The Holy Spirit and Youth
"There appeared to them parted tongues, as it were of fire" (Acts of the Apostles, ii. 3).
"The fire of youth," we say in one of our most familiar phrases — the fire of enthusiasm, the hot eagerness of young people, the burning flame of temptation, the bright light that burns in young souls, the raging flame of the young armies that sweep the battlefields, the uncontrolled fires that recklessly burn what they do not understand.
Youth is a flame. Youth is a fire. And we sigh a deep sigh as we realize that with years the flame dies down, the fires are banked, ashes lie cold and grey where once there was warmth and ardor, and the tremendous driving power of fire is gone forever.
So, when to the Apostles Christ spoke of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter, He was thinking of those older men who needed comfort and assurance. He saw with divine vision how weary they would grow with the struggle of life. He knew their discouragements. He felt the weariness that would weigh down their limbs. He spoke to them of the Holy Ghost as one who would, like a kindly physician, bind up their wounds and calm their troubled souls and give them peace and the assurance that in the midst of apparent defeat there was still victory ahead.
Yet, when He actually sent the Holy Spirit, He sent tongues of burning fire. This was to men who, in their mission, were young men. The moment of Pentecost was the start of their new lives. This was the birthday of the Catholic Church. This was the bright flame that signaled the start of their swift, prairie-fire sweep across the world. This was the beacon calling them to arms. They were young men at that moment — men with all the possibilities of a new life before them. In time they would need the Comforter. Right at that moment of their spiritual youth, they needed a burning flame.
So, to young men and women the Holy Spirit must be a flame, a raging fire, a bomb to blow up their apathies and wearinesses, a beacon to challenge them to combat, a searchlight thrown into their deepest minds, a warmth to kindle their enthusiasms, a pillar of fire by day and night to lead them across the world.
Actually the story of the relationship of the Holy Spirit to youth has three aspects. Two of them are most consoling. One of them would be depressing were it not for the fact that it challenges the leaders of youth to an almost forgotten task and beckons youth itself to an almost forgotten God.
The first aspect of the story is God's. Into the lives of all His children God comes with an almost startling intimacy. Here is no remote and distant God. Here is no Deity seated on a throne, far out of reach except of far-flung prayers strongly winged, faintly heard. Here is the Trinity who holds the infant in the arms of a loving Father, who comes to the young body under the disguise of Bread, who burns its way into the growing soul in the flame of Confirmation.
At the very time when the flame of passions is being kindled in adolescence, the flame of the Holy Spirit comes to fight fire with fire. When the mind, innately Catholic and naturally religious, runs into the smoke screen of doubt thrown up by the enemies of God and His light, the Spirit of Light and Truth burns in the very depths of the young person's soul. At the moment when the temptations of life seem quite irresistible, there is given to the youngster the conquering flame which is God's own invincible strength. When human love has awakened, troubling the young heart, disturbing the forward march of the emotions, the God of Love comes in Confirmation to fill youth's impressionable years with the warm fire of divine love.
All the Sacraments are important. Yet, none is more perfectly suited to the age for which it was destined than the Sacrament of Confirmation: to counteract hot passions, the fire of pure Spiritual Love; to dispel the gloom and fog of doubt, the clear light of the God of Wisdom; to burn away false loves, the love of God's own lovely Spirit; to reassure the young soul, stumbling for the first perilous fall, the bright light of the Holy Spirit.
That is God's story. The story of the Church is almost as clear. In rapid succession the Church matches the growth of the young person with the progress of the Sacraments.
The child is born; and Baptism gives to him his birth in God, a spiritual birth to match the physical birth.
The little child reaches the age of reason, and for the first time knows good and evil. A trembling shudder and he falls. He knows the paralysis of sin and the soiling effect of guilt upon his soul. The Church takes him by the hand and leads him into the shelter of the Sacrament of Penance.
The little body grows, clamoring insistently for food. The soul grows too, and the guidance of the Church brings the soul to the Divine Table where it tastes for the first time, and knows all through its being, the Bread of Life and the Food in the strength of which saints walk towards heaven.
Doubts are dimly born; the presence of the enemy is vaguely felt; adolescence fans new temptations to troublesome life; passion wakes to hot, smoky vigor. And the bishop walks along the altar rail, hands extended, while into the living body of these growing boys and girls comes the God of Wisdom, the Spirit of Love, the Source of Light and Courage.
Thus far, everything is timed with divine precision. The story of man's relationship to God takes on its perfect form and moves in perfect development. Then comes the last aspect of this story, the relationship not of God to the young person but of the young person to God. And there one pauses in embarrassment.
Whose is the fault? Is it the fault of us who are priests? Is it the carelessness of parents? Is it the strange blindness of the young people themselves? Or are priests, parents, and young people united in a singular conspiracy of silence and almost contempt which makes it sadly true that, for the overwhelming number of boys and girls, young men and women, the Holy Spirit is simply the Forgotten and Neglected God?
How lovely it would be if we could say: "Young people use this Fire in their souls for the thousand noble purposes it was meant to have"! Instead . . .
