To the Young People
Every Christmas, I consider changing this, but I keep coming back to it. I always begin the same way, saying to myself, “I want to write a word to the young people sitting in the pews before Christmas Mass, who may be looking up from their phones long enough to read something from the priest.” Adding, “It should be short, and maybe include a graphic to catch their attention.”
And then I think to myself, “Don’t try to sound relevant. And, for God’s sake, don’t try to sound cool. But don’t be depressing either. Remember, the general decline of society is not so much something they’re creating, as much as something they’re inheriting, so go easy on them. Nor do you really have a relationship with them. But,” I remind myself, “you may find that gently acknowledging how hard it must be for them to navigate these times in which we live - even admitting that it’s hard to know how to write to them - they just may hear a word from God in their hearts, a word of hope, of understanding love.” And then I return to this Christmas message:
It seems natural to me that we detach from our parents as we grow into adulthood. It seems to me that God designed the human person to do just that. But it also seems that the process of maturing is taking longer these days. Nor does it enjoy the success rate it once did.
It also seems natural for a child to move from saying, "I believe in God because my parents do," to saying, "I believe in God because I do." And if that child is ever to become a mature Catholic of deep faith, that transition is also necessary. This is what continues to interest me, this process of moving from worshipping our parents to worshipping God.
I mean no disrespect by the expression, worshipping our parents. I did it too. We all did. All children do. That's how God designed us. That's how life begins: we are formed by our parents. But when we begin to think for ourselves, we begin also to understand that our parents are not gods, and that they themselves are imperfect. Nor can they save us.
The emotional mourning that often accompanies the discovery of our parents' limitations, easily masked by the excuse to rebel, is made all the more painful these days by a cultural storm clamoring for our attention at every turn. Growing in the Faith is treacherous.
Acquainted with the prayers of your parents, all I want for Christmas this year is for you to find some way to be taken up into the Mystery yourselves, and there to find for yourselves the God who formed all of us in our mothers' wombs when He gave us life in the first place. +