Denver, Colo., Nov 12, 2024 / 08:00 am
A traditional quinceañera — a celebration for a young Hispanic woman when she turns 15 — includes not just a beautiful ball gown and vibrant party but also a Mass of celebration and thanksgiving.
Now, in preparation for her quinceañera, a young woman may also opt to take classes with the “Quinceañera Created for God: Creada para Dios” program. The course is an eight-week bilingual formation program run by local parishes designed to prepare young women for their quinceañeras by forming them in understanding their femininity from a Catholic perspective.
Attendees braved the snowy Colorado weather on Nov. 7 to celebrate the launch of “Creada Para Dios” at Most Precious Blood’s St. Stephen’s Hall in Denver. The group also included participants from the Diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Denver Auxiliary Bishop Jorge Rodríguez led the gathering in bilingual prayer to open the event.
Endow, which develops materials for Catholic youth groups and other formation materials, focuses on women’s identity based on Church teaching, such as St. John Paul II’s 1995 Letter to Women. Endow (Educating on the Nature and Dignity of Women) helps facilitate small groups through its programs for middle- and high-school students as well as adults.
The newest addition to its programs, the Quinceañera Formation Program, is managed by its Spanish outreach group, Magnifica.
When families come to the Church asking for a quinceañera Mass, Annette Bergeon, CEO of Endow, said she hopes that parishes will be able to offer them the Quinceañera Formation Program.
“It’s a real opportunity because you know how hard it is to evangelize in our culture today. We have to go out there,” Bergeon told CNA. “We have to try to convince people that the Church has something of value to say to them. In this case, they’re coming to us, so we have this awesome opportunity to speak into their hearts and into their lives.”
Filling a formation gap
Janeth Chavez, director of Magnifica, noted that “across the United States, parishes celebrate thousands of quinceañera Masses and blessings each year.”
“When a girl turns 15, most Hispanic families approach the Church to ask for a Mass or blessing to give thanks to God for their daughter’s life,” she told CNA. “However, when they return, they often receive little to no faith formation.”
Bergeon added that young women today face “tremendous pressure and tremendous challenges.”
“Three of the key problems that the researchers have found is that they lack a sense of purpose in their life, they lack adult mentorship, and they lack real meaningful friendships,” Bergeon explained. “And this formation program, by bringing them together and giving them the faith formation with a parish-assigned group leader, gives them not only the faith formation and the opportunity to build real authentic friendships, it gives them that sense of purpose in their life.”
The program was the “brainchild” of Rodríguez of the Archdiocese of Denver, Bergeon said.
“He has wanted a formation program for quinceañera for a long time because a lot of quinceañera are culturally Catholic but not practicing,” she said. “It’s an event that brings their family and the young women to the Church, but a lot of times when they come, they [the parish] don’t really have any faith formation for them. They don’t have a strong program for them. So it’s more like a one-day event.”
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The program, Bergeon hopes, will change that. It began with pilot groups in California, Colorado, and Washington. But Chavez hopes to spread it to dioceses all over the United States now that the program has launched.
Keep God at the center of the celebration
“The goal of this program is to help young girls encounter the love of Jesus and understand that they are created for God,” Chavez explained. “It aims to help them embrace their identity as beloved daughters of God, recognize their dignity and value as women, deepen their faith, and share their gifts and talents with others. It encourages quinceañeras to keep God at the center of their celebration and to give him thanks for the life and families they have.”
“This program is a way to engage them, engage their families, and to teach them, give them some solid faith formation, teaching their dignity as women, especially as coming of age, and to help them understand the beauty of the feminine vocation, which in our culture is very much under attack,” Bergeon added.
Rodríguez said in a talk at the launch event that Magnifica’s quinceañera program “is giving us the key, how to reach out to the Hispanic community, because this is something that is very Hispanic.”
“The first thing I have to say, this program works,” Rodríguez said. “It works.”
Womanhood from a Catholic perspective
The program delves into the question of womanhood from a Catholic perspective.
“What does it mean to be a woman? Because a woman is a gift from God,” Rodriquez said. “We read it in Scriptures. She is a gift from God, and I don’t know if we are appreciating women as we should.”
When Ilyza Marripa went through the quinceañera pilot program, said she learned “a lot about valuing myself.”
“It really helped me reflect on my friends, my family, the people I was hanging out with, the choices I was making, the choices that I should be making, or just reflecting on things that I could have done better,” Maria said.
The weekly structure of the program helps young women by “creating a supportive parish community where the girls can learn, share, and form new friendships,” Chavez noted.
“I noticed the more the girls came to the meetings, the happier and more engaged they became,” Chavez said. “They took part in reading and sharing and learned more about the quinceañera tradition and their Catholic faith. Many of them began going to Sunday Mass regularly, made new friends, and wanted to get more involved in the parish or join the youth group.”
“Parents said they were learning from their daughters’ experience, and group leaders said they were growing spiritually too,” Chavez added.
Aline Cervantes, a group leader of a pilot quinceañera program, said the program involves a week-to-week learning based on a book that Endow put together that “dig[s] deeper into what the feminine genius really is.”
“Every week [the program] allows room for the girls to really grow into relationship with the Lord. But not only that, but to really accept that femininity that he has created in them and to realize how powerful they are in Christ,” Cervantes said.
“I think that’s been really beautiful to watch much, especially in our Hispanic community, for them to really learn, why are we having these quinceañeras? Aside from the party, who are you as a woman? Who is God calling you to be as a woman?” she said. “And it’s been really beautiful to watch them do that.”
Cervantes said she saw how the young women attending classes grew more comfortable throughout the program, especially through a prayer that they say every week: “I am a daughter of God.” At the beginning of the program, Cervantes told the girls to put the prayer on their mirrors.
“They truly start believing that,” she said of the prayer. “‘You are a beloved daughter of God, and he did create you to be this lovely person.’ And you get to see them not only just believe it, understand it, and just fall in love with that and with themselves.”
