CYO

St. Mark’s CYO youth group is open to all high school teenagers. Our meetings are typically on Sunday evenings (7:30-9 PM) during the school year. We not only learn about our Catholic faith but put faith into action by engaging in numerous service activities including working at an Asbury Park soup kitchen and visiting a local nursing home. We assist at the annual Champion for Life dinner, are servers at the St. Patrick’s Day party at St. Mark’s, and we also present the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday as well as well as run the parish Easter Egg hunts.

CYO is an opportunity to bond with other teens who share our common faith and compassion to serve others. It is also a great social outlet with lots of social events: our Girls and Guys’ Nights, Bowling and Miniature Golf, our annual barbecue, Senior Supper with Monsignor Sean, plus our Thanksgiving and Christmas parties! We have Game Board Night, Leadership Night, Comedy Night and very special guest speakers. If you wish to develop your leadership skills, there are plenty of opportunities for you to lead a meeting or discussion group or design and implement a new CYO activity and then get it organized and completed. Our current and former CYO members have written and directed movies as well as implemented Operation Christmas Child, Operation Cookies for U.S Soldiers in Afghanistan and a charity bike-a-thon into our program. Our annual Christmas wreath sale enables us to donate thousands of dollars to many worthy charities such as Madonna House, St. Denis Doves and the Mission of Mercy– Uganda missions.

Our primary goal in CYO is to make all our teens feel welcomed in our church and to help them realize their special role in knowing, loving and serving God and others through our faith community. CYO members make lifelong friends in our program.