It was Father Juan Perez’s first day on the job as the newly assigned parochial vicar of St. Joseph Parish in Marysville.

As his eyes swept across the faces of parishioners gathered for the noon Mass in Spanish, he became concerned.

“I was looking for the young people and wondered, ‘Where are they?’” Father Perez recalled.

At the following Sunday’s Mass he issued an invitation to the youth to come to a meeting just for them. Ten came, so they were asked to bring a friend or two the next week.

After two months 45 young people, primarily Hispanic, were attending meetings with Father Perez. In six months there were 80. His message to them was simple.

“We need you to be a light in your community,” said Father Perez, who also challenged them to start thinking about just how they could become “a good light.”

Miguel Lemus, 27, remembers receiving that first invitation over two years ago and a few more in the weeks to come.

“I’d always say, ‘OK, OK, next week,’” said Lemus, recalling with some amusement that he came to the first youth group meeting so Father Perez would no longer be “bugging” him.

Not long after that Lemus joined the Hispanic youth group and attended a charismatic youth retreat at St. Rose Parish in Sacramento.

“That’s when I got the call,” he said. “It was like ‘Hello, Miguel, I’m God. I’m here and you’re going to serve me.’”

What happened next to the Hispanic young people of St. Joseph Parish may have even surpassed Father Perez’s expectations. The group, which now includes about 90 members, still gets together Friday evenings for meetings but that’s just the beginning.

They have formed a youth choir and a charismatic prayer group that meet weekly. The young people sing at a Spanish-language Mass at St. Joseph and then travel to join the choir at Our Lady of Guadalupe Mission in Live Oak. Youth group member Blanca Ramirez, 28, says music ministry is a powerful way to “evangelize the word.”

“The youth group is helping the rest of youth to grow and inviting other kids out there to join us in learning about God,” she said.

Because the St. Joseph Parish community is approximately 40 percent Hispanic, the community has two youth groups to reach out to the growing number of English and Spanish-speaking young people.

The Hispanic youth group has also organized outreach programs to serve the sick and elderly in the Marysville area. Many young people are taking religious education classes so they can be catechists to children of the parish.

“We don’t just help the youth, we help everybody, whatever the need,” noted Lemus, who currently serves as the youth group leader. “It’s God working through us…giving the invitation to another person.”

It’s an invitation Lemus has given often, sometimes without even realizing it.

Robert Martinez, 26, was not really thinking that much about church or about what it meant to be Catholic until he met Lemus at a Marysville produce packing company where both worked as supervisors.

“I was a little rebellious against the church and had stopped being a believer,” Martinez said. “I put God aside and hid him somewhere.”

Martinez says the first time Lemus invited him to attend the youth group, he dismissed the idea. That was until he began to notice how his fellow supervisor’s caring nature made a difference in the lives of co-workers.

“If you change, you change the other people around you,” he said. “What you have on the inside is what you give others.”

He joined the youth group in attending a charismatic youth retreat at St. Joseph and soon found his own life changing.

“I had never seen a Catholic church with people dancing, people praying, people freely expressing themselves,” Martinez said. “I began to just let myself experience the presence of the Holy Spirit.”

Like most members of the youth group, Martinez is involved in multiple ministries which include a prayer group, serving as a eucharistic minister, a lector, and as an organizer of youth retreats like the one that brought him back to God.

Until two years ago, Ruben Romero’s whole life revolved around soccer. Romero, 22, a junior at Yuba City College, was a member of the college’s varsity soccer team. He attended Mass but didn’t feel like he was living his faith. Then a friend invited him to attend a youth group meeting at St. Joseph and he soon found himself at the church every day for choir practice, prayer group or meeting with Father Perez.

“I began to learn what my religion is really about…that being Catholic is being a helper to other people, to be a servant to the community,” Romero said.

A year ago Romero traveled with the Marysville youth group to Hamilton City to participate in a charismatic retreat for Hispanic youth at St. Mary Mission Church. He heard stories about young people in that community whose lives had been taken as the result of gang violence.

“The youth who were doing bad did so only because it was the only thing they were living,” Romero said. “We went to tell them they can do other things—that there’s another way to live this life, to meet God.”

Father Miguel Silva, co-pastor of St. Dominic Parish in Orland which includes St. Mary Mission, says he has seen a change in the spirit of its youth following visits from the St. Joseph youth group and Auxiliary Bishop Richard J. Garcia. A 40-member youth choir has formed and a growing number of the young people are volunteering for ministry in the church.

Lemus says that trips by the Marysville youth group to surrounding communities like Hamilton City, Live Oak, Colusa and Redding are empowering everyone.

“It’s youth calling youth. We’re uniting and that’s something youth have to see,” he said. “We can do things God wants, just like the disciples.”

Over the past year St. Joseph Parish has also hosted four father-son retreats in Marysville, Live Oak, Gridley and Colusa.

“Our young people have the ability to touch the hearts and minds of others,” according to Father Perez. “This is a way for youth to share with their families what they’re feeling about their faith.”

These days the challenge is finding a seat at the Sunday noon Mass in Spanish at St. Joseph. A second Spanish-language Mass has been added on weekends to accommodate the overflow and young people fill the pews and the choir loft and serve as eucharistic ministers.

“The youth have become the heart of the parish,” Father Perez concluded, “and their commitment is growing.”

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