smp.org. Beyond looking for ideas for upcoming Servant Leaders, we would also like to extend an invitation to any of our servant leaders who might be interested in writing for a future issue. Again, if there is a particular topic you would be interested in writing about in a future Servant Leader,simply send an e-mail to the following address: smpress@smp.org.

The last thing I would like to do in this issue of The Servant Leader is to give you a few resources you can use over the summer months:

Summer Reading List: This list was developed by Aquinas & More Catholic Goods, a store in Colorado Springs, CO, specializing in Catholic books and products.

Movie Reviews: Read reviews from the Catholic News Service of the latest summer movies. Rather than awarding stars to movies, movies instead are rated on a scale from A-I (suitable for all audiences) to O (morally offensive).

Summer Games and Activities: Need a game to play with a group of stir-crazy middle school students at a lock-in? This sitecontains an extensive collection of youth-group games that you can search through using various criteria (e.g., age of youth, group size, space available, objective of the game).

Thank you again for a great year. I pray that summer goes smoothly for you and is filled with grace, and, as always, I pray that God will continue to bless you and your ministry.

Peace,
Steven McGlaun

Click Here for More Information

From Justice and Service Ideas for Ministry with Young Teens

Overview
This strategy suggests a spiritual framework for service activities and some creative ways to engage the young people in outreach experiences that are transformative. Based on the understanding that we become seekers of justice through experiences of service, those ideas are aimed at connecting the young people, on a spiritual level, with those who are on the edges of their world, giving names and faces to realities of injustice and need.

Suggested Time
Outreach experiences can be tailored to a variety of time periods ranging from 2 hours to a week or more. It is difficult to develop effective and meaningful service experiences that require less than 1 to 2 hours.

Group Size
Outreach ministry with young adolescents takes place ideally in small groups of between five and ten young people under the guidance of one or two adults. Small groups increase the potential for the participants to make personal connections and may enhance the quality of the sharing after the event.

Procedure

Choose a Focus
One helpful image for defining service is that of a pilgrimage, a quest to uncover the face of God or encounter Christ. This quest has two distinct movements: outreach (an outer journey to connect with a situation of need) and inreach (an inner journey of reflection and prayer that investigates the meaning and implications of the experience). Both movements require attention and preparation.

Outreach involves crossing personal and social boundaries. In every city and county, one can find borders of every kind to cross, including those that surround prisons, shelters, the homes of shut-ins, nursing homes, hospitals, and facilities for refugee and immigrant populations. Here are some questions you can ask yourself to help shape and discern a particular outreach activity:

- God, to whom should we go?
- Where are the boundaries that the young people need to cross?
- Where would Christ be found today?
- Where would Jesus take the young people today?
- Who would Jesus want them to know and be touched by?

Step into Service with Care
Once you discern the path the pilgrimage will take, it is necessary to plan the best possible use of the time available so that the experience will have the greatest possible effect on the young people. Following are ten guidelines for broadening and deepening an experience of outreach for young teens:

- Plan it! Match the gifts of the young people and the needs and opportunities for service available in your area.
- Choose it! Look for the margins, that is, opportunities for personal connection that will challenge, question, and clarify a young person’s faith.
- Prepare it! Organize the logistics for the service component of the project, and also be sure to organize prayer, scriptural connections, music, a theme, symbols, reflections, and a rationale for the experience.
- Make it connect! Ensure that you and the young teens meet people in the service area, introduce yourselves and accept introductions, and politely ask questions.
- Learn something! Help the young people collect information about the life experiences, needs, and issues of the people being served.
- Reflect on it! Gather with the young people after the event, to share memories, impressions, prayer, and reflections on the experience and its implications.
- Revisit it! Frequently bring the experience to prayer or sharing at subsequent youth gatherings or liturgies. Encourage the young people to send thank-you cards and plan a return trip to deepen the relationship.
- Value it! Refer often to the issues that the young people encountered in their outreach project.
- Vary it! Ensure that the experience engages the whole person with activities for the hands, thoughtful discussion for the head, and prayer and faith sharing to touch the heart.
- Spread it! Invite the family and the parish to be transformed with you and the young people.

