Jocelyn A. Sideco

Young Voices: Whether you are a parent managing video-based education for your child, a college student facing a very changed campus life, or someone inspired by recent times, be gentle, stay open to God's voice and find a way.

Young Voices: God calls us all to live in the fullness of God's reign, especially those who are laboring within a system that dehumanizes them, ignores them, takes advantage of them, even kills them.

Young Voices: Can I be simultaneously angry and sad? Yes. Can I be simultaneously filled with gratitude and keenly aware of my unworthiness? Yes.

Young Voices: There is pastoral work that needs to be happening, amid the church closures and scramble for priests learning how to livestream Mass. Our church leaders need to reach out to the oldest parishioners.

Young Voices: As a female minister of color whose faith in Jesus leads me to interact boldly with God's creation, why do I still feel a tiny ounce of shame for exposing my daughter to Shakira and Jennifer Lopez?

Young Voices: It may sound petty and superficial to talk about beauty pageants when our global society seems to be on the brink of collapse, but I wanted to divert our eyes to a soul-satisfying defiance amidst these cruel times we live in.

Young Voices: Much happens in the space between. Where I end and you begin. Where day ends and night begins. Where we end and God begins.

Young Voices: Wouldn't it be great if we in the pews would be trusted enough to be seen and heard within liturgy and therefore within our community? I'm challenging myself to see others better. 

Young Voices: Jesus gently calls us to behave in ways that are pleasing to God and one another right now. He is not trying to shame me, but I am never excluded from his instruction.

Young Voices: Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School's act of bravery has captured my mind, heart and imagination.

The lives of Jean Vanier, Rachel Held Evans and Melinda Gates are helping me love others and inviting me into a thoughtfulness that moves into action. 

Young Voices: I contemplate deeply what it means to live out what Jesuits call a "faith that does justice." I contemplate two recent key moments in the light of Pope Francis' call and prayer for better leadership. 

Young Voices: With what we know about adolescent brain development, we educators try to create experiences and environments that encourage healthy risk-taking as the prefrontal cortex continues to mature and offer agility to plan, prioritize and control impulses.  

Young Voices: Our church is huge. I would like to think that our universal community can take a lot of diversity. We just don't have to prove we are better than one another or more holy than the next holy companion.

Young Voices: In her book Daring Greatly, Brene Brown argues that vulnerability is not weakness, but really an experience of love. Jesus embodied that kind of love when he spoke to those who resisted his message. How can we imitate him?

Young Voices: Could I recognize a broken heart as an invitation for God's love, compassion and care to enter? Or would I stay stubborn in my own self-pity and close myself off to others?

Young Voices: Being a witness to God's presence in the world requires a continual openness to amazement and possibility that, quite frankly, demands real work and presence.

Young Voices:  As we approach the darkest day of the year, we are reminded of God's promise of light. This co-mingling produces a new color, a new story, and new hope: rose-colored vestments, if you will.

Young Voices: Have brown and black people been silenced in our churches as much as they are silenced in our media? Have their experiences of faith been muted, hidden in the shadows?