Our youth should flip the script

eeeeeeeeToday’s youth are growing up in a world that is both hyperconnected yet deeply isolating. Some are trapped in cycles of violence, addiction, and despair. Others numb themselves with endless scrolling, chasing the next dopamine hit from likes and followers. Around the globe, the story is the same: a generation searching for meaning while drowning in distraction.

Archbishop Charles Jason Gordon did not sugarcoat the truth when he addressed young Catholics at the August 9 Archdiocese Youth Pilgrimage Experience, hosted by the Archdiocesan Commission for Evangelisation, which brought young people to visit the Jubilee sacred sites.

“I know in these years, this struggle can be great,” he said in a pre-recorded message when all the young people from the vicariates met up at St Philip and St James RC Church, Chaguanas. “I know in these years, there’s a lot of doubt about self. I know these years, there’s a lot of shame and guilt for stupidities that you have done and things that have taken hold of your life. I know, I know. And God knows even more than me.”

The Archbishop’s message was not just sympathy. He reminded the youth that the Jubilee Year is not about sentiment, but about radical transformation. “The Jubilee takes away all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all sin. And that’s the Jubilee grace,” he insisted. But receiving that grace requires action: Confession, prayer, and a willingness to let God strip away “the crust of sin” that clings so tightly.

This isn’t easy talk. It is a call to responsibility in an age that often sells excuses. Archbishop Gordon told them plainly: “Your life is more than eating and drinking and pleasure and money and all these things. You have a sacred purpose.”

That language cuts against the grain of our culture, where so many young people are told their worth lies in consumerism, career success, or physical appearance. But it is precisely the message needed in a generation where anxiety and depression are endemic.

‘Archbishop J’ was blunt: you are not just the “future” of the Church. “You are the present of our Church. We need your energy. We need your dynamism. We need your love and your gift.”

This insistence—that young people are called to be protagonists, not spectators—finds a living example in Blessed Carlo Acutis. Here was a teen like any other, born in 1991, who loved video games and the internet. But instead of letting technology consume him, he ‘flipped the script’.

He built a website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles, using the digital world not to promote himself, but to point others to God. His mantra was simple: “Not I, but God.”

Pope Leo XIV will canonise Blessed Carlo on Sunday, Septem-ber 7, declaring him the first millennial saint. His canonisation explodes the myth that holiness is outdated or unattainable among today’s youth.

Carlo shows that sanctity is possible in sneakers, with a laptop or mobile phone, surrounded by the same distractions every teen faces.

Our Gen Zs and Alphas don’t need more empty affirmations or “live your truth” slogans. They need what millennial Carlo embodies: a bracing reminder that life is sacred, vocation is real, and holiness is possible—not tomorrow, but now.