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Cardinal Newman Catechist Consultants
— 11th February, 2017 — HANDOUTS n. 141
“Clear, brief and easily assimilated by all”
Enthusing the Wayward Adolescent
See
earlier Handouts n. 65 “Honour thy father and thy mother” and n. 132
Growing-up, the Great Adventure
Download as a  PDF
“LIFE IS WORTH LIVING”
Archbishop
Fulton Sheen
Greater love has no man than this,
that a man lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you
do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the
servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you
friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to
you.
The Lord Jesus, John 15:13-15
Friend, go up higher!
The Lord Jesus, Luke 14:10
PURPOSE IN LIFE
Damien
paper was a
heroic news-reporter with the Australian army in World War II and
killed in New Guinea in 1944. His job was to keep up morale of the
soldiers and their folks at home. When he joined up, the army had just
discovered psychology, and he was quizzed, “What’s your purpose in
life?” At once he quoted the Old Green Catechism: “God
made me to know, love and serve Him here on earth and to see and enjoy
Him for ever in Heaven.” He had made Christian ideas and
ideals his own — the Three Ds: the Dignity, Duty and Destiny
of man made in God’s image. Gen.
1:26-27; Deut. 10:i2; 11:13.
THE SPIRITUAL WAR
Satan has special departments in Hell
working overtime, always concocting new plans to ensnare souls to
live and die in mortal sin.
Further, Satan — at least as alleged by C.S. Lewis in The
Screwtape Letters — assigns other fallen angels, that is, demons,
to individual human souls, to promote these evils.
ONGOING CHRISTIAN FORMATION
Informal
TALK while
doing things together helps adolescents (and children): e.g. gardening,
household repairs, preparing vegetables, washing & pegging out
clothes. Then adolescent son or daughter might “open up” to either
mother and father, separately or together.
Avoid confrontations, avoid prying questions. Rather,
try this bit of wise and witty ironic sarcasm — just leave it lying
around:-
“WHY I DON’T WASH”
1.
I was forced to wash as a child.
2.
People who wash are hypocrites — they think they are
cleaner than everyone else.
3.
There are many different kinds of soap. I can’t decide
which one is best.
4.
I used to wash, but 1 got bored and stopped.
5.
None of my friends wash.
6.
I’ll start washing when I get older and dirtier.
7.
1 can’t spare the time to wash.
8.
The bathroom is never warm enough in winter or cool enough
in summer.
9.
People who make soap are only after your money.
John Bohan, Geelong West, in Into
the Deep, December 2016.
SPIRITUAL LIFE
Enthuse by parental good example of living
a life in good standing with God — praying daily,
morning and night, on one’s knees; Sunday Mass, and perhaps weekday
Mass for special intentions.
Do you go to Confession regularly? To a
regular confessor? Have you they ever been on a retreat?
The worst scenario is an adolescent having nothing
to live for, and whining like a curmudgeon, “I didn’t ask to
be born”! It’s worth remembering that:- It’s a privilege to have lived.
John L. Tierney, casual remark
THE
HOLY CHILD Samuel was given encouragement by
old Eli the priest (who foster-fathered him):
Samuel did not yet know the Lord…
And he said, Speak, Lord, Thy servant is listening.
1 Samuel 3:7 and 3:10
WHAT DOES HE READ? What do you?
Is he reading the Bible? Do you? Try the Didache
Bible (see Handouts n. 138) with its helpful notes
and articles and cross-references to the CCC).
And do they ever see yon checking things in the CCC (Catechism
of the Catholic Church)?
Is it feasible to have Bible Discussion Group for
family and even others? It helps if each has a different version, which
brings out the difficulties of translating an ancient language and
culture into modernity.
Then there’s The Book of Virtues with its
inspiring snippets in a constructive counter-attack on schooling which
despises heroes and saints. Try taking turns reading bits aloud during
the main meal.
If the adolescent does not read, it’s still not too late
to help him enter into his full literacy potential and to read books
for pleasure and improvement.
Some families regularly read adventure fiction or travel,
saints or biography, taking turns at the main meal. N.B. It’s character
formation to eat together.
Reading helps all present to escape addiction to TV, mobile phones, or lost in cyber
space in computer games. Reading books transcends the shallow
relationships of a virtual presence. Also, Face Book, U-tube and
Twittering have lots of “stranger danger” and bad
company, as well as wasting much time.
BAD COMPANIONS
The internet is a grievous temptation even to
those old enough to know better. Yet deliberately entering an occasion
of sin can sometimes be justifiable. But more than half of it’s
pornography — an electronic brothel and propaganda for promiscuity.
It’s worse than being trapped in an underwater cave by an octopus, or
sinking into bottomless quicksand:
But I say to you that every one who
looks lustfully has already committed adultery. If your TV or mobile
causes you to sin, cast it out; better to forego electronic
entertainment, or education than be thrown into hell.
Adapted from Matthew 5:28-32)
SELF-RESTRAINT in Bedroom & at School
Does the adolescent have a TV or mobile phone in bed?
It’s a symptom of a serious malaise. What’s more, the whole electronic
entourage is a lure for wasting time, missing opportunities and
squandering life itself. Computers on every desk in school rewire the
brain to its detriment; they impair intellect occasion moral weakness.
