Well, thanks so much for the invitation to speak today, to the NIH for organizing the meeting and especially to Lita and Owen for putting together such a really interesting agenda for the next few days. So I'll talk a bit today about high-throughput functional analysis methods and techniques for the human microbiome, focusing to a large degree on sequencing-based methods such as metagenomics and metatranscriptomics, and then touching a small amount on other high-throughput methods such as Janet was covering earlier. Hopefully, there we are. So I think the question that functional analysis methods really start to address for the microbiome is what the underlying biomolecular networks are that are dictating or causing the emergent phenotypes that we've been seeing today and for the next few days that manifest in the microbiome as a microbial community and in the host as human health and disease. And a nice parallel that I often draw between the microbiome with the microbiome, excuse me, is with the last several decades worth of cancer research where we've really built up a nice understanding of the detailed interactions between genes and gene products that drive emergent phenotypes in cancer. This is important in the microbiome for one because it links our translational applications back to basic biology. We have a long history in microbiology of really in-depth understanding of microbial metabolic networks and regulatory networks, which we have not yet reached for microbial communities and host interactions. But also this is important because it identifies actionable targets for, say, molecular therapy in the microbiome, which is hopefully something that we'll be reaching soon. If you think again about cancer, we wouldn't have personalized precision molecular targets such as, say, our hit by Gleevec or Heceptin without this deep understanding of individualized underlying regulatory and molecular networks. So if we want to reach this level of understanding for the microbiome, we need to build up our set of tools and our suite of analysis methods and, of course, our sets of experimental designs and results in order to take advantage not just of structural understanding of the composition of the microbiome but of its functional potential and functional activity in health and disease. So a quick overview of sort of the state of the field right now in terms of analysis methods, specifically focusing on shotgun sequencing approaches such as metagenomics and metatranscriptomics. Of course, this type of data can provide information about taxonomy and phylogeny, the structure and composition of a community, just like 16 as amplicon sequencing would. And it's worth calling out that due to that nice slide that we saw this morning, the rapid decrease of sequencing costs have brought the cost of a typical, say, metagenomic assay down to only about three to eight times the cost of an amplicon survey. So we're getting to the point where there's not a large price differential or effort differential between the two types of assessments of the microbiome. And, of course, you get not only structural information about a microbial community from such an approach, but also information about things like functional potential or functional activity if you're tackling sequencing in RNA to look at a community by metatranscriptomics as well. And both of these are areas where there's now robust suites of tools for assessing who's there from shotgun sequencing data, for assessing which genes or pathways are active from shotgun metatranscriptomic data. And a third area that's fairly distinct from either of these that started to be investigated using these sorts of high-throughput sequencing approaches is comparative genomics within microbial communities within an individual, between body sites within an individual, or within the communities across many individuals in a human population. It's worth mentioning that all of these approaches can be tackled with or without metagenomic assembly, putting back together large contigs or whole genomes from shotgun sequencing data. So, and again, this is a very rapidly changing field. Methodologically, you'll see all the dates on these papers are within the past year now. And it's already had a number of really nice successes of pulling genomes out of metagenomes. It integrates very well with single-cell sequencing, which provides another complementary high-throughput tool for a lot of these approaches. And again, can be performed upstream or not of some of these other downstream analysis tasks. So, to provide some background on how some of these analysis methods work, I'll talk very briefly about one of the tools that we worked on for specifically taxonomic profiling from shotgun metagenomic data during the Human Microbiome Project. And I'll use a few examples from the HMP during the talk today. Metaflan is a system that specifically leverages the thousands of microbial isolate genomes that are also now becoming available in order to optimize taxonomic profiling of metagenomes. So, just like 16S say uses a single marker gene that acts as a microbial name tag, amplifies that and uses it to count up which microbes are there. Metaflan catalogs a very large number of unique marker genes, typically several hundred per microbial clade, where a clade can be anything from a species or a subspecies on up to a genus or family or whole phylum. By pre-computing a catalog of many unique marker sequences, we can get much more precise and robust identification of which organisms are present than you typically do from 16S sequencing. It's tough but not impossible to get say species level identification from 16S sequences. It's very easy to get species or subspecies or we'll see later strain level identification from shotgun sequencing data. So Metaflan uses this pre-computed information to very rapidly within say minutes per sample per metagenome identify the relative abundances of which organisms are there. And to give you some idea of how this really takes advantage of the thousands of microbial isolate genomes that are available, a year ago we had just over 3,000 finished and draft bacterial and archaeal genomes in order to put this system together. These represented together about 2 million total marker genes, each of these is a microbial orph family, and we kept about the 400,000 most informative ones. Again, this represents 2 to 300 markers per species. So several hundred times the robustness of a single marker gene. We're working on updates now that incorporate almost 9,000 genomes. So this is a tripling in the number of available microbial genomes in one year. It gives you some idea of the growth of microbial genome sequence in addition to metagenomes. And of course something I can't emphasize enough is the fact that shotgun sequencing approaches such as metagenomics or metatranscriptomics really do give access to all four groups of microbes that are typically of interest in the microbiome. We've heard a great deal about viral sequencing already this morning and I'll give a couple eukaryotic examples later today. This brings our available gene pool up to about 5.5 million total families, boiled down from a total of 12 million microbial genes in reference genomes. And we heard this morning again we have a pool of 8 million that we're working from in the human microbiome as well. So there's a tremendous amount of reference and metagenomic data to combine in these sorts of new analysis approaches. What this allows us to do is very quickly and easily assess which species or subspecies are present in hundreds or thousands of metagenomes, assess their relative abundances, meta-analyze together very large data sets. This is an example combining about 120 individuals from the HMP with another hundred individual gut metagenomes from Metahed. We can see if you have very good eyes. The Privatelacopry example that Dan mentioned is right on the bottom row there. And of course we can perform the same kind of taxonomic profiling for known viruses using viral genomes to identify markers in either DNA or RNA sequencing data. So I won't talk in a great deal of depth about the HMP specifically today but I do want to emphasize that one of the nice aspects of the project was the way in which it integrated large-scale shotgun sequencing metagenomics with very large-scale Amplicon profiling and 16S data. So that by putting those two things together in this population and surveying individuals over time we now have a nice base of about 1,500 individual microbial genomes that were detected at significant levels across the HMP population. Their phylogenetic relationships, their prevalence in this healthy population across seven different body sites in this particular example, their relative abundances and their pathogenic potential in this particular case, all of which can be visualized and used to summarize the 3.5 terabases of sequencing that were introduced so well this morning. So those are some examples of identifying microbes specifically using shotgun sequencing approaches but I said I'd talk about function and tying together which microbes are present with the kinds of genes and pathways that they're carrying and carrying out in the microbiome. So we've seen this example a couple times today in which when we view the variation at the genus level or in this case at the whole phylum level from person to person in the microbiome it's very high. Even in health and the absence of obvious disease perturbation we range from very high loads of specific phyla on the gut to very low loads. Despite this there seems to be a maintenance of a distribution of microbial pathways that is habitat specific. There's a set, and again summarized at a high level, there's a set of pathways that are maintained stably by different microbes and different individuals that are habitat adapted. And as David mentioned this morning I'll talk about that in a little bit. I again want to give a half slide summary of the kinds of methods by which that we currently have to detect genes and pathways specifically in a metagenome or a metatranscriptome for the human microbiome. So these of course also rely on taking advantage of the very large catalog of available microbial genomes and in this case open reading frames by starting with that as a reference database and comparing it to a characterized amino acid sequence database of interest. So if you're interested in fishing out say carbohydrate active enzymes from the human microbiome or antibiotic resistance proteins you can start by identifying gene family or clustering excuse me gene families of interest within antibiotic resistance proteins or carbohydrate active enzymes or your favorite amino acid sequences of interest comparing these to a reference database to identify any non-unique sequences. So screen out any areas of a gene or protein family that do not uniquely identify that particular