Sharing Our Struggles Could Mean Victory for Others

For the last eight months, I have had the opportunity to help teach a class of 100 high school students who are preparing to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation in the Catholic Church. For those who are unfamiliar, Confirmation is the final stage of a young adult’s initiation into the Catholic Church. It is the moment when they receive the Holy Spirit, sealing the human soul with the indelible mark of God’s loving care. In order to prepare for this life-changing event, we meet every Wednesday night to pray together, and discuss topics like Christology (the study of Jesus Christ), ecclesiology (the study of the Church), Mary, the mother of God, the saints, and salvation history. We share experiences of living our faith amidst the challenges of living in the secular world. It has been an eye-opening experience for me—communicating with young people is more of a challenge than I expected. I am only 29 years old, yet there are times when I feel totally out of touch with them. This may be because I truly am out of touch with that age group, but I also think it is because many high school age kids just do not seem to know very much about their faith.    

Since this is the case, I don’t blame them for going into silent mode when they come to class, as frustrating as it is for me. I would probably do the same if I were thrown into something like a math class, no matter how interesting it might be. And that’s precisely why teaching can be so frustrating, because as teachers (and parents) we know that beyond the initial roadblock of what may appear boring and useless, lies a vast array of incredible information with life-changing potential. Yet herein lies the key. In order to get people, especially young people, to get over that hump—in order to get them to see how important something is, and how life-changing it can be—the best approach may not be to start with the subject matter itself, but instead with our own personal encounter with it. We ought not to feel tied only to the facts, but free to share how those facts have not only informed and changed us, but also inspired us to take the time and energy to stand before them in order to pass on the same information. I was able to do this recently, when the group began a four-week session on Theology of the Body, Pope Saint John Paul II’s masterpiece treatise on human sexuality.     

A little background on the Theology of the Body— during the beginning of his papacy, from 1979 to 1984, Pope John Paul II gave short public weekly lectures on human sexuality. In a way, it was his counter-attack to the sexual revolution, which took human sexuality—the divine gift that unites people together in body and soul making them capable of producing new life—and debased it to a desire only for physical pleasure. For Pope John Paul II, it was absolutely necessary to restore a correct understanding of the body and to return human sexuality  to its proper place. For when humans get their bodies and sexuality wrong, they get everything wrong. If God is removed from sexuality then man loses sight of his dignity. If man loses his dignity then there is no reason for him to care for himself or for others; so anything goes in the attempt to obtain pleasure. What this spells out for man is destruction of life, in both body and spirit.     

It goes without saying that the topic of sexuality is interesting to teenagers, and that it was not very hard for our Confirmation class to focus on this topic. We began our sessions together by watching a thirty minute video on Theology of the Body from a series made especially for teens. Each video is hosted by the same three adults in their mid 30s, who break down key points of Theology of the Body in a talk show-like format. I thought this was very good because we were able to see the personalities of the hosts shine through the material, which brought it to life. They enthusiastically shared how their encounter with John Paul’s teaching had changed their lives. Thus, as we proceeded to separate the boys from the girls for small group discussion, I imagined the guys would have a lot to share, or at least a lot of questions to ask. But they didn’t.     

What happened? Well, nothing happened. I believe their silence was a result of being confronted with something that was both totally new, and entirely contradictory to what they hear on television, in movies, in music, on social media…everywhere! And that is (as men especially) that they have the right to protect their sexuality. To repeat what I said to them several times, they have a right to be cherished, and to not have their dignity degraded. What this means is no premarital sex, no porn, no masturbation, no drugs, no alcohol abuse, etc. because these aren’t only objects meant to satisfy physical pleasure, they turn us into objects as well. They kill our life, both physical and spiritual. They rob us of the dignity we have, as co-creators with God. This, by the way, is foundational to the mission of NFP. It isn’t valuable simply because it has an incredibly high success rate planning births. It is valuable because it restores dignity to sexuality. It allows husbands and wives to say to each other “I will not use you as an object to satisfy my desire for pleasure. We are open to life.”     

The silence of the boys told me that this was a totally new idea for them and, dare I say, totally far-fetched. There I was, a celibate seminarian, standing in my roman collar telling them not to do all these things that society and media tell them are okay. What gave me the authority, or the right? Well, I had Pope Saint John Paul II to back me up. But I had something else: a conversion story, which means a past in which I had traded my dignity for the sake of physical pleasure, but also an awakening, and a change to a better life.     

If only you could have heard the silence break as a resounding “Yes!” came from the boys when I asked them if they wanted to pause what had become a lecture on Theology of the Body to hear my story. They sensed the truth in the teaching, but they needed someone to prove it to them. They needed another man to tell them that he had fallen for the lies that they fall for—lies that remain decades after the sexual revolution— but that he had learned a better way to live. Make no mistake about it; young people can sense inauthenticity, and they are listening for the truth. What’s more, they are looking for examples of how to live lives of generosity. Thus, we would do well to heed the words of another holy Pope, Paul VI (d. 1978): “modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses” (Evangelii Nuntiandi). People, especially young people, are yearning for witnesses to share their experiences of sexuality, even bruised sexuality, because chances are they have been bruised too. They want a way out. NFP, the Theology of the Body, these things offer that. So, take heart, and do not be afraid to share the good news of NFP. Share what you have witnessed and what you have experienced. Our young people are listening to many voices. Will they hear ours?