Deepen the Experience
Service becomes prophetic when it challenges the young people to readjust how they think and act and what they believe as Christians. The following questions may be valuable for concluding or deepening an outreach experience:

- Why do you need to serve?
- Why were you there, and who was with you?
- What did you see and hear?
- Who did you meet, and what did you feel like?
- What happened to you as you served?
- How were you served?
- Whose company did you keep, and what did that person or persons teach you?
- What connections did you make?
- What difference did your serving make to you or others, and who will serve tomorrow?
- Why are there suffering and needy people?
- Where did you see the face of Christ?
- What report will you take to God in prayer?

Suggested Strategies

Random-Acts-of-Kindness Cards
Group acts of kindness such as wiping windshields, cleaning alleys, mowing lawns, and sweeping sidewalks can be transformed by leaving reminders of the gift of service. Guide the young people in making cards that inform the recipients of the gift they have been given and invite them to pass on the act of kindness.

Light-the-World and Afterglow Rituals
Ritual and prayer provide a framework for outreach. Give small candles to each individual or service group, and focus on sharing light in a prayerful opening ritual and concluding reflection for the service activity.

Diaries of Young Prophets
Prayer and reflection are deepened when the young people are challenged to write their thoughts, memories, and prayers quietly in a journal. Distribute small blank notebooks and encourage the participants to use them as creative diaries that may later be shared with the parish or school.

Bridge Builders
Outreach provides excellent opportunities for the young people to span social, religious, and ethnic divides. Help your group connect with a church or youth group of a different denomination or with young people from different economic neighborhoods, in order to transform your outreach into justice building.

Prophetic Profiles
Service activities are transformed into experiences of justice when a relationship is formed. Suggest that young people who are active at social service agencies such as soup kitchens, shelters, and hospitals develop their relationships with staff and clients by interviewing them and sharing their stories in youth newsletters, bulletins, and Catholic papers.

Bread of Life
Sharing food is an important symbol for service and outreach. Rather than simply asking the young people to serve a meal at a community kitchen, deepen the experience by inviting them to share the meal. Also consider encouraging them to contribute to the meal by baking bread to share.

Prophetic Postcards
The young people can become prophets by inviting others to share in their outreach. Help them to create postcards from photographs of service activities, and to use the cards to invite other young people and adults to join them in serving others.

Scriptural Connections
- Joel 2:28 (I will pour out my spirit on everyone so that they will proclaim my message.)
- Matt. 20:26–28 (If a person wants to be great, that person must be the servant of the rest.)
- John 12:26 (Whoever wants to serve me must follow me.)
- Gal. 5:13 (Serve one another in love.)

June 5, 2011
Matthew 28:16-20

Opening Prayer
Jesus, on a mountaintop in Galilee you promised your disciples that you would be with your Church always. Give us the eyes of faith to see your presence in our world each and every day of our lives. Amen.

Context Connection
This Sunday's Gospel, in observance of the feast of the Ascension of Jesus, concludes the Gospel of Matthew. In Matthew's account of the Resurrection (which was the Gospel reading for the Easter Vigil), Jesus rises from the dead on Easter morning and greets the women who have come to see the tomb (28:1-10). Jesus instructs the women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee, to the predetermined place on a mountain. The disciples leave Jerusalem immediately and travel to Galilee. Matthew's Gospel differs from John's Gospel (which we have been reading since Easter) in that John's Gospel has many post-Resurrection appearances of Jesus. Matthew's account also differs from the one found in the Acts of the Apostles, which states that Jesus ascended into heaven forty days after the Resurrection (Acts 1:3), from Mount Olivet (Acts 1:12) near Jerusalem.

The conclusion of Matthew's Gospel makes three profound statements about the authority of Jesus, the commission of the disciples, and the promise of Jesus's abiding presence. The encounter of Jesus on the mountain in Galilee, according to Matthew, was the disciples' first experience of the risen Jesus. Some embraced him, "when they saw him, they worshiped him," whereas other disciples were apprehensive, "some doubted" (28:17). In this instance it is Jesus who comes to the disciples, whereas in other parts of Matthew it is the disciples who come to Jesus. Jesus shares with the disciples a profound truth about himself: "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me" (28:18). The risen Jesus has been given supreme authority over the universe, all power in heaven and on earth, by his heavenly Father because of his obedience--even unto death.