functionality. So the system that I'm describing shortbread catalogs a small number of optimized sequence markers for functional gene product families just like we saw a few slides ago where Metaflan's cataloging sequence markers for taxonomic clades. Here we're looking for sequence markers that can be used to quickly and accurately identify functional gene families and get this sort of overview of habitat specific functionality in the human microbiome that David mentioned this morning. So as he pointed out there's a great deal of variability excuse me well there's a great deal of stability excuse me within an individual within a habitat within the human microbiome there's a great deal of variability between habitats in which microbial processes are enriched or depleted in order to adapt to the community to that particular habitat which processes are selected for various of course from habitat to habitat. So this is one high level way of looking at that in which each dot around the outside of the circle represents a single metabolic module in this case from the keg catalog and I'll talk about that in a little bit. It's colored if it is significantly enriched in at least one body site and it turns out that about two-thirds of the pathways that we had to analyze in the HMP were enriched or depleted among the seven habitats where we assessed them there. However it was very rare to entirely lose a process from the community metagenome so most processes were core less than 10% were actually lost from the metagenome in any particular body site or individual and you can contrast this to no microbes meeting that level of cornice or stability between individuals or certainly between body habitats in the human microbiome. So this suggests a model in which our metagenomes are shared despite variability in which microbes are carrying those particular genes and processes. They're differentially regulated in a way by enriching or depleting metagenomic abundance within particular habitats and although I won't show a lot of transcriptomic data today they are again personalized with individuals just like our own genomes by differential regulation, differential transcription from person to person at a much more rapid time scale than the abundance changes metagenomically. And again, I mentioned this already, most processes are differentially metagenomically abundant even when they are not lost from the metagenome. So to show a couple of examples of what this looks like in terms of specific data again from the HMP, this is an example of sulfate transport. Each of these dots are an individual. The y-axis here is a metagenomic, again not transcriptomic in this case, but metagenomic abundance. And you can see this is a process that is carried by the communities at almost every body site. It's enriched throughout the GI tract but rarely have ever lost entirely from the metagenome. A counter example to this, one of the rare cases in which a pathway can't be detected even in particular metagenome at our particular limit of detection comes from this interesting example, the complex one, NADHD hydrogenase. This is a uniquely eukaryotic pathway, it's a mitochondrial complex actually. This is detected almost uniquely in the body sites where there is a significant fungal presence on the skin and the nose and in the four individuals here among the HMP's healthy cohort in which we also detected taxonomically a presence of Candida albicans in the vaginal microbiome. So again, I showed a couple of viral examples earlier. We can pick up eukaryotic function here. It's important to emphasize that these types of functional approaches, shotgun sequencing, do pick up all of those different domains of life. So there are limitations though of course. A big one being that any catalog that we currently have access to, keg being one example, metasite being another, has been developed over years or decades worth of individual single microbe metabolism typically, not taking into account either the specific microbes that occur in the human microbiome, the specific processes that occur in habitats of the human microbiome or especially the interactions that only occur among microbes in communities. So there are big gaps in our knowledge of which genes and pathways are active under those circumstances. One initial, some initial work to remedy this that I wanted to highlight today comes from urine races lab, recently of K.U. Leuven, where they've been manually curating a set of pathways that are unique to the gut microbial community and starting to curate genes and the relationships between them that carry out microbial metabolism in different compartments of the gut. So this is one initial step along really curating and organizing our knowledge of which genes work with which other genes, specifically in the human microbiome, but this is an area where there's going to need to be a lot more computational and high throughput work to assemble that knowledge and apply it to the thousands of samples that we now have available, which still really mostly addresses individual organisms' functionality. And as David mentioned this morning, it's very hard to really even define what we mean by whole community functionality or ecological functionality. One way in which we and others have been starting to approach this is by looking for ecological interactions among organisms in the microbiome. We did some work on this again with your room during the Human Microbiome Project in order to identify microbes that co-vary together or co-occur together within body sites and across body sites within individuals. And this proves to be a surprising methodological challenge where I could give a whole separate talk about how hard it is to actually detect this from the kind of measurements we can make today. But you can start to see patterns such as this example where two different groups of streptococcus and violinella species here or streptococcus and aggregate vector species here co-occur across the HMP population in three different oral body sites in this case. Each individual tends to either have this particular pair of microbes or this particular pair of microbes and they do not occur together. In this example on the right, the streptococcus violinella pair has been observed earlier by microscopy to co-occur due to a specific receptor interaction on the cell surface in this case. So this is one example where because of independent functional data we're able to confirm a co-occurrence that we found using high throughput approaches. But for example this example on the left we need additional more specific functional data to identify why it is that these species are co-occurring. So on top of that what the functionality they're contributing to in the whole community sense might be. So to again highlight another recent project that started to address this this time from Ellen and Borenstein's lab in a paper that came out very timely as of last week in order to identify metabolic rather than physical interactions between microbes in a community. They started from a very similar species co-occurrence set and looked for in addition to information from microbial reference genomes again in this case whole cell metabolic reconstructions for individual microbial species. For potentially co-varying pairs of microbes they were then able to identify metabolic products that were or needs that would either conflict between pairs of microbes or complement each other suggesting either ecological competition for resources or cooperation for one microbe to provide resources to another starting to identify mechanisms by which functionality might be contributed to the whole community by in this case interacting pairs of organisms. So we heard a lot in Janet's talk about multiomics but I felt I'd be remiss to give a talk about function in the microbiome without at least mentioning some of the other ways in which this could be applied outside of shotgun sequencing approaches which of course focus on giving us genomes, genes, variants, catalogs of which microbes are there all the things I just talked about in addition to if you're lucky shotgun RNA sequencing or metatranscriptomics which will tell us a bit more about transcriptional regulation and gene expression. These are both very microbially focused assays they don't tell us independently about protein activity which again we just heard a lot about but even then we don't necessarily know from this type of high throughput information which extracellular small molecules are being used say for signaling or might serve as metabolic products or nutrient needs for intake as we might get from metabolomics and most of these assays don't tell us explicitly about the host which has its own genome, its own transcriptional regulation, its own proteins and of course all of these differ by cell type they differ by biogeography just as do the species and strains and bio molecular activity that we can measure in the microbes themselves this hasn't started to touch yet on more exotic mechanisms of regulation we heard a little bit about viral epigenetics today but I don't think we'll hear a lot about either host epigenetics or microbial epigenetics yet in the microbiome and all of these are the types of information that we'll really need to get functional models in the sense that we have for single model organisms for example in signaling pathways and regulatory pathways and metabolic pathways that have been built up over years or decades of work again in some of these model organisms so to give just a few vignettes of how we can start integrating different types of multiomic data to get a better sense of functionality in the microbiome I've mentioned a few times metatranscriptomics and this really is starting to be a more accessible functional data type you can run this alongside of shotgun DNA sequencing fairly easily now and although there is a great deal of basal transcriptional activity in the gut it turns out this is from a study we did of the gut metatranscriptome in which about 50% of the metagenome was not a differentially regulated it was basally transcribed there are of course exceptions to this this is one we've highlighted here where a low abundance organisms the methanobrevibacter over transcribed by about 100 fold specifically the methanogenesis pathways here and we know both the functionality and the organism responsible for it and they're very characteristically over transcribing this particular set of pathways we heard a lot earlier about metabolic profiling differentiating subtypes with an IBD I don't think I'll go into that very much and of course that's with Janet and Romnick Xavier at MGH and the Broad and we've had several projects with Romnick now looking at the host's functional contribution often specifically an IBD and I'll talk about that on the next slide we have a couple of examples where we've been starting to look at the