The future of the world and of the Church
passes through the family.
—POPE ST. JOHN PAUL II, Familiaris Consortio, n. 75
or on YouTube
It was a powerful conference in Texas, this past weekend. The Holy Spirit fell upon those gathered setting many hearts ablaze. There were many emotional and physical healings throughout the weekend. But I was particularly drawn to the young men gathered there and an awareness of their need to be strengthened and supported… but that was just the beginning.
The Lost Boys
On my return flight home, I caught the last few minutes of the Charlie Kirk Memorial. As it ended, I had the overwhelming sense that there is an incredible (but small) window to reach out in particular to the young men of this generation; to intercept, as it were, the wave of souls being awakened at this hour. I have, for months now, been pondering how the older generation has a unique role to play in helping to guide the youth (see On Growing Old).
Suddenly, words came from outside of me as they often do: This is the Moment… And about a second later, I heard in my headphones the words: “This is the moment…” coming from the broadcast!
Since I had no access to the Internet to do some work, I decided to watch a movie on the plane. The title “The Grizzlies” caught my attention. Turns out, it’s a beautiful movie about a teacher flown up to a small far north community that is reeling from high suicide rates and young men utterly lost to drugs and alcohol. In simply giving these young men focus and a sense of dignity, the culture of death among them was largely averted. The message to me, personally, was unmistakable.
That night in my hotel room, my heart was burning with this new “now word,” recalling how boldly the Spirit moved in me as I was praying over the men at the conference. I grabbed my computer and began to write some ministry colleagues: “This is the moment for us to reach out, in particular, to young men. They have been stirred and awakened by what happened to Charlie. But they need guidance….”
The next morning, I got in my car to make the journey home. When I turned on my radio, Billy Graham was preaching at a seminary in Louisville, Kentucky in 1993. My jaw dropped as he spoke:
Billy Graham, 1918-2018
I recently asked a university president what he thought was the greatest need of our hour. And after careful consideration, the president responded, I may surprise you because I’m not a religious man, but I believe that the greatest need that we have at this hour is a spiritual awakening which will restore individual and collective morals and integrity throughout the nation.
And I agree with that. I believe that the greatest need that we have at this hour is a spiritual awakening… I’m going to read from Peter’s account in Joel in Acts 2…: And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy. Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams. And on my servants and on my handmaidens, I will pour out in those days of my spirit and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath, blood and fire and vapor of smoke, the sun shall be turned into darkness. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before that great and notable day of the Lord come. And it shall come to pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
…Old men will dream dreams. In our context, where I’m an old man, that means that they will know how to support the vision of the young… I think we need to support these young men that God is raising up. And it’s not easy for an old generation to hand the torch to a new generation that’s coming up… In addition, people in the midst of a very impersonal computer age are hungry. They’re hungry and thirsty… Yes, our nation can be changed. It could start with you. Revivals start in the heart of somebody… Yes, an awakening could bring a challenge to our young people. And our young people need it desperately, I can tell you. And the evangelization of the world… an awakening could bring about the evangelization of the world in our generation. — “America Needs Spiritual Revival”, 1993, billygraham.org; extended version here
UPDATE. I was just contacted by a reader after publishing this. She says that the date of this speech was on October 14th, 1993 — that is actually Charlie Kirk’s birthday. (Thanks Margaret Sheehan for this remarkable information!)
As if to punctuate even more what I had just heard, Graham’s next talk was titled “Man Bringing Man to Christ.” Were these coincidences or the Holy Spirit speaking?
Seeking the Lost
Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA
It seems to me that what Charlie Kirk had been doing on campuses was filling The Great Vacuum that was left by the shepherds of the Church (cf. The Armies of Light and Darkness). As a young man growing up, I was longing to hear truth proclaimed from the pulpit. But more often than not, we were given vague, uninspired ramblings that neither taught nor challenged us to deeper conversion and a deeper interior life. Political correctness, rationalism, and a desire to please everyone left many Catholics in the pews groping in the darkness.
Woe to the shepherds of Israel who have been pasturing themselves! Should not shepherds pasture the flock?… You did not strengthen the weak nor heal the sick nor bind up the injured. You did not bring back the stray or seek the lost but ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and became food for all the wild beasts. They were scattered and wandered over all the mountains and high hills; over the entire surface of the earth my sheep were scattered. No one looked after them or searched for them. (Ezekiel 34:2-6)
Charlie Kirk referred to young men as the “lost boys of our generation,” and like a good shepherd armed with rod and staff, set out on college campuses to find them. And he still is. As Church Father Tertullian said, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” Charlie Kirk’s videos are like seeds now, being scattered across the globe as millions who’ve never heard of him begin to watch. But who will water these seeds?
