Its method is based on forming communities with a clear ecclesial awareness in the experience of prayer with three foundations: the Gospel, the Eucharist, and the Mission of the Church.
The spirituality of EYM has emanated from the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola to become essentially a Eucharistic spirituality. Thus, it has the following characteristics:
– It is grounded in the real life of children and young people, considering their stage of physical, psychological and spiritual development, offering them a formation that takes their limitations and their needs into consideration, while developing their skills and capacities.
– It encourages a personal friendship with Jesus, in union with His Heart, through: Prayer (teaching us to find God in all things), Listening to the Word of God andCelebrating the Eucharist.
– It summons us to be apostles, to experience our service as an offering to the Church and to the world.
EYM seeks to lead children and young people to an interior knowledge of Jesus and His Word, teaching them to be able to find the Lord in every dimension of daily life, through trustful prayer to the Father and through community celebration of the Eucharist.
It is an essentially ecclesial movement, and lives in, through and for the Church. It remains always at the service of the local Church and in coordination with its structures. Therefore, EYM forms people in communion with the pastoral structures of the diocese, parishes and schools.
This ecclesial affiliation and friendship with Jesus is represented in
three axes or fundamental pillars experienced in community life to foment an apostolic life:
– Gospel: Contemplate on how to live like Jesus.
– Eucharist: Be nourished and moulded by Jesus’ life.
– Mission: Collaborate in Christ’s mission serving the needs and challenges of humanity.
Once the member has gone through the proposed stages,
the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network will continue to offer them, after the
age of 25, a spiritual path, to live their daily offering in service to the Kingdom of God. This spiritual path, called “the Way of the Heart”, delves into the three foundations of EYM over nine stages.
The spirituality of the EYM, like that of the AP, both of which have Ignatian roots, is a Eucharistic spirituality. For this reason, it has the following characteristics:
1. The heart of the EYM is friendship with Jesus
Attention to the young human and spiritual moment.
Prayer, which teaches us to find God in all things.
Listening to the Word.
2. The heart of the EYM is to live out this friendship, nourished and modelled by the Eucharist
For us at the EYM, the Eucharist is much more than a ritual that we attend on Sundays. It is a spiritual food that transforms us, an invitation to make it our way of living ‘a form of Eucharistic life’. It is an invitation to live Jesus’ style of life.
To understand what this means, we need to understand what Jesus’ own gestures, and those of his disciples, meant for Him on the night of the Last Supper.
3. The heart of the EYM is to share the life and mission of Jesus, as Church, serving the justice of the Kingdom of God.
Challenges for humanity and mission of the Church.