interaction of host transcription with microbial presence, absence, and transcriptional activity in inflammation, excuse me, in pouchitis associated inflammation and then we heard a lot from Ruth this morning about the longer term host genetic contribution to disease risk and composition of the microbiome and one comment I do want to make on, again, functional data and its contribution to our understanding of microbiome structure as well is that there have been a couple comments made today about the uniqueness of the microbiome or variability of the microbiome which is something that we've found more tractable and easier to understand again by looking at it with strain level shotgun data in this case as far as uniquely and stably identifying an individual from their microbiome composition over time it's easy to see that there are differences among individuals based on amplicon profiling but differences do not equate to uniqueness they don't equate to sufficient stability to identify someone over time again this is an area where I could give a whole separate talk but it's turned out for us at least to be very difficult to stably identify someone over an 8 to 12 month time period using amplicon sequencing data but much easier to identify them using shotgun sequencing strain level optimized markers which can reach up to about a 75% level of accuracy over that year or so time period for unexposed areas like the gut and of course this drops as we saw in the example of strain level persistence this morning in microbial habitats that are more exposed to disruption so to wrap up with an example of how these functional analysis techniques can be combined in an application in human health I'll talk a little bit about IBD and we heard a lot about it earlier in Janet's talk it's a condition with a really rich history now of investigation of the involvement of the microbiome in Crohn's and Coletas there were some good early indications that the ecology of the gut microbiome was disrupted in IBD and over time this has evolved into an understanding of specific clades that might be involved how they might vary between IBD sub-tet sets and one of the things that I like about Crohn's and Coletas is an example of a microbiome-linked health condition is that it really parallels the kind of models that we built up from genetics there are Mendelian genetic diseases in which we know there's one gene of large effect involved and there are complex genetic disorders like IBD where many genes of individually low effect are involved the microbiome or microbiology generally provides a nice parallel in which infectious diseases may have one or microorganism of individually large effect involved but IBD remains a complex disease here in which there seem to be the whole community is involved or many microbes are involved of individually a small effect so we wanted to understand how these structural changes in IBD were really involved with the disease itself not with other environmental perturbations that might be going on like disease treatment and which of them might be functional, again what might be the processes or pathways of deriving these differences rather than the overall ecology of the resulting differences so I'm running out of time, I won't get into a lot of depth of this particular study we set out to answer these questions in a cohort of about 200, a pair of cohorts totaling about 200 individuals with Romney Xavier and Bruce Sands in which if I start from an overview of the differences between subjects in terms of their microbial composition it's easy to see that the different different IBD subtypes in this particular case were not the major driving factor in differences in microbial community structure and because we had really nice metadata for these particular cohorts we could unravel which of these other environmental and treatment effects were distinguishing microbial community composition among these subjects as opposed to disease and again as opposed to microbial functional differences and I think Rob will talk a good bit more later about some of the effects that exogenous factors such as sample handling and treatment effects can have on our measurements of microbial community structure what I'll wrap up with instead though is what we were able to determine about microbial function in these conditions in this particular case using not a functional analysis excuse me not a functional measurement but a functional analysis method called PyCrust that we developed in order to make general inferences about community function beginning just with composition or in this case 16S sequencing data so even if you just have Amplicon profiling you can still make an educated guess about microbial community function and the basic summary of the process is again by taking advantage of those isolate genomes when we measure a community using 16S sequencing sometimes when we're lucky we know exactly the or very close relative of the microbe that we detect by Amplicon sequencing in our reference genome catalog other times we have a nearby relative or in the worst case scenario we're able to take advantage of many genomes that we have available from isolate sequences perform an ancestral state reconstruction and make an educated guess with known confidence intervals about the gene content of each microbe that we observe by 16S sequencing by doing this for the entire microbial tree of life and then multiplying our taxon abundances by their putative or known gene content we can get a good guess as to the virtual metagenome or the abundances of genes in a microbial community beginning from just this phylogenetic information and we've performed a wide range of validations on this process in general it's easy quote easy to get a good correlation between 16S based predicted abundances of microbial genes and measured abundances of those genes in validation data where we have paired 16S and shotgun data sets for the same samples and we perform these validations on hundreds of such paired examples from the human microbiome project where we tend to achieve very high correlations in our predicted versus measured abundances and carried these out in other communities as well where we have generally lower reference genome coverage and I'm keeping an eye on the time, thanks so to wrap up one can recover general community function again this is just a prediction and we're able to determine this way that there are over six times as many processes disrupted in IBD as microbes I won't go into the details again but this allows us to start assembling pathway maps for the whole community specifically as they are perturbed in a dysbiotic state such as Crohn's and Colitis so some of the gaps that we need to close I think to start making our next steps in functional analysis of the microbiome start with tools to make these analyses really easy and these can span a wide range of modalities as I mentioned earlier systematic and cross species protein function and pathway cataloging quantitative models that go from single organisms to whole community interactions metabolism signaling and regulation and really better identification of host microbe and microbe microbe interaction mechanisms we've heard about this earlier today and I'm sure we'll hear more over the next few days we haven't heard a lot yet about temporarily resolved microbiobiography where are these bugs when so that they can interact with each other and we haven't heard much yet about in vitro models that allow us to do controlled experiments on functionality in systems made to parallel the human microbiome and finally a point that I really didn't talk about today at all but which is just as important as functional profiling is maintaining high standards for both the experimental protocols and the analysis protocols that we use on these complex high throughput data in order to ensure reproducibility and translational quality of the results so that's my last slide I want to thank the folks in my lab who worked on these examples are collaborators that I mentioned and one who I haven't yet and they've been central to almost all of these studies as well as the human microbiome project and our funders including the NIH thanks so much Thank you Dr. Hattenhauer do we have one question? I didn't expect to get time for it Yeah, you don't Okay, so thank you all of the speakers we're gonna have a break until 3.30 when we'll start prompt again, 3.30 and please visit on the right corner our sponsors for today's meeting they are excited to have questions from you


here. Fascinating article in the Athletic. Alright, so I subscribe to the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, the Athletic, Apple's News, Apple News Plus. Alright, I do that for you to give you the latest and greatest. Alright, so here in the Athletic, alright, how have the Tennessee Titans out-reformed odds-makers pre-season expectations every year under Headcurch Mike Vrable? And you're saying to me, 40, how do the Titans do it? And I'm here to tell you that they are New England 2.0, right? And the NFL's fifth-best record since Mike Vrable became Headcurch in 2018. So some coaches call the plays not Mike Vrable. He coaches the entire team, he focuses on gaining competitive edges in critical moments. So do you want to win? Everyone wants to win, but how far are you willing to go to win? Are you willing to push the rules, even to go past the rules? For example, in trials, plaintiff attorneys, they usually get paid a percentage of a win. And so they tend to be much more adventurous. They tend to push the rules much more, right? They're not nearly as staid and conservative in their approach as defense attorneys. So Tennessee Titans, remember the defeated New England in the playoffs in Tom Brady's final game with the Patriots in 2019? Okay, so Tennessee was leaving 14-13, it was 6-39 remaining, and they incurred intentional penalties to drain the clock to 4-44 without running a play. So the NFL had to close the loophole after this. Tennessee is one of the games after taking intentional penalties while seeking competitive advantages. So the Titans, more than any other team, known for being better than others, laying on top of offensive players during two-minute situations when the Titans are on defense, slow them down, and for also incurring well-timed injuries to defensive players, which opponents see as buying time for defenders to regroup, which is exactly what it is. So the Titans push the limits of the rules, and that's why they win. So it's not like the Tennessee Titans are known for analytics, but they're known for difference making plays in crucial situations. So under Mike Rable, the Tennessee Titans have led the league in opponents' full starts. Why is that? Why have the Titans drawn more of their opponents into full starts? More of them on field goals, more of them on extra points, more of them on 4-1. More of them