Quique Mira, what are young people looking for?

At the age of 19, Quique Mira's life took an unexpected turn. After devoting many years to the world of nightlife and away from the faith, he met Father Javier, a priest stationed in Barcelona, a priest whose gaze and closeness awakened in him an inner restlessness. “The way he cared for me surprised me a lot,” he recalls. That encounter led him, almost by chance, to a Holy Week course in Madrid, where he had a decisive conversion experience: “I remember being on the floor, crying before a crucifix, realizing that there was something real in that love».

Since then, he began a process of searching for answers and spiritual accompaniment that transformed his life. Three years after that conversion, Quique decided to share his faith experience through social networks, which would later give rise to Aute, a project that seeks to be a bridge between young people and the Church, using digital media to proclaim the Gospel with authenticity and closeness.

Today, together with a team of more than 50 people, he is also promoting Kaleo, Aute's first face-to-face event to be held this Saturday, November 8, where hundreds of young people will live an immersive experience to discover that they are called and loved by God.

How did the idea of creating this project come up and what specific need did you see in today's youth that led you to promote it?

-I started creating content five years ago out of a desire in my heart to announce to young people what had changed my life. I came from a very different environment and after my conversion, I spent three years hidden from public life, networks, etc., falling in love with the faith, falling in love with the Lord, falling in love with the Church.

I began to understand that this had a lot to do with my life and I became more and more immersed in it. After three years I had it very clear in my heart that I had to create content to share my experience of Christ to others. My testimony grew a lot in social networks, I received a bombardment of messages from people saying «I did not know the Lord, I did not know the faith and when I saw your content I received an answer to a problem that was distressing me. I have understood that there is a God who loves me».

Well, brutal. I was in the business world at the time, but I was running a marketing department in Barcelona, a company in Barcelona. And as my account started to grow a lot, there was a point when I was invited to the United States to give a leadership course and that's when, talking to the young people I was giving the course to, I ran into a brutal identity crisis.

I met a young man subdued and bombarded by so many superficial inputs who told me uncle, I don't know who I am and I don't know what I'm doing here and I don't know what the meaning of my life is». I returned to Spain very touched. I told my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, «Mery, something has to be done».

I felt that I had to put more resources, more structure, more equipment to communicate the Gospel to the young people in a more professional and clearer way, which is what has changed my life. And that was the beginning Aute. Initially it was a tool to share the message of Christ to young people. Then we started to set up the application to connect the youth with the Church. 

In what specific ways Aute brings the word of God closer to young people? 

-We mainly do everything through digital media. Our official Instagram account is where we upload all the content, all the videos, which is a little bit the place where the viewer, where the audience, receives the Gospel.

But then, the idea is that each person who has been touched by the Gospel, download footprint and there, according to your location, you find a place to live the faith. In the end, Aute does not offer a direct path in faith. We are an instrument, a team of 50 people, with this mission of announcing the Gospel and then each young person finds his place in the Church.

What is the key to transmitting the message of Christ through the digital world? 

-Be authentic. I think young people are crying out for authenticity. We are tired of lives that are lies, that tell the half-truth. So much idealism cancels out the truth. When a young person perceives authenticity in someone who shares both his good and bad days, and who speaks from the heart, he recognizes it immediately. What is true is beautiful, and it comes through, and it is attractive.

I believe that the key to evangelizing in the digital world is to be authentic, to say «hey, I am a normal young person, with your same desires, concerns, with my job, with my dating relationship, but at the center of my life is something greater, which is Christ, which is the Lord».

Kaleo's motto is “you have been called by name”, what does that phrase mean to you and how do you expect young people to live it? 

-What the event intends, and a little bit the reason why we thought of it, is an immersive experience in which the young person will feel called by God.

There is an experience where it is said «disconnect and forget about everything that binds you in the world and connect with the Lord». For me that is the fundamental thing. I could not be where I am in my day to day life and doing what I do if it were not because I have been called by the Lord.

In my life I would have never imagined this. I had a job projection, a professional career, other aspirations in life, and since I met the Lord, since I was called there, all my activity, all my relationships, everything has changed. Everything has been transformed for the better, for the better.

We want to transfer that experience in the format of a seven-hour event, with lectures, a time of worship, live music, so that the young people see that they are loved by God and that this has to do with their lives and not just with a few. 

What fruits do you expect from Kaleo? What do you expect to happen after the event? 

-May each one return home with a heart in love and ready to serve the Lord. We hope to receive a young man who is doing, who survives.

Let them go out saying «today I work, tomorrow too, I have my girlfriend, better or worse, but life is exciting and I have a calling to serve with my gifts, to love. I have been created for this, I cannot be satisfied with what the world puts in front of me, with surviving». The whole event is planned with a common thread that proposes to the young man «you are called, you are loved and then you are sent».

The last stage of the event is a presentation of the sending, to say «go back to your reality, go back to your family, go back to your relationship, go back to your work and that really what you have seen here, which is this love of God, you can take it to your home, to your reality».

How do you know when to start talking about God? 

-It is a process. I didn't start talking about God publicly until three years after my conversion. I needed first, in an interior way, to understand what was happening to me, to answer questions, to let myself be accompanied and assimilated.

Then you start to understand your history. Then you look at your old environment and you say «I have to tell my friends with whom I used to go out on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays that there is a better life, that it's okay to go out partying but that life is not there, that we can't put life and hope there, which is how I lived until I was 19 years old».

First there has to be a journey of knowing, falling in love and understanding what God's love means in your life and the power it has. And then you find yourself in the need to say «this has not been given to me to keep for myself, but to share it with those around me».