Teens at Youth Rally reminded of the God-given purpose of every person
Grace Fischer, a chaperone from the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, left, and Kendall Schreck, a student at Bishop Dwenger High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., right, stand with Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart at the end of the Indiana Youth Rally for Life on Jan. 22 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis. Mother Olga was the keynote speaker at the rally. (Photos by Sean Gallagher)
By Sean Gallagher
Youth conferences can sometimes be marked by high-energy speakers who get an emotional rise from their teenage audience, getting them up on their feet to celebrate their faith with joyous screams and shouts.
But the keynote speaker at the Indiana Youth Rally for Life on Jan. 22 at the Indiana Convention Center in Indianapolis was different.
Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart, a diminutive religious sister, wore her religious community’s blue habit and spoke with a low, calm voice to the 1,600 teens and their chaperones who attended the rally from across the state.
A native of Iraq, Mother Olga, 59, came to the U.S. as an adult and founded the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth in the Archdiocese of Boston in 2011. She lives at present at St. John Paul II Parish in Sellersburg, where two members of her community began ministry at the start of the year.
She told her audience at the rally that she came to speak to them, not because she’s a great public speaker or because of her life as a religious and the foundress of a religious community.
“I’m here because I believe in the pro-life message,” Mother Olga said. “I believe in the sanctity of life from the womb to the tomb. I believe that God has a purpose for every little tiny soul born from the womb of a mother.”
‘Life is a gift from the womb to the tomb’
In the first of two presentations she gave during the rally, Mother Olga reflected on the meaning of the lives of babies with many health challenges she’s come to know in ministry in hospitals in Boston.
She shared how she brings the Blessed Sacrament with her in a small container called a pyx when she visits hospitals.
“I always bring Jesus with me. He is the divine physician,” Mother Olga said. “He is the author of life, and he is the one who takes care of all these babies.”
She also gives small rosaries to the babies she meets in neo-natal intensive care units (NICU).
“I always leave Mother Mary with every baby that I visit in a NICU,” Mother Olga shared. “I tell them that she’s the best mother to take care of them and to nurture the life that God has given them.”
Among the stories of the babies she’s met, Mother Olga gave special attention to Hendrix, a baby who is blind, deaf and cannot sit up.
“Yet, his joy is contagious,” she said. “When he is in the room, he can fill the room with something beyond our understanding, beyond what we can ever explain. This boy … has a presence that is bigger than all of us, bigger than this room.”
To show Hendrix’s unexplainable joy, Mother Olga shared a video of him bursting “into a spontaneous laugh.”
“One of Hendrix’s gifts to this world is the gift of laughter,” Mother Olga said, “and the gift of joy that he brings to his family and friends and loved ones.”
The story of Hendrix and the other babies Mother Olga spoke of was meant to remind her listeners that “every life from the womb to the tomb has a purpose, regardless of the life condition.”
Mother Olga shared that she knows this from her own life. She had many health challenges when she was born in Iraq, leading doctors to tell her parents that they didn’t expect her to live beyond her fifth birthday.
Yet as she grew well beyond age 5, Mother Olga came to know that “God has had a purpose for my life,” leading her to serve as a missionary in 14 countries.
“I have seen many wars and a lot of suffering, yet I have seen the hand of God so present in all these places and circumstances of my life,” she said. “If God didn’t have purpose for my life, I would have not lived what I have lived or survived what I have survived to be here with you today.
“So, please, my beloved children, my spiritual children in Christ, my brothers and sisters, I want you to believe in the gift of life and the purpose that God has for every child, for every person.”
At the end of her first presentation, Mother Olga had a student from Bishop Dwenger High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., in the Fort Wayne-South Bend Diocese, to help her lead all of the those at the rally in repeating several times, “Life is a gift from the womb to the tomb.”
“I really want baby Hendrix to hear us … and even the babies in heaven to hear us,” Mother Olga said. “Can we say it in honor of every gift of life, whether that baby is in the womb, whether that baby is in a NICU, whether that baby is in heaven right now? Can we say it wholeheartedly? Life is a gift from the womb to the tomb.”
