By Katie Vasquez
Five hundred fifty students enter Holy Family church in Fresh Meadows to sing songs about god and reflect on their faith.
“It was very involving, and it was just, I like the singing a lot. It was very, it was just very cool,” said Isabella Vizcarrondo, a student in the Xaverian Genesis Program.
“It made me feel that God is always around me and that he has so much power,” said Sacred Heart Catholic Academy student Natalie Palumbo.
Kids traveled from across Brooklyn and Queens for this Junior High Eucharistic youth rally, the latest stop in the Diocese of Brooklyn’s Lenten Pilgrimage.
“It’s just beautiful in the way they prayed before the blessed sacrament and where they responded to the music and the prayers,” Bishop Robert Brennan of the Diocese of Brooklyn said.
Bishop Robert Brennan led the adoration for the packed church.
He says that seeing the youngest Catholics in prayer and the other pilgrims traveling the diocese’s churches is inspiring.
“It’s very encouraging to be among the young people,” said Bishop Brennan, “You see their energy, you see their reverence.
Like those undertaking the pilgrimage, the kids prepare for Christ’s death and resurrection by learning about it in the classroom.
This rally gives them a tangible connection to their faith.
“I think it’s good for kids in middle school that you’ll become more, more introduced to the actual faith,” said Domenico Bolkovic, a St. Kevin Catholic Academy student.
“We give the opportunities to see that the world is bigger than just their appetites, that there’s something more gracious involved in everything they do,” said Diocese of Brooklyn Superintendent of Schools, Deacon Kevin McCormack.
The rally didn’t just fulfill the Lenten practice of prayer; it also encouraged almsgiving. Those in attendance were encouraged to give toiletries that would be donated to the Little Sisters of the Poor and missionaries of charities. They would be given out to the elderly and the poor in the Diocese of Brooklyn.