They can become a false religion! They weaken concentration,
mental alertness and memory power, which are all empirically
observable.
See REMOTELY CONTROLLED, How Television is damaging our
lives and what we can do about it, by Dr Aric Sigman, 2005, 356 pp.
(see Handouts n. 125).
HUMILITY
Aim for it indirectly, by honesty
and generosity. We need humility to
admit when we are wrong. We need humility to be right,
to know it and to say so, especially courageous humility
to be good when mocked as a “goody-goody” by those who spread,
teach and practise the evils of worldliness.
WAKING UP
There ARE two kinds, closely related:-
1.
“Waking up”, to get up each morning, either “cranked up”
by someone else or on one’s own selfstarter, and consciously,
deliberately getting up to give glory to God as pledged in the
Baptismal Covenant — with all its myriad details in the small print.
2.
“Waking up” and taking one’s place in the Church and in
society, with personal commitment to the Lord Jesus and embracing the
Christian adult mindset, the Christian “word-view” —
in other words, completing a successful Christian adolescence.
DISCIPLINED LIFE-STYLE?
Most folk need some encouragement to embrace a life-style
with a set time of rising and rising with a
definite purpose. We need to conquer our laziness and impose
on ourselves a timetable to put ourselves to bed at night at an hour
early enough for rising for a better day on the morrow — the basic
program for reforming dissolute youth in boot camps!
We all need a program of balanced activities: others can
make suggestions, but we must impose it on ourselves. With this is the
good habit of being able to say “NO!” to self — instead of reserving
our ‘no’ for parents and other authorities in life.
What needs doing? “Needs!” We all need to be needed!
There are people everywhere in need of help: friendship, spirituality,
hunger, thirst, clothing, housing, tutoring the young, reading to old
people. There are the Missions crying out for volunteers: the rewards
are out of this world:-
That they cannot repay you means
you are blessed, because recompense will be made to you when the dead
rise again. Luke 14:14
Family Life International and Parish Conferences of St
Vincent de Paul need helpers.
Parishes needs readers, servers, wardens, counters...
Our world is diving deeper into a
gutter,: we can turn it back to the Light, Life and Love of God.
THE CANCER OF SELF-PITY
An ADOLESCENT needs friends of his own sex to
talk to. It’s not homosexual to have non-sexual same-sex friendships —
it’s an extension of siblings.
Non-sexual opposite sex friendships are
essential too — better in company, not pairing off or dating before
they’ve grown in self-control and self-forgetfulness in a group of
young men and women. And tactful chaperoning is more necessary than
ever.
The greatest therapy is simply talking with ordinary people: only severe
cases need a psychologist. Talking keeps us going through the purple
patches of life. Good friends can lift us out of ourselves and reduce
depression, folly and self-pity.
It’s good for youth to blow their minds in sport, and not
just watching it. There’s “healing in the bush”, growing in virtues
through camping and bushwalks.
MATERIAL PROSPERITY?
Responsibility breeds maturity. But much money, gadgets,
luxury, idleness, often breed spiritual poverty:-
But Jeshunin (i.e. Israel, the
Chosen People) waxed fat, and kicked; then he forsook God who made him,
and scoffed at the Rock of his salvation.
Deuteronomy 32:15
SUCCESSFUL ADOLESCENCE
Many youngsters suffer an “involutional regression”.
Instead of spiralling upward and outward to manhood and womanhood, they
spiral inwards and down, back into childish
immaturities. On life’s freeway they’re “going the wrong way”, or like
a whirlpool plunging into its own gloomy depths.
They need extra help, as also do those who missed out on
the pre-adolescent stage of “adult childhood” (.Handouts n.
132), for it’s tough facing up to that personal effort required to
conquer self, selfishness, sin and Satan. Though they must do
it themselves, they can be helped.
It is highly desirable to spiral upwards and
outwards — going clockwise, too — heading for maturity,
adulthood, marriage and parenthood.
MANHOOD, WOMANHOOD, SAINTHOOD
An eager adolescent keeps aflame his faith, hope and
charity, despite stumbling and rekindlings. Confusion, uncertainty,
gloom and darkness of the tunnel-syndrome in adolescence are a training
course for young adults to emerge into the light of day.
After more or less completing the adventure of
adolescence, getting married is an entry into a
greater adventure, as also are priesthood and Religious
Life.
There is also the single state of secular life lay
apostles as unmarried men or women who sublimate their natural
appetites in spiritual counterparts.
The culmination of all four holy states of life is in
fatherhood and motherhood, or exercising spiritual parenthood in the
priesthood or as Religious.
The celibate priest, of course, is spiritually married to
the Church and like Our Lord, the Bridegroom.
Father James Tierney
© The Rev. B.J.H. Tierney. Handouts
are free and may be copied for any non-profit teaching
purpose. However, donations to defray costs are welcome and should be
made to the publisher and distributor, the Cardinal Newman Faith
Resources Inc. PO Box 359, St Marys NSW 1790; phone 02 9673 2235; fax
02 9623 3181 email <fr@eardinalnewman.com.au>
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