when opponents run the fringes of field goal range, more of them inside their own 10-yard line. Why are they so good at drawing full starts when the game is on the line, when it matters most? Because the Tennessee Titans defensive linemen are known for moving subtly or not so subtly, which is illegal for defensive linemen to move in a way that leads the offensive players to making a full start. So the name of this is stemming. That's to draw offensive movement in critical moments. So you've got a nose tackle that aligns in a stance with one knee on the ground, that is the snap near as he raises the knee off the ground, that often triggers movement from the offense, but the nose tackle shifts abruptly with similar results. The Titans are far better than anyone else in the league in doing this. All right, the defensive linemen use aggressive waves, they use arm waves, they use all different sort of subtle movements to draw the offense offside. And coming at you right now from the botanical gardens, the Royal Botanical Gardens here in Sydney. So not very good sportsmanship, but it's helping them win games. So Tennessee, like New England, also realizes that defensive hoarding is really called undefensive linemen. So Tennessee's defensive linemen do a great job hoarding, offensive linemen hold them to maximize the penetration from their pass rush stunts. All right, the Tennessee Titans defensive players also mimic opposing quarterbacks cadences. Every little thing you can think of to get an advantage they have. They work the officials. They grasp the rules, they maximize advantages within the rules. Then they also play basic fundamental football, they run the ball well, they stop the run, they maximize pass efficiency through the use of play action. So it's not that they have a ton of talent, right? They're just physical rough tough players who push the limits of the law. So they have a heavy run game, great play action, and their defensive backfield, right? There's a lot of illegal contact and defensive hoarding. So what's the temperature there? It's 70 degrees right now. So 20 degrees Celsius, 70 degrees Fahrenheit. So New England Patriots also do this. They just hold and hold and hold. That's how they all just slow down, paint and manning, right? Because officials just get tired of calling pass interference. So Pittsburgh Steelers did this against the Dallas Cowboys. So when Dallas Cowboys played the Pittsburgh Steelers into Super Bowls Tom Landry told that the Cowboys don't get into fights with the Steelers because the Steelers are bigger and tougher, rougher than you are. The Cowboys in the 70s under Landry were a finesse team. The Steelers were a brawny team built, you know, with extra steroids. So you'd look at the Steelers offensive line and they were just incredibly cut. Like their physique was just unbelievable.  Because the Steelers were on many more steroids. So Cowboys relied on trickery.   And though the Cowboys played them very tight in both Super Bowls in the 1970s, the Steelers, you know, ended up winning.  They didn't keep within the law. The Pittsburgh Steelers led the way in the illegal use of steroids in the 1970s. And so that's how they were able to win for Super Bowls.  They broke ribs, knocked people out of games. And it's a lot like Tennessee Titans football, a lot like New England's Patriots football. So yeah, it's a beautiful day here at the Royal Botanical Gardens. It's just so nice being able to walk all over Sydney. And I've never once felt fear in Sydney. I've never felt concern. So my mind is not occupied by things like that, fear, concern, worry, and keeping an eye out for Super Predators. So instead my mind can roam free to bring more and more of these amazing insights to my live streams. So I'm not preoccupied by Super Predators in criminals and dangerous situations trying to deer away from unsavory characters. And it's not like New York City or Washington DC or LA or San Francisco. It's just imagine all the people living life in peace. And now you say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. Perhaps one day you'll join us and the world will live as one. So this is right next to the Central Business District. You've got the CBD just behind these trees at half a mile away, the Central Business District of Sydney. I've got the Opera House is that way at half a mile. All right. Concentrated Sydney is just to my left. What is the size of Sydney compared to New York City? So there are about six million people who live in greater Sydney, but I don't think it's as concentrated with people as New York City. Los Angeles is actually more concentrated than New York. And so you don't have 10 people living in an apartment here like in Los Angeles and New York. So you have a lot of people, but there's so many parks. There's so much space and our cathedrals are beautiful cathedrals, beautiful churches, but the real Aussie cathedrals are our beaches. Now beaches are magnificent. And then everywhere you go, there are these great big beautiful well-tended parks. You just don't see any trash, lots of public toilets, no trash, they're very little graffiti. Just see the occasional bum lying on a bench, but they're not causing any disruption. It's just a peaceful easy feeling. Sydney, I know you won't let me down. No migrants hiding in women's restrooms, waiting to assault people. You don't have that in Sydney. This is the lucky country. The hobos, they don't cause problems here. Not that I've seen yet, and he had one person ask me for money and it was a very gentle ask. Oh, I'm riding public transport all around Sydney. Riding light rail buses or the ferry and on average it's costing me 67 American cents a day. I ride the light rail down to circular key, then I take those ferries over to Manly and ride the ferry back and take the light rail back. And at the end of the day I am out one Australian dollar, right, 67 American cents. So are there gang members in Sydney? Yeah, there are the lebos, the Lebanese, right, Lebanese and some Afghans. They tend to dominate the drug trafficking, but there's no legal marijuana. And I'm sure there are people doing illegal drugs here, but I see very little sign up. I haven't smelled that that sickly sweet smell of marijuana since I've been in Australia. That's a giant relief. So I walk through, you know, the busiest streets in Sydney and yeah, I see some bad hombres, right. I see some tough-looking dudes, right, who I would not want to have a run in with, but not bothering civilians. To the extent there's organized crime in Sydney, they rarely bother civilians. Now, there's a lot of entrepreneurship and moderate amount of financial scams in Sydney that are very likely to be introduced to you by an acquaintance, but people by and large are breaking into your home, they're not hoarding you up, they're not sticking a knife in your ribs, they're not shooting you. I hear police helicopters, but they're always monitoring, they're monitoring the oceans, like anyone getting caught in a riptide or something like that. So you'll see signs of the oceans warning about dangerous currents, but I almost never hear sirens. I have this very little sense of panic. So open question for the chat. Why is this Colorado shooting, getting so much attention to shooting Colorado Springs? I remember a few months ago, 50 migrants boiled to death, and that wasn't a top story in the New York Times for five minutes. It's been 48 hours now since the Colorado Springs LGBTQ shooting, and it's still dominating the news. Is it because we've got a sacred group and so their suffering is more important than everyone else's and because the media wants to dispel false stereotypes about the LGBTQ crowd, so he saved a lot of lives. Combat veteran tackled Colorado gunmen, oh yeah because a gun was involved, it can be blamed on MAGA. So the quick actions of retired army major and a drag performer in high heels guys took down the gunman before he reached a crowded patio. So thank god for drag queens in high heels, man. So this guy, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, he's been booked on suspicion of murder and bias motivated crime. So we don't know why he did it. We know this guy is a nutter, but the entire media focus for the last 48 hours was oh my god was this a heat crime. This is a bias motivated crime. God forbid there should be a bias motivated crime. I know in America we've had very serial killers who have assured us that they're not racist, right? They killed a lot of people, but they're not racist. Yeah. What's going on in Idaho, right? That's kind of disturbing, right? We have this Idaho college party house murders of five people were stabbed to death and absolutely no idea who did it. That's a frightening situation. Okay, so 70% of active shooter situations end before the police act, right? The police usually just arrive and quite and quite secure the perimeter of four college kids out of six slaughtered at 4 a.m. I want to want to know what's going on there, but they weren't nice to death. So that makes you think it was something personal. So the police usually don't stop active shooters, right? The police, as we saw at that horrible Texas school shooting, they fumble and bumble around for an hour or so establishing the perimeter. So in this case we had a drag performer stomped on the gunman with high heels. Thank God for those drag queens in high heels, man. They're saving us, keeping America safe. And let's never forget these victims of the LGBTQ club. Like these gay, transgendered individuals who suffered because of American homophobia. So this is a well-known LGBTQ bar that only in recent decades has emerged from a long history of hostility toward LGBTQ communities. And that's never because they did anything wrong. Like it's not because of AIDS, monkey parks, transmission of nasty sexually transmitted diseases. It's not because of impurities in the blood supply and thousands of innocent people dying of of AIDS because they got a tainted blood transfusion. It's not because of anything the LGBTQ community has done wrong. They've just been hated for absolutely no reason whatsoever. But maybe if the media can just bang on about how brave these people were at this club and how the the drag queen stomped on the shooter with her high heels. I think we just get 175 more articles like that. We can finally overcome America's very sad long history of homophobia.


of 14 million new cancer cases in 2012, 2.2 million, 15.4% were attributable to carcinogenic infections. Helicobacter pylori, human papilloma virus, hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus and Epstein-Barr virus were the most important infectious agents worldwide. Caposis succoma was the second largest contributor to the cancer burden in sub-Saharan Africa. This article was authored by Dr Martin Plummer, Ph.D., Kaffirinda Martell, N.D., Jerome Vignette, Master of Science, and others.