Based on his universal power, Jesus then commissions the disciples to carry on his work here on earth: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you" (28:19-20). Everyone is invited to be disciples of Jesus Christ, not just the Jews. The words Jesus used when he commissioned the disciples and told them to baptize all nations are the same words used in Baptism today.

Finally, Jesus promises that he will always be with his followers: "Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age" (28:20). This last verse recalls verse 23 in chapter one of Matthew: "'Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,' which means, 'God is with us.'" Jesus's promise to be continuously present to the disciples in every generation brings to fulfillment Jesus's name Emmanuel--God is always with us. The Spirit of God will guide and protect the Church at all times.

Tradition Connection
The feast of the Ascension of the Lord celebrates what we are and will be as the Church. The focus is on Jesus's presence, through the Holy Spirit in the midst of the Church, rather than on Jesus's departure and return to the Father. The risen Jesus is no longer limited by space or time. Jesus returns to the Father so that he can be present through the Holy Spirit and in the sacraments.

The mandate of the Church, which is missionary in nature, is based on these words of Jesus: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations" (28:19). The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:
"The Church on earth is by her nature missionary since, according to the plan of the Father, she has as her origin the mission of the Son and the Holy Spirit."1 The ultimate purpose of mission is none other than to make men share in the communion between the Father and the Son in their Spirit of love.2 (paragraph 850)
It is the Holy Spirit that guides and directs the Church on her missionary path. This mission unfolds as each member of the Church gives witness to this mission through the witness of his or her life:
All members of the Church share in this mission, though in various ways. "The Christian vocation is, of its nature, a vocation to the apostolate as well." Indeed, we call an apostolate "every activity of the Mystical Body" that aims "to spread the Kingdom of Christ over all the earth."3 (Catechism, paragraph 863)
The purpose of the Christian vocation, affirmed in Baptism, is to assist God in the plan of salvation. God desires to save all people and provides us with the strength and the enthusiasm to carry out God's plan:
It is from God's love for all men that the Church in every age receives both the obligation and the vigor of her missionary dynamism, "for the love of Christ urges us on."4 Indeed, God "desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth;"5 that is, God wills the salvation of everyone through the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is found in the truth. (Catechism, paragraph 851)
Therefore, at the close of every Mass, the presider commissions those in attendance to go forth to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ in the world. The assembly responds in thanksgiving for the opportunity to do so.

Wisdom Connection
Matthew's community was most likely a group of Christian converts from Judaism. Perhaps some members of the community wished to be exclusive rather than inclusive, making it difficult for non-Jews to convert to Christianity and join their community. Matthew, in a dynamic way, presents the risen Jesus as the true Messiah that has been given complete authority over heaven and earth. It is this glorified Jesus that declares that his salvation is for all people--Jew and Gentile alike. In fact, Jesus commands his disciples to go forth and make disciples of all nations. Jesus's discipleship is one of inclusion not exclusion.

The Church is presented with the same challenge today. How can we spread the Good News of Jesus Christ to all peoples everywhere? We are called to be evangelizers by our Baptism. It is our Christian vocation to be focused outward and to share the salvation of Jesus Christ with all nations. We have such good news that everyone deserves to hear it and to encounter Jesus, the Christ.

Acknowledgments
The scriptural quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Catholic Edition. Copyright © 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

The quotations labeled Catechism are from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America. Copyright © 1994 by the United States Catholic Conference, Inc.--Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.

The Lord's Prayer is taken from Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers. Copyright © 1988 by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Inc., Washington, DC. All rights reserved.

Endnotes Cited in Quotations from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
1. Ad gentes 2.
2. Cf. John Paul II, Roman Missal 23.
3. Apostolicam actuositatem 2.
4. 2 Corinthians 5:14; cf. Apostolicam actuositatem 6; Roman Missal 11.
5. 1 Timothy 2:4.

June 1 is the memorial for Saint Justin Martyr. Saint Justin was a philosopher in early second-century Rome.

Through the witness of Christians and the reading of Scripture, he converted to Christianity and became an active defender of the faith. He was beheaded for his Christian beliefs in AD 165. He is recognized as the first Christian philosopher.

For more information on Saint Justin Martyr, go to http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-justin-martyr/.