In many a Catholic school the year begins with the Mass of the Holy Spirit. The student body kneel together. The choir solemnly calls upon the Holy Spirit to come and dwell within them. An eloquent orator cries from the pulpit the glories of Catholic truth and the beautiful reality which is the light and warmth and explosive power of Catholic principles. All the while the young people sit in their pews, with the Holy Spirit burning, a neglected flame, in their hearts. They look outside them, vaguely thinking of parted tongues still to come. They glance up towards heaven as they would, seeking God the Father. They turn towards the altar, where in the tabernacle they are accustomed to find God the Son. But they do not by the simplest gesture in the world turn inward to find, in the core of their very souls, God the Holy Spirit. They need to be reminded — they must, if life is to be a success — that for all of them there was a Pentecost.
That personal Pentecost they can best understand if they remember the first Pentecost: the fear of the Apostles, their hiding away in the dark places, their vagueness about the teachings of their Master, their dread of the future, their scurrying away from the spies in the street, their fear of any soldier who glanced their way. And then the swift wind, the parted tongues of flame, and a revolution in their soul, such a revolution as only fire can bring! They are no longer afraid; they face the world like conquerors; they no longer skulk in darkness; they go out to prince and people, carrying in their hands the burning light of Christian truth; they are not ignorant, timid fishermen; they are the great world Revolutionists who upset a rotten paganism, bombed out of existence the world of cruel injustice and selfish lust, and built a new world that was the Kingdom of God.
That first Pentecost was meant to be duplicated in every soul that comes for Confirmation. Of this our young people simply must be reminded. Within them are the parted tongues of flame. No longer visibly, but with the same splendid reality, they came at the moment of Confirmation. They remain until driven out by the hideous rebellion and counter-revolution which is sin.
This is a forgotten reality. And to this, as a start, we must bring every young man and woman, every boy and girl, to whom we can speak of the God of Fire and Light who dwells in their souls.
That is the simple fact which God meant to underlie the whole relationship of the Holy Spirit and the young children of God. They are not alone. The fire of youth is no idle expression; the parted tongues which were the Spirit of Pentecost burn in young Catholic souls. The Third Person of the Blessed Trinity is in the center of their being, like a vigil light burning at a shrine, like the light before the tabernacle, like banked fires in a foundry, like the warming fire upon a hearth.
From that magnificent and exciting truth, which should somehow be a central conviction with all young people, comes a series of glorious practices.
In the moments of doubt and difficulty, of decisions to be made and truths to be learned, the young person turns inward to that burning light. Black doubt disappears. Difficulties are so brightly lighted that their explanation becomes clear. Decisions are left, not to blind chance or accident, but to the clear guidance of Wisdom personified. And the truths that make all the difference between a life guided towards God and a life drifting towards destruction glow with vivid clarity in the light of the Holy Spirit.
Temptation burns with hot fire. Its fumes almost choke the young soul. The young person seems to melt under their power. He grows as weak as wax in the sun. But somewhere he has heard that fire is fought with fire. And so he fights it. "Come, Holy Ghost!" he cries. There within His troubled soul and temptation-hot body the pure flame of God's fire burns. He is fighting not alone but with the irresistible flame of God Himself. He sees the hot temptations recede. The fumes burn away. He grows strong and sure of himself. Lust has been burned away. The adolescent knows he is not left to his own unaided weakness. He fights the fire of evil with the fire of God's own Spirit. Victory is his.
Love wakes during those years of adolescence. Often human love is beautiful. Often it is not love at all but its murky counterfeit, lust. Always it is, in the days of youthful development, disturbing, perplexing, a mixture of good and evil, of strength and weakness, of idealism and troublesome temptations.
Yet, all the time within the soul of youth burns the Spirit of Love itself. False love fades before that true Love. True love grows stronger at the shrine-flame of God's Love. The bright, white light of the Holy Spirit makes lesser loves pale and die. The beautiful love which God meant all of us to have for our fellows, increases in beauty and warmth when into it is fed the flame of God's burning Love.
That flame breaking into the souls of the Apostles sent them out to set a world on fire. Christ had cast fire upon the earth. He had kindled a light that would never be quenched. From that flame a million million lesser flames would take their spark — the little red lights before the altar, the burning books that light up Christ's own truth, the flame-like souls that have carried Christ and His Law unto the farthest horizons, the calm lights that burn above Catholic cradles, the glowing example of fine Catholic manhood, the unquenchable flames in the souls of martyrs, the bright swords of Crusaders in war and peace, the candle-glow of nuns at prayer, the lightning blaze of priestly oratory. That flame was the high explosive to blow up the old sinful world. It was the hot riveting flame that made possible the building of the City of God.
That very flame is in the souls of our young people. It awaits their use. In their hands, it becomes the fire of a thousand glorious purposes. It is a light to be lifted over a world lost in darkness and muddling through inky fog. It is the warm fire around which Catholic homes can be established and Catholic loves made beautiful and pure and divinely constructive. It is the pillar of fire to a lost civilization. It is stronger than the flame from the mouth of cannon: that cannon-flame destroys; this flame builds towards God's own heaven.
It awaits the uses of the young.
In their hands it can remake the world.
The Holy Spirit and Youth!
God has done His part magnificently. The Church has seen to it that early in life each Catholic young person passes through the glory and promises of his own Pentecost.
What is youth doing? Little enough, I'm vastly afraid. What can it do? With the fire and light and warmth and explosive power of the Spirit of God within our Catholic young men and women, youth can destroy the world of black doubt and smoky sin and destructive high explosives. It can flood a world with light and rekindle the warmth for which shivering mankind is groping. It can build around the undying Shrine Flame of the Holy Spirit the perfect City of God.
Joseph F. Wagner, Inc.
This item 7514 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