‘My life is a gift and my life has purpose’
In her second presentation, Mother Olga reflected on the ministry she and the sisters in her community do among the elderly residents of nursing homes in Boston, especially those suffering from Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, emphasizing the importance of “simply being present” to them.
“I don’t take their pain away. I cannot change their lives. I cannot bring their memory back. But I can make whatever they have left on this side of heaven meaningful.”
This simple approach to ministry, Mother Olga said,
is an example of the principle embodied in the lives of St. Thérèse of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Calcutta “that not all of us can do big things, but we all can do small things with big love,” a statement that she had her audience repeat several times.
To highlight this, Mother Olga shared the story of an elderly Puerto Rican woman in a nursing home. She had forgotten everything in her life except the music she loved and the dances that went with them. She even taught sisters in Mother Olga’s community how to play maracas.
“We couldn’t bring her memory back,” she said. “We couldn’t change her circumstances or her life. But if the only way that she can feel the love of God is to dance with the sisters, praise God. If the only way that she feels she still has purpose in life is to teach our sisters how to play the maracas, praise God. We all can do small things with big love.”
Mother Olga summed up her message by saying that “there is a purpose for every life, even if people have no memories left. These residents, they fill our lives, the sisters and I, with so much joy. We all look forward to visiting them every week, all year long.
“I often tell our sisters that we are the only Jesus they see. But also for us, whenever we visit them, he is the Jesus that we visit.”
She went on to tell them firmly that thinking that they can do nothing for the sick, the elderly, people suffering from addictions or terminal illnesses “is a lie.”
“I want you to hear it from me: that is a lie,” Mother Olga said. “You have so much to offer—your prayers for them, your love for them and most importantly, your presence to them. Try to see Jesus in them, in the wrinkly hands, or broken legs or blind eyes. We can see Jesus in each other.
“We are in the presence of Jesus all the time. Yes, sometimes the broken Jesus, sometimes the sick Jesus, sometimes the wounded Jesus.”
After speaking of the dignity of babies with severe health challenges and elderly people who have lost their memories, Mother Olga’s closing words were a reminder to her young audience of their worth in God’s eyes.
“You live in a very difficult time, in a way, because you live in a generation of social media,” she said. “Your worth, your identity, is [determined] by the number of people who click likes or follow you on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok or Twitter.
“But no, I want you to hear it from me, so loud in your heart. You are worth more than any numbers on social media. You don’t need to be a social influencer. You are already a God-given gift as a divine influencer because you’ve been created in the likeness and image of God.”
And similarly as she ended her first presentation, Mother Olga brought to the stage a group of young people to lead their peers in repeating, “My life is a gift and my life has purpose.”
‘The greatest joy of my life’
Elizabeth Taylor and Angel Morales attended the rally with about 50 other students from Father Michael Shawe Memorial High School in Madison.
Elizabeth, a sophomore at Shawe, was touched by Mother Olga’s reflections on the dignity of people young and old with health challenges.
“It touched me because my dad was born premature and he was told that he wouldn’t be able to have children,” she shared. “I was the one that proved the doctors wrong.”
This was the second rally that Angel, a junior at Shawe, has attended. He spoke of how he’s impressed by spending time among so many pro-life peers from across the state.
“Not all of us know each other,” he said. “But we all know that we want to speak for those who can’t speak for themselves.”
Jocelyn Rouch accompanied about 200 youths from the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend as its director of youth and young adult formation.
This was her third rally, but the first as a mother. Coming along with Rouch was her 3-month old son Pio, whom she often held to her chest with a baby wrap.
“I feel like I appreciate [the pro-life message] more,” Rouch said. “There are so many things that I didn’t know. Yes, I was pro-life. But now that I have a baby, it’s like this is the greatest joy of my life, and I want other people to experience that.” †
