They’re coming from near and far to the Walk for Life West Coast! One group joining us is from St. Henry’s Church in Buckeye, Arizona, led by their good pastor Fr. William Kosco. That’s Father celebrating Mass, below.
Fr. Kosco took a little time from his busy schedule to share a little about the trip to the Walk:
Our little group will be comprised of myself, Anna Jimenez, (our youth leader), and 4 high school seniors, all 18 year of age. We will fly to SFO from Phoenix early on the 26th, and return the evening of the 27th. It’ll be a quick turn-around, but I have Masses on the 28th, so gotta get back.
Our parish teen group is called: OneStepBeyond (or OSB for short). Our patron saint is St. Benedict (OSB again).
OSB is probably not unlike your average youth program, except that it is sort of a secret. We do not advertise or announce the group at all. It started 11 years ago with a few teens and has been a word-of-mouth program ever since. The idea is that not all high school teens are ready for a more serious involvement with their faith/parish and that those Catholic teens who do desire something more in their lives will openly express that desire and discover our little group. And for a parish our size (small-medium), we get a good number of teens attending. Our aim is to provide Catholic teens with as many experiences of the faith as possible. We do all kinds of things together in an effort to show young people that faith is family; that faith is a language, not a subject to be taught (though we do a fair amount of teaching, mostly Bible-based). Over the years we have attended Catholic workcamps in five different states. We spent two weeks at a college in New England one summer studying the Catechism and enjoying the outdoors. We’ve visited a monastery in Oregon for a week. We go to concerts, movies, plays, comedy nights, you-name-it, so long as it is clean fun and spiritually-based. We attended the SF Walk For Life back in 2013 and this time we want to rough it a bit more which is why we asked if we could obtain simple lodgings, unlike the previous time when we stayed with families and in a hotel.
As always with our adventures, there are laughs to be had and stories that will be told and memories that may indeed keep a young person connected to the Catholic faith for the rest of his/her life or which may help later in life if the person finds himself drifting or in a spiritual crisis – memories have a way of calling us back.
God bless you, Father, and we look forward to meeting you at the Walk! Are YOU coming? Tell us your story!