I always find it frustrating when an entire gen-
eration is painted with one broad stroke. You
could call that “generational stereotyping”. Nat-
urally there are vast differences between indi-
viduals in the same generation. But nevertheless,
there may be some traits that tend to be general-
ly shared. If I can speak for my own generation
(and nobody asked me to), I would say millenni-
als are characterized by a desire for authenticity.
Waves of advertisements, first on TV and then
endlessly on the internet, have sickened us to
being “sold” something. So we just want some-
thing true, whether it’s pretty or not.

And this is how God communicates with us. He
gives us the whole truth, whether we like it or
not. We know that Jesus is the Word of the Fa-
ther—He is everything that the Father wants to
say to us. And that Word is totally authentic. In
the Creed, we profess that Jesus is “God from
God, light from light, true God from true God,
consubstantial with the Father”. This means Je-
sus is one with the Father. He reflects Him per-
fectly. He tells His disciples, “He who has seen
Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). In Jesus,
God is real with us. He tells us how we are to
live if we want to be happy. He calls us to die to
ourselves and to give up our own way of doing
things. His teachings are not always easy! But
they are authentic, and that’s what’s so attractive
about them.

What does this mean for evangelization, for
sharing our faith? Perhaps it means that if we
want to reach out to our 20 and 30 year-olds,
what we need is not a sales pitch, but an au-
thentic witness. Listing the “selling points” of
going to church might seem like it will be
helpful, but sharing our own experience of liv-
ing the faith, the joys and also the challenges,
being truthful and transparent even when it
reveals our imperfections, that’s something a
person might listen to. Of course, that means
we have to be living our own adventure of
faith so that we have something to share. And
the Holy Spirit is very ready to help us do
that, if we ask Him. We don’t need to be superhu-
man to share our faith. We just need to be authentic.