So so anyway, I'm your track coordinator. I'm happy to help also just a heads up this This track is in is just in the middle of a little bit of change Because in November our bishops are supposed to we'll see if it happens approve a new Document on youth and young adult ministry and we're going to it's not going to be anything radical You know like oh wait, we should talk to young people, you know like it's all in there You know what we cover is good But we do want to update it with kind of the language and the vision because part of the part of the beauty of Documents like that is it helps everybody in the field have a similar vocabulary and you know vision to work with so We're not exactly sure how that document is going to look but it will be an opportunity for us to update a lot of our videos on on this on the franciscan at home website and Not also to mention. I don't know if we mentioned this already There won't be a Bosco conference next year on campus. I'm not the first person dropping the bomb on that one, okay? Because next year is the Eucharistic Congress and we recognize that many you know a lot of the Eucharistic Congress is focused on church leaders Like yourself and so we didn't want to have any competition to what the bishops were trying to do in Indianapolis We'll actually be very pre Franciscan will be very present at that particular conference So you kind of get like a little Bosco if you end up going to to that conference, okay? So Let's actually just start off with maybe a bigger vision of what we talk about when we mean youth ministry I in addition to doing ministry and speaking at conferences and you know as Petrach mentioned yesterday I was a parish minister for ten years I've worked with a number of different groups such as life team also young life if you're familiar with young life and Even now as a deacon in my parish I'm helping out, you know one of the reasons they sent me there is because I'm at the parish where the pastor is the chaplain of the Catholic High School And so I've gotten to be really involved in that also just having seven kids. It's just a perpetual youth group that's going on Because we just have all their friends over at the house all the time and it's just a real gift to to be a part of all of those things and ministry and stuff like that so But in terms of a bigger vision of ministry I would say that there's there's a there's a way that When we think of youth ministry sometimes we we narrowed the definition too much Which is to say we talk about a youth group or a youth ministry at a parish And I I do think those are very important elements of youth ministry But sometimes I actually just like to refer to it as ministry with youth I find when I'm at like dies diocesan events if I do like a talk on youth ministry I get a bunch of parish youth ministers, but if I do a talk on ministry with youth I get a whole wider range of people and so throughout this track Even though I think maybe one of the defaults is going to be you know ministry in a parish specifically We want to keep casting a wider vision of it which is to say we're talking about ministry with youth Which takes on a lot of different forms. It really needs to be adaptable. You'll hear later in some workshops You know that That stereotype that youth ministry is youth group is really not what the church's vision of ministry with young people It is that being said a youth group can play a very important part in the context of youth ministry And so hopefully as you get through this week You might be able to start expanding your mind a little bit and seeing various different ways Doing ministry with young people Ways to coordinate ministry with young people in different You know elements in the parish or in the diocese and of course We really want to as we get later on in the week it very practical with what are some of those things You know, what does that look like? You know, how might we do that more effectively in today's age? I One of my favorite scriptures is in the gospel of Luke Chapter 3 and it's or chapter 2 rather and it's the finding of Jesus in the temple Each year Jesus his parents went to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover and when he was 12 years old So he's isn't like junior high, right? They didn't have that back then, but you know that that helps us They went up according to festival custom and after they had completed its days as they were returning The boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it Thinking he was in the caravan They journeyed for a day and look for him among their relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him They were turned to Jerusalem to look for him I Have some great sympathy for Mary and Joseph. I don't know how many of you have kids and How many of you have lost a child for a good period of time? Yeah, everyone. Oh, come on I'm not the only one. Thank you for at least remaining there. I mean like for an hour half hour Ten minutes. You've been at Walmart. Come on. Okay. Okay. Yeah, you know what we're talking about Yeah, I That one of the worst was Well, there's two bad moments my oldest son one time we were we were driving I don't know where we're driving but we stopped at a truck stop or a rest stop and you know food stuff like that and then you know we get back on the highway and Suddenly there's a little voice in the back going. Where's John and it's like. Oh, no We forgot a child, you know because we had five at the time and I don't do math I'm really bad at it and of course it was one of those highways. That's like next exit 23 miles You know, it's just this this you know or like flooring it trying to get around he was totally fine He was actually chatting with the bartender and he was having a great time The scariest though, but at least I knew exactly where he was that was totally fine the scariest though I went to I was visiting some friends in Indiana I think we had about six kids at this point So visiting some friends in Indiana and they also had a large family and we saw the movie happy feet remember that movie I hate that movie, but it's another story Probably because of this experience. It's not the movie's fault. So Anyway, I had six kids this these friends of ours had five kids So just a you know gaggle of kids that were around and the movie stops and we get up And I take the boys to the bathroom my wife takes the other kids, you know The girls and some of the other kids to the candy counter I I come out and I recognize that I'm missing a boy Bobby my third son And I think well He's probably with Jenny and I look at Jenny and you know my wife's name and we had this immediate recognition that is Bobby with you No, I thought Bobby was with you. Okay. Don't panic. You know just take some breaths. I'm sure he's around here somewhere He was not around anywhere. I run back into the theater. He's not there now It's like freak out level starts happening. It's felt like an eternity It's probably ten minutes at most, but it was a long long ten minutes and then finally He comes in an adult brings him in through the front door I guess what happened was in the darkness. He just got up and he thought he was with another family or with our family But they just like walked out You know those doors at the back of movie theaters that don't have door knobs on them You know like the one Jesus knocks to get into our heart. So Yeah, so he was just standing out. He was probably six He was standing out in the parking lot just sobbing, you know, because and again I know isn't this and we're in Indiana like he has no idea where he is and we're like running around You know the the polyester vest kids are like, you know code seven code seven so when we saw him it was just this absolute joy and It was yeah, it's just nothing nothing like finding a lost kid so I can't imagine the anxiety that Mary and Joseph had in Losing Jesus for three days like that is that's just craziness. I mean it's just absolute craziness now to soften the blow of you know Not thinking them irresponsible parents The Jesus was 12 at the time and 12 was the age of bar mitzvah it was the age of becoming a man and when communities used to caravan down to Down to Jerusalem the men would walk together and then the women and children would walk together So as a kid at that age, he would be moving from the women and children group to the man group That was present and so it was really easy for Joseph to think oh Jesus is so kind He's probably doing his last walk with the women and children and Mary's thinking Oh my little boy's grown up and he's doing his first walk with the men And so it's only a day because they're not walking with each other at the end of the day of traveling All the groups get together and there's this Wait, you don't have Jesus. I thought you know, oh my gosh, right? You know, and it's it's looking really really bad and I would I would probably say of the two of them Joseph was probably more stressed out right because You know in the holy family, you know If you've got a holy family of the incarnate word in the immaculate conception and something goes wrong It's probably on you Joseph, you know like like God's a father's like like Joseph. You literally had one job You know just just don't lose that kid So then it takes them a whole day, you know, but you know, they can't travel at night because it's not safe So then they have to you know, they have to get up in the morning and they they travel a whole day back to Jerusalem And now it's the next day and they're searching Jerusalem. They're looking at you know all the acquaintances all the places they go and They finally find him praise God After three days, this is that third day they find him in the temple Sitting in the midst of teachers listening to them and asking them question And all who heard them were astounded at his understanding and at his answers When his parents saw him they were astonished and his mother said to him son Why have you done this to us?  My mom used to say stuff like that like why have you done this to us, right? Joseph says nothing. Maybe Luke just edited that out for kindness and And and Jesus said to them, why were you looking for me? Do you not know that I must be in my father's house? But they didn't understand what he said to them He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them And his mother kept all these things in her heart and Jesus advanced in wisdom and age in favor before God and man I'm I find this gospel story to be so beautiful because it's a story of Jesus as an adolescent and What a gift that you know, we hear him as a baby and then we get him when he's 30 But the gospel of Luke just shares with us this one beautiful story of something that happened when he was 12 years old And what I think is amazing is that Jesus truly Was an adolescent, you know, he allowed himself to be an Adolescent he all stages of life, but particularly being 12 I think of all the ages that I'd like to go back to 12 and 13 would be at the very low end Of the list, you know, like seven would be cool 20 would be cool 13 No, please never never again, and it's good to understand a little bit of Christology to really grasp what Jesus does for us.  