Youthful Hope

The following article was originally published in the June 2024 issue of Roqueta, Menorca's English-language magazine.

Three years ago, as part of an article for Roqueta, I mentioned that the Church of England has a programme called the Ministry Experience Scheme (MES), which offers young people the opportunity to spend a year in a parish working and observing what life is like as an ordained minister.  Each intern is assigned someone to guide them, as well as pastoral mentor, whose role is to listen and support them.  I was duly assigned to a young woman from the Netherlands, Daleen, to be her pastoral mentor.  Daleen and I keep in touch regularly, while she has been studying at a seminary in Durham for the past three years.  At the end of June I hope to be able to travel to Brussels, where she, along with several others will be ordained as a deacon.  Then she will be off to Lisbon to serve as a curate in the Anglican chaplaincy there, to be ordained as a priest in the not-too-distant future.

As I said three years ago, if there needed to be evidence that life can be restored to the dry bones of the church, there are young people, with enthusiasm, inquisitiveness, and spiritual energy, who can serve as an oracle of hope.  There are those who like to demean or belittle young people for all sorts of reasons, whether it be to assert that they have a sense of entitlement, or a naive lack of reality, or … well, I’m tired of hearing the recital of complaints about young people.  I don’t believe that the current generation of youth is any worse than any preceding generation.  Not only that, but they have inherited a world that is the creation of those who have gone before.

Kate and I were invited to be guests at an English language class for adults recently, where we discussed a lot of things, with a conversation that I would probably not have managed in Spanish, so I was impressed by the fluency of the students.  One of the subjects discussed was the comparison between student protests of the 1960s and student protests in 2024.  Why should young people not protest about perceived injustice in the world?  Does it make a difference?  Well, it could be argued that the Vietnam war came to an end partly because of protests.  The sad thing is that there are those who protested against war, inequality and injustice in the 1960s who seem to have migrated to a different point of view in their later years.  Is it because we all have become just a little too comfortable within our own lives and resent the potential intrusion of others into our comfort?

I have to be careful, or I will stray back into territory that I covered previously in last December’s Roqueta, when I mentioned John Wesley’s complaint of the rich, that they had no idea what ordinary lives were like.  Most of us in the western world are rich by global standards, and wilful ignorance of the plight of others is, as I said then, often just an excuse for hardness of heart. 

Meanwhile, returning to the subject of young people and the priesthood, I was pleased to be invited to the cathedral in Ciutadella at the end of April to witness the ordination of a young man from Es Castell, Jaume, to be a priest in the Roman Catholic church.  I have known him since he was sent to me to help him with his English studies in secondary school.  The ordination was a splendid ceremony; cathedrals, whether Roman Catholic or Anglican, generally know how to do such things well!  The following day, when Jaume celebrated his first mass as a priest, Es Castell was rife with clergy from Menorca, Valencia and other parts of Spain.  It really was quite encouraging, because far fewer young people present themselves to be considered for a role as a member of the clergy than was the case decades ago.  Not only that, but Jaume seems to have been gifted with a spirit of caring and compassion, coupled with humility, and an understanding of servant leadership.  I hope and pray that he will carry that sense of humility with him throughout his life as a priest, because it’s all too easy to forget that as a priest he is (we are) called to servant leadership.  Compassion is easily blunted by arrogance and pride.  

I wrote to Jaume to congratulate him for his ordination, and express my respect for his gifts.  I also reminded him that he should never stop learning, or being open to learning.  The more we know of God, the more we realise that we don’t know, and this should keep us on our toes, and always ready to grow in learning (and awe, I suppose!).

In all of this, I was acutely aware that I was holding a mirror up to myself.  How do I match up to having appropriate respect for youth?  Do I approach servant leadership with a spirit of humility?  Am I open to continuing a journey of learning?  Should I work harder at improving my ability to converse in Spanish?  Well, that last one is undoubtedly true!  Above all, can I grasp the nettle of frustration, disappointment and sadness from a damaged world, and from it pluck the flower of hope (to borrow tangentially from Shakespeare)?  Perhaps readers would like to look at the young people around them, look for what is of value in them, and then hold up their own mirror, to ask themselves similar questions. 

Today’s young people, will, like the protesting (and non-protesting) students of the 1960s, evolve and change through the course of their lives.  Yet I hope that they manage to hold on to the core spirit of idealism which the world seems at pains to dilute and dismiss in waves of cynicism.  Maybe those of us of more mature years could do more to encourage and sustain the enthusiasm and hope of younger people.  Who knows, maybe some of it might even rub off on us.