Young Adults Welcome the New Year with Jesus

By Denis Grasska

LITTLE ITALY — For the fifth consecutive year, young adult Catholics had a spiritual alternative to the traditional New Year’s Eve festivities.

About 85 young adults from throughout the diocese turned out for the event, which was held at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish in Little Italy. The celebration began at 9 p.m. with an hour of Eucharistic adoration, followed by a Mass concelebrated by five priests. After the liturgy, attendees had the option of spending more time in adoration or moving over to the parish hall, where they ate, drank, danced and chatted with one another as they prepared to ring in the new year.

“It is important to have Jesus at the center of our lives,” said Carrie Giebel, director of the diocesan Office for Young Adult Ministry, “and what better way to start off the new year than with Him?”

Giebel, whose office sponsored the event, described it as an “an alternative to the party scene.” By offering this alternative, she said, the diocese was not condemning more traditional approaches to the holiday, but merely inviting young adults to try something different.

Sean Jagers, 36, has attended the celebration for the past three years.

A member of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish, Jagers noted that he could have partied the night away at a club, where he would have encountered “alcohol, noise and immodestly dressed people,” but preferred to welcome the new year “with a focus on God.”

“For me, the appeal of this event is starting out the new year right, just as I try to start out my day right, and for me that is with the Lord our God,” he explained. “What is more right than that?”

Some of the events sponsored by the Young Adults Office are primarily spiritual, while others are predominantly social in nature. With the New Year’s Eve celebration, Giebel said, “It’s actually a balance between the two: You can praise the Lord, but also socialize, have a drink, dance and have a good time with other young adult Catholics.”

“The young adult New Year’s celebration, in my opinion, is the perfect combination of faith and fun,” said Corrie Daughters, a 30-year-old Our Lady of the Rosary parishioner, who attended for the second time this year. “We start off with adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and Mass and end by dancing the night away until 2 a.m. What could be better?”

Giebel said some attendees stayed for adoration and Mass, but left before the party began. Others, she said, came after the Mass ended and joined their peers for the festive celebration that followed.

“Some people just want to come for the party, and that’s fine,” Giebel said, noting that Jesus Himself was no stranger to parties and performed His first recorded miracle during a wedding reception in Cana.

The alternative New Year’s celebration began five years ago as a last-minute idea proposed by a handful of young adults at Our Lady of the Rosary Parish. The Barnabite priests who staff the parish were immediately supportive, and the Young Adults Office also came on board as a sponsor.

Reflecting on the event’s fifth anniversary, Giebel said its continuing appeal “only goes to show how hungry people are for this kind of celebration.” As director of the Young Adults Office, she found it “inspiring” that this event was started on the grassroots-level by young adults themselves and sees it as proof that “the Holy Spirit is alive, active and moving in this diocese.”

The Southern Cross