By Stephen P. White
I’m old enough now to be the sort of person who occasionally observes, with all apparent seriousness, that being surrounded by young people makes me feel young at heart. It’s a concession to the realities of middle age that I resist making, but here we are.
I’ve just returned from two weeks of teaching Catholic social doctrine in Poland to some three dozen young people, most between the ages of 20 and 25. By any measure, this group was exceptional compared to their peers: academically excellent, seriously religious (mostly devout Catholics), vocationally minded, and incredibly diverse (we had students from both Peoria and Papua New Guinea).
Yet for all that, they were united in their assessment of their own generation: anxious, fearful, and generally unsettled. Beyond the normal uncertainties of youth, this generation does not seem sure of who they are, who they are supposed to be, or to whom they might turn for answers. In short, they have inherited a deep doubt about the very possibility of hope.
The horizon by which they are taught to understand themselves seems to be shrinking. Young people feel the longing for greatness, but they seem increasingly afraid that such longings are illusory, that the call to greatness is impossible to answer.
They are taught to strive for passing things—money, status, academic excellence—not because these passing things will satisfy them, but because these things are all there is. It is a miserable lesson imparted by a frustrated and cynical age that, having lost its own confidence in human possibilities, has inoculated a younger generation against hope.
My students are more immune to all this than most, but they see it around them and cannot help being affected. And that should trouble us all.
Those of us who are older sometimes like to tell ourselves that youth is wasted on the young. I suspect this is little more than resentment on the part of people who are surprised to discover how difficult it is for them to touch their toes. The physical advantages of youth are obvious. But there are disadvantages, too.
Ronald Reagan—who was then 73 and seeking re-election against 56-year-old Walter Mondale—famously quipped in a debate: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, the youth and inexperience of my opponent.” The joke is, if anything, even funnier four decades later.
Youth (and its necessary companion, inexperience) turns out not to be a great credential for anything. To be sure, physical health and beauty, which come more easily to the young, are good things, but they are not reliable indicators of character or virtue. The measure of a man is found elsewhere.
Young people, moreover, seem to know this. They understand, with all the hope and anxiety that entails, that they are not yet the men or women they will become. That space—the space between the person one is and the person one is becoming—is where the ultimate drama of every human life unfolds.
This knowledge ought to be a source of wonder and hope, both for the young and for those who are not so young. But it can only be so when human life is set before its proper horizon.
Christian faith stretches those horizons—far beyond the temporal and the material—to their utmost limit. In the light of the Incarnation, we perceive the fullest possible scope of human aspiration: perfect union with God himself.
This union is not an obliteration of the self, but a fulfillment. As Pope John Paul II observed in his first Urbi et orbi: “For God and before God, the human person is always unique and unrepeatable, someone thought of and chosen from eternity, someone called and identified by his own name.” To be a saint is to be conformed to God and, in so doing, to become truly and perfectly oneself.
I said that being surrounded by young people has the virtue of making me feel young at heart. What I mean is that young people tend to perceive more readily the drama to which we are all called. If the young are less calloused by the inevitable costs of life in this valley of tears, they feel the promise and potential of vocation far more acutely. And that is contagious.
To feel young at heart is to be renewed in the hope that comes from knowing the heights to which we are called and knowing the One who calls us by name.
Which brings us back to the question of today’s young people. The danger for young people today is not so much that they are looking for God in the wrong places, but that they have been sold the idea that the search itself is dangerous and very likely not worth the risk. The highest aspirations of the human heart have been cowed by fear, anxiety, and doubt.
That is not enough. Human beings were made for greatness. We all fail, but we have a Savior who lifts us up. Young people, more than anyone, need to be reminded of this. They need examples of this. Young people today need to hear the words so associated with Pope John Paul II, but which are the first and last words of the Gospel:
“Be not afraid.” Christ knows “what is in man.” Only He knows. Today, very often man does not know what is within him, in the depths of his mind and his heart. Very often he is uncertain about the meaning of his life on this earth. He is assailed by doubt, a doubt which turns into despair. We therefore ask you, we beg you with humility and trust, let Christ speak to man. He alone has words of life, yes, of eternal life.
Such words are capable of making anyone feel young at heart, because they inspire in us the boldness to hope. These words transformed a generation. And they can do so again. If only we have the courage to proclaim them.
About the author:
Stephen P. White is the executive director of the National Shrine of Saint John Paul II and a fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.