Youth art contest: ‘Beauty is a pathway to God’

 

2025 will be the Catholic Church’s Jubilee year, and the Diocesan Office of Youth is calling all teens, 8th through 12th grades, to submit original artwork reflecting on the Catholic virtue of hope.  

 

Going around the Diocese in the past year, we have been pleasantly surprised by the diverse and unique talents of many young people. It is time to come together and allow the gifts God has entrusted them to impact the community.  

 

The winners will see their work in diocesan postcards to commemorate the 2025 Jubilee of Hope. The top three will win an all-expenses-paid trip to the National Catholic Youth Conference (NCYC) in Long Beach, California, on November 14-18, 2024. 

We live in the hope that God will lead us to our final destination, that is, to Him. However, this definition does not communicate everything hope is. 

 

One needs to be careful not to reduce hope to merely future or wishful thinking. Because we trust in what God has prepared for us, we walk in freedom, thus impacting our present. Hope calls us to live purposefully today, knowing God’s promises are active in every moment of our lives. Properly lived, hope translates into acts of worship and service that keep us engaged in the rhythm of the Kingdom of God in our daily lives. This is what we want our youth to capture in their artwork.  

 

Since I was 14 years old, I have the Church to thank for embracing my passion for art. Back then, I had free guitar lessons and participated in various art and music contests, which helped me find my vocation as a Carmelite and as an artist. It is time to pay it forward and to open that door to new generations. 

 

One may be tempted to think that art is not essential to our faith; however, our theology, our history, and our God tell us otherwise. During a meeting with artists in 2009, Pope Benedict XVI, spoke of the “via pulchritudinis, a path of beauty which is at the same time an artistic and aesthetic journey, a journey of faith, of theological enquiry” (Benedict XVI, November 21, 2009). Beauty is a pathway to God, and those given an artistic gift cannot ignore it. Their holiness depends on it. God’s beauty is there for us to encounter him through the uniqueness of each artist and each artistic style. 

 

Along with this contest, the Office of Youth is gathering young pilgrims from all over the diocese to travel to Rome in April 2025 to attend the Jubilee celebrations with Pope Francis. We are also preparing a podcast with conversations with young people and Bishop Weisenburger, as well as the youth awards and the Lenten retreat for teens: Pilgrimage to Hope. 2025 is a year for youth. 

 

Pope Francis began the Bull of Indiction, the declaration of the 2025 holy year, by saying: “Hope does not disappoint” (Romans 5:5); I would like to add: neither do youth. Help the Diocese of Tucson find a new generation of artists in this quest.