Young People Desire Heroism

From: www.newcityph.com

Igino Giordani in «Fides», August 1955, pp.242-245

“It is a dangerous risk to abandon ourselves to God.” And young people want to embark on this dangerous adventure, to jump into the fray by loving God in the midst of the world.

Young people always run to a challenge. If they are not enfeebled by moral entanglements, they are always enamoured by the supreme beauty of God. Then they are prepared to face the most daring battle, the battle of faith.

They love the non-gratifying challenges of purity, of self-denial and dedication. But if they hesitate in front of Christ, perhaps it is because they are only familiar with a deformed image of Him, having been presented with a weak, worldly, mediocre version of religion, one coated by compromise and minimized by so many adaptations, like a secondary, marginal or even semi-clandestine activity, or something senile and boring, labouring as it strives to keep up with the pace of the generations.

Yet if young people are able to discover the true face of Christ, if they are able to grasp the real essence of the Church, then they will be fascinated precisely by the risk which (living) the Gospel entails. During the Church’s adolescence, the Early Church Fathers had said: “It is a dangerous risk to abandon ourselves to God.” And young people want to embark on this dangerous adventure, to jump into the fray by loving God in the midst of the world.

They do not know what to do with a Christianity that has been scaled down to the size of today’s world as if it were some sort of seasonal fashion. They want a Christianity that can be called “great.” They want it immense.

And so they are not interested in a Church that is small and reduced; they want a great, boundless Church, one which admits all humankind – the People of God.

If there is a lack of vocations, it is also because all the hardships and external ardour often required of them is not enough. They desire chastity in a society that is incestuous; they want poverty in the midst of this orgy of Mammon; they want love in a society dismembered by hatred.

They grow bored in a community in which one avoids speaking about union with God, or hesitates to talk about the merits of the Blessed Virgin Mary, or about penance and prayer; where the life of the Mystical Body is not lived out in a supernatural communion among brothers and sisters and with God, as God’s co-citizens among the citizens of this world so as to incarnate in human existence the graces of Divine Life, and to be Christ among brothers, for their brothers.

Therefore, a religion reduced to mere culture, organization, and apostolic techniques, and to aesthetic, metaphysical or literary discussions does not satisfy them at all.

Young people love daring missions.

They come running as soon as they are called by a Don Orione, a Canossa, or a Mother Cabrini. They run to anyone who is willing to offer them an adventurous life of purity and sacrifice, service and dedication. In other words, they love the heroism of the Cross, its folly.

Jesus passes by and the youths follow Him when they see Him, when their vision of Him is not obstructed by the emergence of others, by proud, super-creatures, who seem to be something more than the others because of their wealth, political power or puffed up vanity.

Jesus is passing by us now. If we follow Him without ever turning back, without offering excuses about the horses to be shod or the cows to be bought, because we have to give excuses to this person or that – then, by that very fact we return young. We become those children for whom the Kingdom of Heaven is made. Let us convert, therefore, for by converting we will see Him and will realize that we have been wasting time cultivating illusions and building our houses of straw. Beyond the vast new horizon we will see a Cross shining, a sign of victory over death. In Him we will have discovered Eternal Life.