Mags GarganIf there is one thing that attracts a young person it is radicality.
Laura Cullen
In one of his books, George Weigel asked young people: “Where are the saints of today?” This question stubbornly stuck in my mind. I started to wonder what is needed today to spread the message of Christ or the Good News. What can young people do to be the saints – the ones who carve out new paths of love and kindness – of tomorrow?
As young people, we must be sources of light that reflect the beauty of believing, but when faced with a culture that encourages a comfortable conformity and an undaring mediocrity, what is the best way to spread the Gospel message?
If there is one thing that attracts a young person (I can testify to this myself) it is radicality.
When I was in my first year in university, I felt the fire of radicality grow in my belly. I detected its sweet scent and its exciting promise. I wanted to change things.
Poverty
I was saddened when I saw the poverty and inequality that surrounded me, so I decided to become a radical socialist and started marching and protesting between the buildings of UCD and the streets of Dublin city. Yes, I wanted to change the world and I still do. Only now I have found the only way to do this.
Catherine de Hueck also felt this fire in her youth. Seeing the racial injustice in the US of the 1930s saddened her so deeply that she transformed these feelings of despondency into radical assertion and she founded Friendship House – a charity that looked after poor people, white and black. This house offered a place where these people could be together peacefully. It was a place modelled on the early Christian communities. The only law was love and the only objective was to see Jesus in each person.
Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin founded the Catholic Worker Movement in a similar fashion. Their radicality and deep-rooted faith helped them transcend the conventional attitudes of the time. They started a newspaper and set up a homeless shelter. They did not just preach empty passion-fuelled words but practised this passion too. Dorothy’s total dedication to the poor is the reason why many people call her a saint. Actions speak louder than words.
This is what we should be encouraging young people to do. These are the stories they ought to hear, to breathe in and to internalise.
The poet Claude McKay was a black nationalist who had flirted with communism. In 1942 he fell ill and was brought to Catherine de Hueck’s friendship house to recover. He was deeply moved by the tenderness and love he experienced there. One year later, he converted to Catholicism and became a volunteer in Friendship House.
Every human heart is touched by tenderness. We are spiritual creatures and every one of us is helplessly open, whether we choose to believe it or not, to the transcendent. When we feel love and tenderness we are feeling a spark of the tenderness of Jesus Christ, the divine tenderness. It has the power to seize us, just like it did Claude McKay.
This is the kind of radicality that will attract young people. This type of all-giving care will appeal to the natural goodness in each person and the natural desire to help the less well-off that is in most young people. This kind of radicality demands of us to give everything to others, to the poor, to humanity. Then we will change the world.
In a time when transparency is crucial, as Christians we must do far more than just speak. We must act.
Search
Young people today search for correlations between what is preached and what is done. We must show that the living Christ is among us. He is with us when we are of service to our brothers and sisters and not just in theory. He plants in our hearts the desires we have to change the world.
But we should change it by loving one person at a time.
I’ll never forget a talk I attended last year in UCD given by Fr Peter McVerry. He said by just smiling at a homeless person, we are doing a world of good. In that one smile, we can affirm a person’s dignity. A simple but sincere smile… I think we can all manage that.
So let’s appeal to that freshness that is deep down in everything. Jesus was a radical. And we, too, if we want to follow in his footsteps, must embrace this radicality.
At a time when mediocrity is everywhere I believe that young people will feel the attraction to serve others and thus the attraction to love that is God.
A return to radical Christianity, a Christianity that is concrete and gentle, tender and tough, I believe will attract the young hearts of tomorrow and turn those hearts into saintly ones.