Get in Touch with the Source: St. John Bosco used tricks and acrobatics to bring young people to Christ. Learn a trick either with string, rope, cards or whatever, and then when you do that trick with young people, they are engaged by the mystery of what they just saw. Inevitably they ask to know the secret. (You might show them a trick later in the retreat, but not yet. For now they need to wrestle with the mystery of not knowing.

Take this opportunity to teach the lesson behind the magic trick. For example, you can say, “If you want to learn the trick, you need to get in touch with the source, which in this case is me.  Don’t ask your friend, because he or she simply doesn’t know and can only guess, but think about this, what is harder, this trick or life?” They will answer that life is harder.  “Right, you can learn this trick in an hour or a couple of days, but life will take you a lifetime…

Therefore, if you want to discover who you are and what God’s call for you for you might be, this can only be done if you get in touch with the Source who is God. That is why we pray, learn about our faith, make retreats. This is why Catholic schools are so important.”

For Discernment: In a world where young people often don’t reflect on mystery, a simple trick engages their thinking and imagination to want to understand the unknown. As we help direct their search to the God who is the Source, we help them to seek to discover the mysterious designs and Call that God has for us.

Scripture: Psalm 94.8-10: “Shall he who shaped the ear not hear?…”