The focus of the program is the Eucharist, the sacrament of penance and reconciliation, Catholic teaching, following the example of Mary and vocations.
“It is so neat to see from start to finish how excited the kids get,” says Steve Arisman, a pre-theology seminarian from the diocese studying at Conception College, who is one of the Totus Tuus leaders this summer. “Watching the kids’ reactions, we can tell they’re getting into it, and we hear parents talk about how their kids rave about how awesome this is. The kids have fun, but they learn so much, and it is solid Catholic teaching.”
Arisman is on one of the two teams of young adults — two women and two men on each team — who received national training and were commissioned to serve the youth of the diocese throughout the summer. The teams move weekly from parish to parish. Young men leaders, who are seminarians, stay at the parish rectory, and the young women leaders stay in the homes of host families in the parish. Team members are from all over the country and range in age from 18 to Arisman at 28. “They call me ‘Grandpa’ in the group,” Arisman says. “The majority of the leaders are in their early 20s.”
The Totus Tuus session for children in grades 1-6 runs Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Evening sessions for young people in grades 7-12 run Sunday through Thursday from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
During their workdays in each parish, the team leaders’ lunches are provided by parishioners, and for dinner the team members all gather together to eat at a parishioner’s home, before returning to the parish church for the evening session.
Erin Hodgson, 23, was the momentum behind bringing Totus Tuus to the diocese. She is co-coordinator of the diocese’s Totus Tuus, along with Kyle Holtgrave, associate director of Youth and Young Adult Ministries in the diocesan Office of Catechetical Ministries. A 2008 Quincy University graduate with a degree in theology, Hodgson first heard about Totus Tuus during her freshman year when she was at Illinois State University.
“I found out about the program through a friend who worked for it in Denver. It sounded great, and I wanted to get involved. But I didn’t want to go all the way out to Denver to work, so I went to South Dakota as a Totus Tuus leader.”
Hodgson, coordinator of religious education and youth minister at St. Brigid Parish in Liberty, talked to Bishop George J. Lucas about instituting Totus Tuus in the diocese, and the bishop put her in touch with Holtgrave.
“It has been awesome to see how well the program is going. I’ve been able to visit a lot of the different churches when their sessions are going on. This is bringing something to them that really speaks to kids’ hearts, and brings it home. It is an experience of Christ. It is really based on catechetics. To watch kids, parents and directors of religious education get so excited is wonderful. I couldn’t be more pleased. The team we have is absolutely so full of joy.”
Each daytime session starts with a skit depicting a mystery of the rosary. There are talks and fun play activities, daily Mass, the opportunity to go to confession, and to engage in dialogue about their faith.
“We teach them to respect their priests and to thank them, and to pray for more priests to come,” says Arisman.
In the sessions for high school students, participants break into small groups to talk about faith, Mass, Eucharist, confession, personal prayer, and adoration. They go to adoration, where they again have the opportunity to go to confession. During the program, there is a talk on chastity, and a talk on vocations. They watch Fishers of Men, a Dominican vocation video, and learn to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. One night is called “fun night,” where they play all kind of games. Each night ends at 9:20 with night prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours.
“We had high school kids in some places that straight up skipped baseball practice, skipped games in order to come,” says Erin.
“We tell parents, ‘If you can get them to come Sunday and Monday, we can get them to come the rest of the week,’” says Arisman. “The neat thing for us is to watch them change through the week, to see them open up more, have more fun, and realize how much they are learning.”
At St. Peter Parish in Quincy, where 120 grade school and 58 high school students from the Quincy area signed up for Totus Tuus, their pastor, Father John Burnette called it “a marvelous program. The children were instructed in their faith and they had a lot of fun. There was a lot of community building, and they kept coming back, day after day. The parents had marvelous things to share about it. One junior high school parent gave her child the option ‘try it out.’ The child kept coming back. They were hitting on all the cylinders.”
Father Burnette said the age of the leaders made a difference. “What it does is exciting. They are people coming from outside the parish and they share their faith. It was wonderful to see how well these young people knew their faith. I’m looking forward to having Totus Tuus again next year.”
Angie Hyde was responsible for Totus Tuus at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Springfield. “Overall it was wonderful. The college students who were the leaders were highly professional. They truly cared about our kids. They talked to them before and after the sessions. We are seeing the fruits of it. We already have kids talking about vocations, and we have adults who are praying the Liturgy of the Hours because their kids came home praying the Liturgy of the Hours.”
“The whole program was started by a seminarian a little over 20 years ago in Wichita, Kan. They now have around 40 seminarians in their diocese, and over half of them had attended Totus Tuus,” says Hodgson.