He doesn't just zip on a human suit He genuinely becomes human and retains his Godhead. That's that's part of the mystery the beautiful mystery of his life He takes on our human nature and sometimes people don't get this that actually our intellect and our will resides in our human nature So you could say that Jesus had two intellects a divine intellect and a human intellect He also had two wills a divine will and a human will and This understanding this is important because it helps us understand some of the gospel moments Like for example when Jesus is in the garden and he says father not my will But your will be done. Well, the your will is the divine will but the my will is the human will and It's so beautiful that Jesus does not ask us to do anything that he didn't do himself Isn't the challenge of our human life to surrender our will to the divine will and so he himself did that Also just in his humanity. He had this human intellect and human will That's why the scriptures say he advances in wisdom at the end of that, you know Like well, how could God advance in wisdom? Well, it's referring to his his humanity and He didn't cheat that's what that's what's incredible. I would have cheated all the time like as a baby You know, he wasn't speaking 12 languages You know, he wasn't explaining to Mary how she needs to do the diaper better, right? Like he allowed himself in his humility to really embrace the human condition He had to learn how to walk and he probably fell a few times doing it He had to learn how to speak. He had to learn how to write. He allowed the human brain as it was to just grow and function and that meant that he allowed himself to be an Adolescent and I think there's nothing more adolescents a great example of adolescent is that when Mary When Mary says why have you done this to us? You've been looking for us with great anxiety and Jesus says Well, why were you looking for me? Like isn't that a total teenage response was the problem, you know, like why are you so stressed about this, right? Now Jesus didn't sin. He didn't do anything, you know sinful in that sense But part of humanity is learning from our mistakes not all mistakes are sinful, right as he learned to speak He probably didn't form every word exactly correct the first time and he has to learn right So he's actually learning what it means to be in a family, which is part of the role of adolescents like maybe you should just Give your parents a heads up, you know, if you're gonna stay behind and they're all gonna keep pilgrimage, right? Like again, no sin involved just Adolescence, you know, how many times do you talk to a teen and you want to say what were you thinking and they just weren't Because their brain is still forming, right? You know, so Jesus seemed to think this was a wonderful idea to hang out in the temple for a while And the parents obviously had a bit of a different impression of that You know, it's fascinating, isn't it that the one story that we get of Jesus as a teenager is Filled with miscommunication Anxiety worry, right? That's what happens with teenagers and families You know everything seems cool, and then they become teenagers and suddenly the rules have all changed on us And if that's how it is again in a family with the incarnate word the immaculate conception and the terror of demons How much more so is it with the young people that we minister to or those that are in our own families? But there's two things I want to draw from this scripture as we lead into this idea of our own spirituality Like what is the spirituality that we really need to embrace? In terms of doing ministry with young people and I would I would say there's there's two things to look at There's Mary and there's Jesus The first is Mary To have her heart for young people I Mean she she did this with great anxiety You know, I mean I imagine Joseph was like look we just have to go to bed now Like we can't you know like she probably wanted to immediately go back to Jerusalem and Joseph the protectors being like look We just wait till the Sun comes up, you know, you know how moms are, you know And and to have that heart that passion for young people lost young people I pray that the church would be inspired by this passion overall that we would have a greater recognition of the lost young people in Our parishes in our country in our world And I don't need to preach to the choir here The reason you signed up to do this track is because you have that heart as well and praise God for that I'm always grateful that you know the heart of Jesus the heart of the father is so big I couldn't handle all of it, but I'm really glad he gave me a little piece of his heart for young people and I keep asking the Lord to just keep that part on fire that I would have a passion for young people that our church Would have a passion for young people We often hear laments about you know young people leaving the church in high numbers But sometimes I feel like when at least in the way it sounds that Sometimes we're more worried about how that's going to affect us than affect them Like young people are leaving the church and now they're gonna close my parish And sometimes we can be kind of selfish in thinking, you know, oh, that's gonna be such a problem for us But the real problem is for them. They do not know Jesus who is the way the truth and the life You know Jesus said the thief comes to steal kill and destroy I've come that you might have life to the full They're not living that fullness of life And it's really important that you know and Mary's heart for her children that we would have that same zeal that same enthusiasm that same Anxious concern for the young people in our own parish or whoever they've put into our lives and The other image is just Jesus himself as a young person You know when I was in ministry and I still recall this and in my office I have a picture of Joseph and Jesus and Jesus is a teenager. It's a really cool picture It's hard to find good pictures of Jesus as a teenager There's a lot of baby Jesus and then there's a lot of you know, 30 Jesus But there's very few teen Jesus at least the ones that aren't like too weird Even the story of Jesus is teaching in the temple, you know There's a there's a few of them out there where it's like Jesus is in the temple And he's like saying something really inspiring and the rabbis are like dang, you know, you're really smart, right? But listen to actually what the scriptures say about what Jesus was doing He was sitting in the midst of the teachers listening to them and asking them questions So Jesus wasn't lecturing the rabbis at this Right and sometimes I see a picture. I'm like, I don't think that's what the gospel says He wasn't lecturing rabbis. He was listening to them He loved the Lord. He loved the faith and he wanted to learn more about that So being in the context of the temple, he was just eating this up. This was awesome Isn't again wait. God is learning from us. What is going on? What is going on? That is the humility the humility of God And yes, they were amazed at his replies and how they answered How they answered his questions and their understanding.  Let him bless you Because when you can start seeing Jesus as a teenager You'll be able to more You know fruitfully see Jesus in teenagers And you're going to be able to help teenagers see Jesus in themselves That that a teenager doesn't need to grow up To become an adult to be holy That holiness is accessible to them right where they are That Jesus sanctified all parts of the human condition And that includes adolescents You know and again, thank you st. Luke for sharing with us that beautiful story and that insight Into jesus as a teenager. He didn't cheat. He embraced it fully One of the documents that we're going to keep referring to throughout your Throughout the tracks is a beautiful document written by pope francis called christus vivis Which is in english christ is alive And i don't know if you've read that or not. How many of you have read that document? Okay, just a handful of you so christus vivis Is a It's gosh You just need to read it. It's really really amazing. So a number of years ago. I think 2018 Uh pope francis called a synod And he titled it youth faith and vocational discernment And he did something somewhat unusual which isn't unusual for francis to do something unusual But he actually did a Pre-synod where he gathered together a few hundred young people from around the world And listened and talked to them now by young people it was youth what we would call youth and young adults So in europe and also in other cultures You know hoveness would be 16 to 30 And so that's actually a more common world definition of when you have a young person Most people in the world think of somebody between 16 and 30 In the united states, it's a little weird Because we're the united states. So we're a little weird But we usually break off 12 to 18 year olds and we refer to them as youth and then 18 to At one point it was like 39, but that's a little crazy 30s. Let's just say 30s, which could include 39 As young adults And the there's the reason we do that in the united states is is mainly because of our legal system That at the age of 18 One become you know goes from being a minor to being a legal adult And so a lot of the legal stuff makes it You know more conducive just to kind of do the 12 to 18 Also in our country We have a very established secondary school system Where you know, we have young people in A junior high and then a high school that goes right up until you're 18 years old So just part of our school system and legal system and culture in the united states made 18 seemingly be a really good marker denoter of Youth and young adults and that's why it's good to understand that because when you read christis vivet He's really talking more, you know kind of an older youth, but certainly a young adult A young adult crowd, you know that that is present there And and yet it really does apply the principles still apply You know to younger people I would say to those in that 12 to 18 year bracket So he does this send it and he invites all these folks of different ages, you know to come together actually our our speaker tonight Katie prajahn Katie migrady is um She was one of when she was a young adult. She was one of the delegates that was picked I mean the united states only sent about four or five people She was one of the delegates to participate in that senate and it was an it was an amazing experience And pope francis was just really available to everybody and was essentially just hanging out with these youth and young adults for the whole week And uh wrote and then the the senate happened and then he wrote this Exertation called christis vivet beginning by saying christ is alive There um, I want to I want to share oops wait darn. Oh, I don't have it open I'm so unprepared. I'm just so excited about being a granddad My my brain isn't working as fully as it usually does All right Pope francis is one of the most quotable popes of all time and And he does not fail to disappoint in this document. It's worth waiting for Here it is The beginning of the document is such a wonderful message christ is alive He is our hope And in a wonderful way he brings youth to our world and everything he touches becomes young new Full of life these first words then I would like to say to every young christian are these christ is alive And he wants you to be alive Have you read his document evangeli godium the joy of the gospel? Okay, so what's really cool is That when you read the joy of the gospel and then you read christus vivet He is doing everything he said to do in joy of the gospel In christus vivet christus vivet isn't really about Youth it's for youth his main audience are young people themselves And so one of the great things about christus vivet is I think it gives us a wonderful model As well, how might we more effectively proclaim the gospel to young people? But there are certainly beautiful moments. It's almost like Somebody explained it to me this way. It's like, you know, you're in a living room and and there's yeah You know po francis is sitting in a chair and there's like young people on the floor and on the couch But then there's like some adult chaperone standing in the back And so he's kind of like talking to young people and every once in a while he goes and you need to make sure you do that And da da da da. Oh, and you need to do that, right? So there's this there's this little back and forth, uh, which has to do with The the dialogue that he's having flame flame find it. Yes And this is this is such a great phrase. He says here in number 67 Anyone called to be a parent pastor or guide to young people? So now he's kind of looking at the back of the room. He's looking at us, right? Must have the farsightedness to appreciate the little flame that continues to burn The fragile reed that is shaken but not broken The ability to discern pathways where others only see walls To recognize potential Where others only see peril This is how god the father sees things He knows how to cherish and nurture the seeds of goodness sewn in the hearts of the young Each young person's heart should thus be considered holy ground A bearer of seeds of divine life Before which we must take off our shoes In order to draw near and enter more deeply into the mystery It's not a great that that's 67. It's it's just incredible This idea and this is what I was getting back to with this vision of Jesus as a young person, right? You know pope francis is saying there's such beauty In the gift of youth the gift of being young there's a sacredness there And that we who minister with young people need to acknowledge the sacredness the giftedness of being young He notes that in scripture the same word in greek for young is also the same work in greek for new And so you can you can translate things With that word instead so for example if anyone is in christ, they are a new creation You could also say they are a young creation That jesus christ is ever ancient ever new. He's ever ancient ever young And in fact at one point he talks about how jesus himself really is eternally young That the ministry that he did was really while he was a young person a young adult in his 