A New Evangelization
The need for this new evangelization was foreseen decades ago. One of the least known and quoted pontiffs is John Paul I. He reigned only 33 days before passing away in 1978. Still, he proclaimed perhaps the most crucial word of our times:
A great challenge of our day is the full evangelization of all those who have been baptized. —POPE JOHN PAUL I, Address to a group of Bishops of the Phillipines, September 28, 1978, vatican.va
That language might have startled people of that time, many who perhaps presumed that just “being Catholic” in name was enough. But clearly, it was not. What was needed was a “full evangelization” of those in the pews in order to counter the spiritus mundi (“spirit of the world”). In the words of his successor :
Sometimes even Catholics have lost or never had the chance to experience Christ personally: not Christ as a mere ‘paradigm’ or ‘value’, but as the living Lord, ‘the way, and the truth, and the life’. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, L’Osservatore Romano (English Edition of the Vatican Newspaper), March 24, 1993, p.3.
And thus began the “new evangelization,” or at least, that was John Paul II’s hope:
I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church’s energies to a new evangelization and to the mission ad gente (to the nations). —JOHN PAUL II, Redemptoris Missio, n. 3
But as I discovered firsthand, the Holy Father was barely being heeded on the local level. Many bishops were afraid of the laity, afraid especially of those of us who had a “grassroots” calling instead of a Masters in Divinity. Parishes seemed more open to bingos and yoga than evangelization. And the worldliness of “Sunday Catholics” and the sexual scandals of the clergy seemed to be driving more people away than to the Church. Were it not for John Paul II’s World Youth Days, would there even be parishes in many places?
Yet, there is a remnant of faithful Catholics today, many silver-haired, who have been prepared precisely for this hour.
This is the Moment…
Perhaps one of the most significant and little known aspects of Charlie Kirk, at least before his death, was that he appeared to be on a trajectory toward the Catholic Church, where his wife already worships. This, in itself, is immensely prophetic since his great thirst was to draw his listeners to the truth.
And that’s where today’s Now Word comes in…. We Catholic women and men, priests and bishops included, have an opportunity to reach Charlie Kirk’s followers with the fullness of truth. Yes, despite her sins and follies, the Catholic Church contains this “fullness of truth” since it was Christ who promised to the Twelve Apostles, the first twelve bishops: “When He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you to all truth.” [1]John 16:13 Kirk has awakened millions by the power of truth. But it cannot stop there:
As you well know it is not a matter of merely passing on a doctrine, but rather of a personal and profound meeting with the Saviour. —POPE JOHN PAUL II, Commissioning Families, Neo-Catechumenal Way. 1991.
…the Church holds that these multitudes have the right to know the riches of the mystery of Christ — riches in which we believe that the whole of humanity can find, in unsuspected fullness, everything that it is gropingly searching for concerning God, man and his destiny, life and death, and truth. —POPE ST. PAUL VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, n. 53; vatican.va
Not to mention, the Eucharist.
There is more to say on this, particularly since Kirk strongly entwined religion and politics, which begs being addressed. But for the moment, we have to see that the spiritual awakening that Graham spoke of, the “new evangelization” that the popes evoked, and the “new pentecost” that the prophet Joel foretold and the popes have prayed for… seem to be sparking all at once.
As I look into the eyes of most young men I meet these days, they seem shell-shocked as though they are returning from the front lines: Their innocence carpet-bombed by the torrents of pornography and Instagram immodesty; their manhood riddled by emasculating feminism; their dignity detonated by a pagan culture that has put gaming, pleasure, and recklessness ahead of service, sacrifice, and self-control. They don’t need to be guilted — they already know. Rather, they need to be loved, then challenged, then given direction to become men of God… or risk being swept away in the spiritual battle raging around us. These are apocalyptic times — but don’t take my word for it:
This fight in which we find ourselves… [against] powers that destroy the world, are spoken of in chapter 12 of Revelation… It is said that the dragon directs a great stream of water against the fleeing woman, to sweep her away… I think that it is easy to interpret what the river stands for: it is these currents that dominate everyone, and want to eliminate the faith of the Church, which seems to have nowhere to stand before the power of these currents that impose themselves as the only way of thinking, the only way of life. —POPE BENEDICT XVI, first session of the special synod on the Middle East, October 10th, 2010
This is the moment, then, to show them another way of thinking, another way that leads to He who is Life itself: JESUS. What a tragedy if we fail these young people once again…
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Personal Relationship With Jesus
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Footnotes
| ↑1 | John 16:13 |
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