Life Teen is a Catholic youth ministry organization and movement that began in 1985 as an answer to Saint John Paul II’s call for a New Evangelization. Since starting at Saint Timothy’s Catholic Church in Mesa, Arizona, Life Teen has extended to more than 1,500 parishes in over 30 different countries, including South Africa, China, Spain, the Philippines, and the Netherlands.
St. Mary’s Life Teen is a youth ministry program based around leading teens closer to Christ. Our goal is to not only help teens discover who Jesus is and to build up a relationship with Him, but to also walk with them in their daily lives and help them navigate the craziness of being a high school teen this day in age. We do that through a mix of social and prayerful events, what we call “Playing hard and praying hard.”
Our Life Teen program started in September of 1997 and for 27 years countless numbers of teens, CORE members, and parents have come through the doors of St. Mary’s and have been changed by the Life Teen program and to this day we continue to work on that goal of ‘Leading Teens closer to Christ’.
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The Mass
Everything we do and everything we are centered around the Eucharist, so the Mass is the most important part of our program. You can join us every Sunday night at 5pm for our Life Teen Mass with music done by our very own Life Teen band. Our Life Teen Mass is directed towards high school teens and getting them involved with the liturgy, from being a lector, to Eucharistic minister, or even playing in the Life Teen band, we get teens involved wherever we can. So come on by every Sunday at 5pm, all are welcome to join us to celebrate the Mass!
Life Nights
Held after our Masses on Sunday nights our Life Nights are a great place to meet new people and dive deeper into different topics of the Catholic faith. Before each life night we have ‘Supper for the Soul’, a supper provided by different parents who graciously cook food for all of our teens. Immediately following dinner, we move into the Life Night. There are usually three different kinds of life nights, content nights, issue nights, and social nights. Content nights are the life nights that are based off of the semester topic, usually involves multiple life nights over an extended period, some topics we have covered are death, questioning the faith, spiritual warfare, and many others. Issue nights are life nights based on a specific topic that is usually covered in that night alone, some topics we have covered are drugs and alcohol, social media use, mental health, and others. The last type of life nights are social nights which are simply meant to be fun nights where teens get to know each other more and build up the community in our Life Teen program. Any teen in high school is welcomed to join us after our Mass on Sunday night for our life nights.
Pizza and Prayer
Our Pizza and Prayer nights are held on Wednesday nights at 6:00pm in St. Joseph’s chapel. The night includes some praise and worship, a reflection, and then some time of prayer where the teens can pray by themselves or over others. Pizza and prayer allow our teens to experience different forms of prayer from Eucharistic Adoration, the rosary, silent prayer, and different options. Following some time of prayer we then go to the life house for pizza and spending some time hanging out together.
Retreats
During the year we have an annual Fall and Spring retreat. This retreat is a weekend away where the teens can build up friendships with one another, make new friendships, and build their relationship with Christ. These retreats involve different sessions with teachings, witness talks, and activities all aimed at helping our teens discover more and more who Jesus is and how He is impacting their lives. These retreats are a great time for teens to get away from the craziness of world and just be with one another and Christ.
We also do a service retreat in the Fall called CIA Retreat (Catholics In Action). This retreat is aimed at doing works for others who are in need. We go to different sites around the area and help out those in need. The biggest part of this retreat is gathering used clothes to bring and hand out at the Boston Common along with some food and hot beverages.
Other Events and Activities
Along with the weekly events and annual retreats that we have going on, we also have different events and trips that come up through out the year. Some are just social and fun events and others are aimed at building up the teens relationship with Christ. To stay up to date on the different events that are coming up make sure to check out our Events page and print out any of the calendars that are up there.