30s And many of his apostles were in their 20s or in the case of john in their teens Our blessed mother when she said yes Was likely 14 years old 13 or 14 years old that would be the common age of where she would be at And so even though sometimes, you know, we envision these icons and these pictures of really old people and the path of salvation history That might be when they died But much of this happens in their youth I say this to youth my students a lot because I think it's so beautiful and francis does an incredible job of giving A history of saints, you know in the old testament as well as in church history young people who made a big difference in salvation history And it's good to highlight those who died young because that's how we know their saints, you know, i'm rhea garedi hosé del Sanchez del rio Carlos acuity, right, you know, these are all great, but but if you only do that then a young person things like oh crud I have to die violently, you know in order to be holy But it's worth highlighting, you know francis was a teen when he had his conversion You know the the work that many people did in their teenage years when they made that That definitive decision to become a disciple of jesus christ And that that is the gift of youth. That's the gift of newness As the brain develops and one of the workshops you'll get is on adolescent development and how the brain works because that is important But one of the one of the dramatic things about Adolescence is your brain starts able being able to think in the abstract You're able to think of concepts. You're able to envision the future You know, these are things that isn't really a big deal for a seven or eight year old But when they get to 11 12 13 Suddenly, whoa, i'm seeing the world in a whole new way Um psychologists say that the most dramatic time of change in our lives are are zero to two You know and just look at a baby from zero to two and it's this massive change But the next one is in puberty whenever that hits. I mean again, look at you pre puberty and after puberty I mean, it's a physical change. It's an emotional change. It's a cognitive change. It's a spiritual change And what's beautiful is that even though that puberty hits There's still a few years that they're still trying to deal with it And that's that is I think the real excitement of working with young people They're open to new ideas because they themselves are very new They are seeing things in a in a whole new way And so as ministers of the gospel, we have a beautiful opportunity one to reinforce The faith of their family This is hoping their family has faith and is active in it Because they're asking questions now and one of the first things an adolescent does is well I've been listening to you for a while I wonder what other people have to say about it and that's not necessarily an act of rebellion It's an act of trying to find the truth. Well, if what you've been saying is true I should be able to find that in other places And I think that's a great gift that we get to do in ministry is that You know, we read we might say the exact same things that their parents told them But it hits them in a different way because they go, oh So this is a true statement. This wasn't just a parent thing that that I was a part of and it's a longer I'll I'll I'll rant this in probably another workshop at some point, but it is a It is very true that much of the work that we do in ministry with young people Is to make up for what isn't present in their family lives You know that there are many families that are just Not faithful living their faith feel empowered enough to pass on the faith, you know, that that is that is a true statement And so that really dominates a lot of the ministry that we do with young people But that being said, there's some that would take that I think a little bit too far and suggest that Youth ministry only exists Because the family has broken down And and I would say that's absolutely false. That is not true at all And I say this even being a dad and I think I'm pretty good at raising my kids in the faith But I want them to be involved in youth ministry in their teenage years for a number of reasons. First, I know They need this reinforced. They've heard me a lot. I need to make sure that I'm surrounding them with people that will say what I've been saying I can't help them find fellow Disciple peers that are present like I don't know their friend group. I can't help navigate that I can't empower them for leadership positions in their high school or in their parish as a teenager, right? Like there's there's a whole depth of ministry with young people that if we had You know rock star faithful catholic families Somebody in ministry with young people would be able to go really deep And really empower them to be evangelists and disciples and living the faith But it is true that we often do get caught up in a fairly rudimentary approach Because we have young people coming to us who you know, don't even know that jesus is god Or or the place in life And tangent back to the workshop so in terms of our respecting and loving young people and You know that vision that pope francis talks about of taking our shoes off In the sacredness of what god is doing in their lives When we talk about a spirituality of young people, I would put that at the very heart of it A recognition that jesus sanctified this time of life That jesus is ever young.  He's ever young That the the time of life that they are in is a sacred and beautiful time And it's a short time You know, we really want to be present because it's a difficult time It's a difficult time for young people They're not they don't know what's going on, right? You know, their bodies are bigger So they're breaking stuff knocking things over their their brain is developing They have this they have this thing now and it's so easy that we forget about this, but sexual awareness That was something they never had like that's like, you know, we have to we have to be sensitive to that This is a whole new thing they're dealing with And they have no idea what's going on And sadly the world has a lot of opinions about what's going on with them, right? But there's a lot of confusion and anxiety that's present there They're navigating difficult things with their parents because sometimes parents They're they're just not ready for this shift. I mean it it's like we have collective amnesia about how difficult it was to be a Teenager I think that's similar to like giving birth and I'm only saying that because my wife says it, you know, like in the moment of giving birth, you know, she's Saying very colorful things to me of what I did to her and that she'll never do it again And then just a few hours later. She's holding a baby. She's like let's have another I'm like, are you Did you hear yourself earlier? You know, right? You know, I think there's a similar thing with adolescents like we can and especially other adults if you don't work with adolescents It's really easy to romanticize Adolescents.  Well Well, maybe we think we didn't have worries compared to the worries that we have now But they are very worried. In fact, they're one of the most stressed out generations ever And people coming up saying this is the greatest time in your life Is maybe the worst thing you could say to them because they're not feeling like it's the greatest time of their life, right? But it's a sacred and beautiful time that we have the gift and the pleasure to Walk with them in certain ways And in our prayer life, it begins With jesus at the heart of it as a young person the sacredness of who they are It's really easy in youth ministry to get caught up in the ministry part and forget about the youth part There's a lot of logistics that can go on in Running a confirmation program Getting ready for a youth night Doing a mission trip and all these other things And it is so easy and i'm just saying this at least in my own experience. It is so easy To forget The point of what it is about I when I was in youth ministry This was a wonderful awareness that the lord gave me, you know, we were doing I think it was a student book conference, you know, and I'd always been encouraging kids to bring other kids and do things like that And we had to go like the bus Was ready to go and there was one kid who was missing. He was a bit of a space kid at kid really friendly really nice but just a space kid at kid And he wasn't there. He wasn't there. He wasn't there. He was like a junior. He's a junior senior So I called his house his phone wasn't on the mom's like well, I know he left He left, you know, a half hour ago. He should have been there by now, right and anyway So he pulls in Right now we're like 20 minutes behind everybody's anxious getting upset and stuff like that and he not he drives up with two friends Who he wants to take To the student book conference And they don't have forms. I mean they just have nothing. They have no idea what's going on And God Stopped me from talking From what I really wanted to say in that moment because what actually had happened was he had been trying to convince his friends And he just felt like you know what I've got to make one last pitch So he went to their house And he argued him into it and he said just get in the car. We're gonna do this And isn't that what I've been telling them to do like for the past few years Like isn't this the exact example of a disciple and evangelist, you know, right? And here I was so close to dropping f-bombs, you know, do this kid And it was such a glorious holy spirit moment where it's like I almost had a vision of Jesus like Step in between being like stop like look and it was and I was able to get over The forms we didn't have the money. We didn't have the other stuff and be like Wow, you're you're doing it like you are worried about these kids souls and you're doing it and I said well I Get on the bus like you give me let me call your parents right now We'll start I'll tell the secretary to fax forms and And we'll figure it out, you know and we got there and it was like hey, I got two more It's just what happened and they were like, okay, and it worked. I don't encourage this but But but it was one of those like, you know what holy spirit like you're making this happen And I'm not going to get in the way And and it really made me realize wow like it's so easy for me to just Get into schedule mode and kid mode and and just forget the lives of the young people that we're ministering to So a youth minister, I think is always looking for that sensitivity is always looking to reflect that heart It's just a part constantly of our prayer and it's something we want to be we want to be grateful for And grateful too, you know We all encounter very annoying young people And that's okay You know, it's it's a similar you've had similar situations where you have this kid who's just a real Obnoxious jerk of a kid and he you know just drives you crazy the whole time Of course he goes on the retreat at the retreat.   