From Archbishop Hallinan

Sermon For Young People
May 23, 1966
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I will pour out My Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy. Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. (Joel, 2, 28)

Since St. Peter took this verse of the prophet Joel to announce the new age of Christ Our Lord, young men and women have carried the vision of the Spirit into classrooms and laboratories, into offices and factories, into neighborhoods and cities. They have founded new homes and reared new families. Long experience and ripe wisdom have indeed been the gifts of an older generation. Christianity, itself a “new birth”, the putting on of a “new man”, has had its greatest impact when youth walked boldly into their new worlds and bore fresh witness to their Lord, --Who died in His early thirties.

Visions come naturally to young men and women. Otherwise they would not enroll in terribly complex studies, tackles jobs that savor more of the heroic than the secure. A young man, on the eve of going off to battle, marries a girl in what surely could be termed a risk, but hardly a calculated one. The Peace Corps, the Papal Volunteers, a mission of mercy, a demonstration against injustice, a readiness to dedicate his life to a servant-priesthood, or to consecrate her life by attachment to God and detachment from the natural freedoms, --the list is long. In each case, the Spirit of God has opened up a new way to unselfish betterment, a love-centered happiness, a God-centered holiness. And when God was willing, vision and prophecy accompanied the decision.

The dreams of older persons are more modest; their years of hard learning and repeated frustrations have made them more mature. The world needs the men and women of this harvest-time of life. How poor our Church would be today without the years of Pope John, the mind of Jacques Maritain, the open heart of Cardinal Bea.

Nor do all young men and women have these visions upon which our human history necessarily feeds. A John F. Kennedy, a crusader for civil rights, some brave young African leader, a sacrificing young father or mother, these stand out in the anonymous crowd. They make us wonder what sort of visions occupy the youthful minds of the jet-set or the motorcycle crowd, the idle and empty souls of those content to eat at mankind’s table without the will to work or the will to rebel.

When God called Jeremiah to be His prophet, the youth objected that he could not speak well. Muttering “ah,ah,ah” he told the Lord. “ I am a child.” But he was immediately reassured: “Say not. I am a child, for you shall go to all that I shall send you. Whatever I shall command you, you shall speak.” And God then touched Jeremiah’s mouth with his hand, and said: “Behold, I have given my words to your mouth.”

Isaac, in turn, was astonished when he had his great vision of the Lord. An angel cleansed his tongue with a live coal, “and his sins were taken away.” Then impulsively, when he heard God say, “Whom shall I send?”, he answered, “Behold, here I am, send me.”

Both men, Jeremiah and Isaiah, became forceful prophets of their time, men through whom the “word of the Lord” came to the people. They instructed their nation with direct and often angry words. Prophets, like judges and policemen, are not often popular men. They must speak the truth. They must act with vigor. And it is essentially the role of the prophet to measure the things of the world by the yardstick of God.

The Second Vatican Council has opened a new age in the Catholic Church, --a time of return to the word of God in the Sacred Scriptures, a time of closer participation of all in his worship. Our concerns are wider today. We cannot taken for granted those of other faiths because ecumenism has been defined as Catholic practice. And those of other races, continents and cultures, -- the Church includes them all. We cannot ignore the poor who have been dispossessed of earthly goods, nor the rich who have despoiled themselves of heavenly realities. These tasks must be shared by us all, men and women of all ages, who profess the Lord Jesus.

But it will take time to renew once more, with God’s help, the face of a weary, discouraged, guilty world. The older generation probably will not live to see the impact of the Council, although they will do their share. And those being born now will be the inheritors, not the agents, of the renewal. It is peculiarly the burden of youth to be sent like Isaiah, to have God put the right words in their mouth like Jeremiah. Young men and women, whether they naturally hesitate like Jeremiah or act on impulse like Isaiah, are the expected pioneers of this new march into the unknown.

It is theirs to speak the truth. So they must know the Gospels and the Old Law at least as well as they know chemistry or English or situational ethics. They must have on their shelves the documents of Vatican II, and read them as easily as they read Time, or James Bond or Harvey Cox's The Secular City. They must speak up, not in sermons but in honest Christian answers to the world’s problems. There are higher forms of the dialogue, but the must familiar kind is every day conversation. Here is the refinement of ordinary speech, sometimes quietly, sometimes with high spirit, talking not of the platitudes, but of the Church in the World of Today, is the voice of the modern young prophet.

Beyond speech, youth is invited to act with a vigor unknown and perhaps not unnecessary in the earlier part of our century. Then our home, our parish, our nation, our world seemed more secure than now. The work of fermentation that is going on today admits no mediocrity. It is becoming more difficult for a young man or woman to justify “sitting this one out.” New ideas as well as grandiose designs are appearing every day. We need healthy and heart spirits to try them out, to test them, as St. Paul, in order to choose what is good.

To measure the things of the world by the yardstick of God. This was the supreme task of the prophets of Israel. If we are to remake the fabric of the old challenge, to refashion the tools for a new design, we must enlist the fresh approach of youth. You will often be untrained, but what better training can take place than in Christian formation. You will make mistakes, but Christian progress is man’s crooked lines rewritten by God. You will irritate an older generation because the honest efforts of the young are necessarily commentaries on the mistakes of those who went before. The fresh ways of youth are needed but they should be carried out in humility, patience, kindliness and always charity.

Our Lord loved the young, not only the children who climbed on His knee, but John His friend, the prodigal son, the young man who sadly left Him because the price was too high. He shared the dreams of the older ones too. Joseph and Mary, Simeon and Anna the widow, Zachary and Elizabeth, but when he came to name those who were to be His witnesses. He called upon the young Apostles to spread His gospel, He blessed the young women who were to care for His Church and her poor and sick.

Visions, whether in His time or our own, whether at the First Pentecost or after the Second Vatican Council, come more readily to those who are entering the world. May God bless us now in this new generation with plenty of new apostles in every walk of life; men and women of courage blended with obedience; of justice worked out in love; above all, of faith shining forth in charity. They must be outspoken, yet generous; active, yet reflective. The burden today calls for every bit of vigorous Christianity that a willing generation is capable of giving.