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Friday, April 25, 2003

 
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Kids and Mystery, or Why They Are At the Mall.

If you were near a movie theater recently, you saw the long lines of expectant youngsters waiting for two monster hits of 2002, Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings.

The movies are different: Harry Potter is “serious fun;” The Lord of the Rings is based on one of the monuments of 20th Century Literature.

Yet they have three very important things in common: they reflect the Christian beliefs of their authors, they deal with the spiritual world, and they are hits with the kids, especiallly boys.

This should tell us something about the kids, and why our youth programs have so much trouble attracting them.

At the age when our kids’ heads are filled with the grandest visions and most romantic ideas, when life to them seems like nothing so much as a string of endless possibilities, when they are straining to prove themselves worthy of the high calling that they feel deep within, we offer them lectures on...hygiene.

These are indeed the decisive years for moral instruction: teens are just beginning to understand the full reality of life, and they feel the tension. They are eager to spread their wings, but they want us there during the unavoidable crash landings. Adolescent life is almost nothing but “teachable moments.”

Yet to teach them, we must meet them as they are. Kids live in an eternal present. We cannot convince many youngsters that their actions have consequences because their experience is so limited. All they feel is the power of their growing bodies and minds. Even the best kid is going to feel most strongly the presence of those who are with him at the moment.

Our children often do not have very good company. Kid culture today is not the usual “running around time” that traditional cultures, in their wisdom, grant their children. Think of the ads now run by the once-conservative Coors, or the latest video by the once demure LeAnn Rimes. A kid party today is not something that can get out of hand. It probably begins out of hand.

Parents will not, cannot, be there at every such moment. But Jesus always is. Why not teach your children to be aware of that glorious presence?

Christian morality makes no sense without the person, Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul began his letters with lengthy explications of mystical doctrine. This was not a mistake, nor was it “socially constructed.” The doctrine of the Incarnation was, as St. Paul says, a “scandal” to the ancient mind. It is true enough that no one “talks that way” these days, because no one has ever talked that way without the light of the Gospel.

John Paul II is the most successful youth minister ever. It is worth listening to what he says about moral education, in one of his greatest gifts to us, Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth.) “This effort (in moral instruction) by the Church finds its support—the secret of its educative power—not so much in doctrinal statements and in pastoral appeals to vigilance, as in constantly looking to the Lord Jesus...In a particular way, it is in the crucified Christ that the Church finds the answer.” (Section 84)

He reiterates this point in his recent, beautiful Apostolic Letter on the Rosary. “Inasmuch as contemporary culture, even amid so many indications to the contrary, has witnessed the flowering of a new call for spirituality, due also to the influence of other religions, it is more urgent than ever that our Christian communities should become “genuine schools of prayer”. (Section 5.)

That powerful teaching was echoed recently by Cardinal Paul Poulard, in presenting a fascinating Vatican document on “New Age” spirituality. He noted, “People who adhere to New Age (thinking) have authentic spiritual thirst and the Church should ask itself why they are looking elsewhere.”
( www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/cultr/index.htm )

If you want your child to think about something other than what his friends, the culture, and his body are telling him at this second, show him Jesus. Instead of mumbling embarressedly about the rites of the Church, confidently fill the youth program with all the mystical stuff you can: Eucharistic adoration with lots of candles and incense, rosary recitations with Scripture readings and songs, frequent confession with serious priests, long evening Masses with beautiful music.

(The music is very important. Why give them relentlessly chirpy, upbeat songs when they themselves are experiencing the full range of human emotions on such a grand and immediate scale? )

And, most importantly, give them intensive Bible studies that concentrate on the mystical. As a troubled teen, I loved the combination of the heavenly and the practical in St. Paul’s letters. Who has caught the reailty of teenage—of human—life better than the he did in Romans 7 and 8? A child who struggles over the paradoxes in First John or James is a child who has had an introduction to life in Christ.

True enough, successful youth programs depend on dedicated adults who pray, in the words of the Liturgy of the Hours for Christmas Week, “that the mystery of the faith that glows in our spirit would shine forth in our works.” But children and youth workers are part of something larger, that is, the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ. When children are growing into fully formed adults, they should be introduced too all of the great gifts that God has granted to His children.

Or we can give them lessons on personal hygiene.

And wonder why they are all at the multiplex.

Very little on offer today is as good for your children’s souls as The Lord of the Rings, or even as much escapist fun as Harry Potter. Morning radio shows directed at boys are explicitly pornographic, and I do not mean merely off-color. That is what accompanies your child through the day.

Far, far better that your child knows that he or she is accompanied by Jesus, the Lord our God who took the form of sinful flesh, yet without sin. “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” (St. Matthew 28:20.) That is more comfort and security than even the most diligent parent can offer.

Copyright, 2003, Kenneth A. Killiany. All rights reserved.



Tuesday, April 22, 2003

 
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