Because the personalities don't change right it's like like you don't get a personality change with it And uh, and then maybe i'm speaking cruelly of them But what I would ask the lord and he always he always gave me this gift when somebody who's driving me crazy I would say this lord Let me see in them what you see in them Let me Love them like you love them change my heart Because we always I love the phrase we always hate most in others what we hate most in ourselves You know the people who annoy us or do things it's usually a tell What is it about you that's reminding me of what I don't like about me that I'm trying to shut out And young people will do that to you a lot right? And so that gift of just saying lord You died on the cross you were thinking of this person when you died on the cross you love them madly and completely and totally Help me love them like that And he would He always would you know, I it was just it wasn't an overnight change. Sometimes it would be a novena Sometimes it'd be a 54 day novena But that's I think part of the that's part of what we're coming to the lord with that's part of our spirituality That we're recognizing I need god to change my heart I need god to change my heart You know petrarch was just so nice to me last night when he introduced me and and something he said is that I have no rough edges Um, I don't spend a lot of time with petrarch, so I'm able to fool him and I'm great I'm grateful for that, but I would say this though and I would give glory to god with this that Ministering to young people as long as I have has smoothed out the rough edges of myself That god has helped me love people in a supernatural way in a way that I could not love them myself You know, I'm finding myself attracted to people that I have nothing in common with And yet I find myself I really understand, you know, st. John Bosco used to often say Just that you are young is enough to make me love you very much And after 30 years of youth ministry, I'm finally getting that that idea that just that you are young You know when I'm at a mall And I see teenagers just like everybody else fades and I'm just and I try not to be creepy, you know because I'm Because I'll just and and sometimes I I keep forgetting that I'm like 50 because I'll I'll just walk up to a group of teenagers And they'll be like what the you know, and I just be like Right. This is this is creep. Bye. I'll pray for you, you know And um, but yeah, it's just but this isn't because I'm awesome like just ask the lord for this gift Like that's what I did just just ask the lord for this gift. He'll give it to you. He loves He loves to share his heart with us. He loves to share his passion with us And and make that a prayer. He also doesn't force it if we don't want it to right now There's a I love the image of the heart of jesus on fire because fire purifies, but fire hurts And when you ask the lord to help you love young people like he does you feel the joy And you feel the pain It can be difficult to love young people. It's very difficult when they're in Hard situations, but even in those moments where you're feeling You know the the flame of the lord is like the burning bush, you know That was the imagery that that pope francis gave, you know that you would take off our shoes before the mystery It burns, but it never consumes You know, that's when am I operating on the flame of the holy spirit or the flame of my own power If it's my own interest if it's my own curiosity if it's my own desire I can start off on fire But it's going to get consumed right away a couple years into it.   I'm sick of this bishop But if it's the flame of divine love if it's the flame of the spirit It's that burning bush In which is never consumed but is always on fire And one of the and and it wasn't just a scheduling thing that had a start with this like this is The beginning of understanding ministry with young people It's our relationship with god And making sure that what is begun in the spirit doesn't end up in the flesh That it doesn't become something that's formulaic or programmatic That being said we'll talk in this track about some good programs and formulas and you know things to do How to give a talk how to structure a night like we'll we'll get to those things But we would be really remiss if we wanted to make it sound like the effective youth ministry Is if you do a bc and then d always occurs right effective ministry with young people is that we ourselves would allow The holy thought you know the our heavenly father To share in his heart and his passion For young people that we would be able to see the sacredness of youth That we would be able to see jesus in all of them to see see the potential in them that they can't see themselves That we would allow ourselves even to be hurt By young people that's a vulnerability in any relationship That we would be hurt by them and offer up those sacrifices to god and to the lord But at all times really keeping in mind and keeping in heart our prayer life um A scripture that always Called me out When I was in ministry and still calls me out to this day Also from the gospel of luke. Thank you luke for all these challenging scriptures um Is when he talks about Hello, it's luke chapter 11. Hello 11 There we go Have I forgotten this my this is my favorite scripture and I can't even find it right now Wait a second, maybe six hundred twelve This is when you can edit this part out of the recording that that's present. I mean really it's absolute. It's my absolute favorite This is a different bible. You know how like you're used to having a bible and you're used to seeing exactly where it is on the page Thank you for Groaning and appreciation for that statement. So it's luke chapter 17 and it's verses seven through ten Jesus said this who among you would say to your servant who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field Come here immediately and take your place at table What he not rather say to him prepare something for me to eat Put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink you may eat and drink when I'm finished Is he grateful to that servant because he did what was commanded So should it be with you when you have done all you've been commanded say we are unprofitable servants We have done what we were obliged to do Well, why did that call me out so much? Well, there's a there's a thing that's happening that the servant is in the field all day And when he comes home at the end of the day, he's supposed to serve the master He's supposed to you know give the master food to eat and something to drink And then the master's promise is you yourself may eat and drink afterward And I realized that there were a number of years actually for me in ministry Where if I was in this parable, I would be the servant that came back after a long day of work And the master said you need to serve me and I'd be like, yeah, I've been working all day. Okay I'm off the clock good night, and I just go up to my room and really Go to bed without my spiritual supper The catechism beautifully talks about prayer as an encounter of God's thirst with our own That actually it's God who thirsts for us in prayer And so this idea then of the servant Giving himself to the master giving food and drink to the master and then the master giving food and drink To the servant is a beautiful image of the reciprocity of our prayer life And of course the food and drink he gives us is his very body blood soul and divinity It's the fullness of the gift of himself And the heart of the servant really is not the stuff he does out in the field But taking care of the master and being in relationship with the master And I think this is one of our biggest traps in ministry not just youth ministry in any ministry Is that we can end up serving the household of the Lord And forget to serve the Lord of the household That we can forget that our primary call Is intimacy with God is holiness God is more concerned About the ministry he does with you Than the ministry he does through you You are not a means to an end In terms of God's heart and God's life And we want to be very careful, you know, there's a one of the ancient heresies of the church's pelagianism And pelagius said that Jesus gave us a great example with which we can now follow And by ourselves We can do it like the real gift of Jesus was the example to follow now We know the way to do it, but we don't necessarily need grace to do it. We can do it on our own And I think in ministry we can often struggle. Maybe we're not conscious of it with a pelagianistic attitude Your ministry should not try to be paying back the Lord for all the goodness he gave you You can't pay that back. That was a free gift But I know sometimes in my life, that's how I treated ministry. Lord, you've done so much for me I'm gonna do this for you And the Lord was up there like Okay, you know like kind of but you know But my problem was then I started to identify myself before the Lord As a youth minister You know, that's who I am. That's what I'm called to be. This is how I love the Lord And Jesus was at that point being like no, that's that's way off But I was just kind of caught in that and so, you know what when my ministry was going great The Lord loves me and everything's wonderful. But when my ministry wasn't going well Lord, what have I done? What have I done? Please forgive me, right? Because my identity was really based on the ebbs and flows of ministry, which is not a good thing to base your identity on When I started ministry a real veteran shared this great words with me He said, Bob He said you need to remember that when you're doing ministry and ministry is going great You're not that great And when ministry is going really bad, you're not that bad There's so much that goes on in ministry that you have no control over, right?  And so like being able to separate ourselves As a child of God That my identity is rooted In you know, the heavenly father As a you know as a disciple of Jesus as a temple of the holy spirit And my call to holiness Certainly might be lived out in this particular vocation lowercase v to do ministry with young people But I also always want to have a holy detachment to that That I would be open to being called wherever the Lord might be calling me You know, no matter no matter what that is I'm grateful that I've been in youth ministry as long as I have and I keep bringing it to the Lord even You know, I mentioned I was ordained a year and a half ago and I Going into formation. I brought that to the Lord Lord You know, is there a new ministry field that you want to take me in? Is there something else you want me to do? And then the Lord just reaffirmed Just stick with young people and I'm like, oh good. That's really what I was hoping you'd say But that's because that's what the Lord is calling me to do But that's not my holiness. That's not my spirituality It can be a challenge because we do so many spiritual things with young people We might have a liturgy that young people are involved with we might do a holy hour That's for young people. We we almost feel like maybe we can get some kind of spiritual osmosis By doing holy things with young people that somehow it might just bleed into our own lives And there is some of that which is really cool.  I love you Jesus shoot He needs to wrap this up in five minutes because we have something else to do, you know, right? Because I'm the host of the event and That's why it's important that you know, my spiritual moments can't just always be around young people You know I made it a habit actually When I was working in a parish To go to you know, when I went to daily mass to go to a mass not at my parish Not at a place where there'd be three parents with Liability forms that needed to be signed or something else that needed to be done Like I just wanted to just be a random catholic somewhere who just loved the Lord and was present In all of that I think are the fruits of a spiritual life that is truly grounded in a love of Jesus That doesn't feel like God only loves me if I succeed at ministry or if I do this ministry or work at a church Because those of you that have worked at in you know church situations know how how very difficult they can be You know parishes and diocese can be really really hard places to work And I think sometimes we over spiritualize the work environment In those places. This is still a job. You know, this is a hourly thing that's going on It's awesome that we're doing ministry, but You know, sometimes you need a good hr person to you know resolve some difficulties because we're human That's that's part of it. I mean, I always say Catholicism would be so much more amazing if it wasn't for all the Catholics involved in it But we're sinful broken humans and then we work with each other and We gotta Get through the crap for the glory of God and the Lord blesses us and does that But we're able to do that if our eyes are fixed on Jesus If we can truly say that You know, I have a relationship with Jesus. I have a daily prayer life. I'm engaging in the sacraments Everything, you know, here's a here's another good thing whenever you hear a really good talk Try to actually listen to the talk for yourself And not think about How this would be a great talk to tell your young people next week, you know Oh, those are great points. I gotta remember to tell my teeth It's just maybe you can just receive, you know, just receive and allow the Lord to bless and receive This is the heart really of ministry with young people We we need people who pray if you're not praying, please don't do ministry Um, let the Lord love you and have a relationship with the Lord Your relationship won't be perfect because you're not perfect and that's totally cool You know, you need to be patient with yourself You are still growing but the Lord is calling you to something deeper You want to be able to go deeper than an adolescent spirituality in your own life You want to be reading more challenging things praying more deeply and contemplatively, you know, allowing the Lord just to guide you And let that be the core of what it's about that love of Jesus that seeing Jesus as a young person Seeing Jesus in young people so that in your ministry, you'd be able to point Jesus out in their own lives And help them see that that's the transformative power of the Holy Spirit And really at the heart of what the spirituality of a youth minister should be about