So I was working in the East End of London and there was this young woman in the parish suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. It was suggested that I take her to see a priest who had a reputation as a healer. So I did. He spoke to Susan for some time about here life and her problems and her illness. Having prayed over her, he turned to me and said, "Well Father, you have a prayer group in your parish of course."
 
I said no.
 
"But you yourself, Father, are in the Renewal Movement, of course?"
 
I said no.
 
So he kind of put on a look and said. "Well never mind, Father, perhaps you can just say some prayers with our young friend here." And we were dismissed. I felt in more ways than one.
 
That incident has stuck with me. Particularly the phrase ‘well just say some prayers with our young friend here’. Just some prayers. I got the impression that if I had asked him to suggest a particular prayer he would have said: ‘Oh, any old prayer will do. Because we have nothing specific for people like you.’

Picking up this same point I wonder whether we are offering anything specific to people in their twenties and early thirties in the area of spirituality. I think not. At worst we are suggesting they join established parish groups whose shelf life is possibly under scrutiny. And at best we are asking them to ‘just say some prayers’. Mind you, I feel that perhaps this approach has been the norm for lay Christians in general. Lay spirituality seen as a watered down version of that practised by the inhabitants of convents, monasteries and presbyteries. Sunday Mass plus. The Prayer of the Church, said at home or before the weekday Parish Mass. Weekend Retreats and Saturday Days of Recollection. All excellent activities. In their own way.

 But how practical is this for someone in their twenties in a committed relationship and holding down a pretty stressful job. Possibly still living at home or in the early days of shared living, be it marriage or whatever. What then about getting up earlier than usual to say the Morning Prayer of the Church, even if it were seen as relevant? What then about daily Mass in a life not overflowing with leisure time? Is this the time to be suggesting more formal meditation? Or the daily Rosary, when this was not a prayer of their earlier youth? This is not to say none of this is possible. It may be. But surely there is more. I believe, we should be talking real options. Recognising that something different is required for the specific age group and lifestyle of the young person of today. And not just imaginative variations of something more suited to an older, more settled group. Sometimes an adaptation or a variation of the tried and tested can be a real turnoff.

 What I suggest is that too frequently when talking about spirituality we have restricted ourselves to prayers, private or public, and forgotten that spirituality is much more than that. It is about our response: to a God who cares for us; to a world which needs us. But in order to respond to this, my appreciation of my own worth before my God needs to be positive. I need to be convinced that I am personally special in the eyes of God. And to aim towards a strong Christianity which sees everybody else as special and therefore worthy of my love and concern.

 I just wonder whether we have neglected the individual circumstances of the young adult person of today. Learning to love and be loved is common to all generations. Learning to love and be loved today is peculiar to now. I believe that we need to take on board the circumstances that many young people find themselves in today. By their mid-twenties many will be in some form of committed relationship. And we need to accept that whether the young person is still living at home or living in a flat, alone or with someone else, life is different today than it was even twenty years ago.

 For various reasons, later marriages are more common nowadays. Because of this I think we need to look in a very positive way at the strong committed relationships that many of our young people are involved in. Maybe time will prove, not to be the relationship of their life. But we are talking relationship not casual friendship. Different sex or same sex. The young people of today did not create the moral climate they find themselves a part of and influenced by. To many young people, today’s moral climate is the only one they have known. Their personal experience by and large has not embraced the living Christian ideal of twenty years ago. To have a feeling that things should be different can be a good incentive to make things different. But it can also cast a cloud of guilty gloom over young people aiming to cope with a situation which so many of their peers, Christian or not, see as natural. We may not agree with their situation but we need to accept their sincerity.

 But I suppose I am saying more. I suggest we need to look again through the eyes of the young person at the religion to which we belong and the moral rules which we were brought up with and take for granted. Rules which are intimated, if not bluntly stated, to the generation of young people today. I feel that we need to ask whether the rock-solid rules of our youth are set in stone. Is there anything which should bar the sincere young Christian from the Eucharist? Mass is the place we gather together to celebrate and to support each other. It is the common meal we eat to make us strong together. It is not the designer meal for those who are not hungry. It is the full meal for those who need to keep their strength up. Strength to respond to the needs of those around us. Strength to put into practice the care that can be called on at anytime. The care that does not discriminate. The care that Christ talked about. As we gather together at Mass we need the support of each other. And the support of Christ. And receiving Christ in the Eucharist crystallises that support.

 Maybe it is here that we actually get to the very crucial element when talking about spirituality for the young lay Christian. It is about reacting. It is about relating. It is about being positively present for whoever is the other in their life. Be it the loved one or another who needs their love. I feel that we need to bear in mind very seriously that it is by loving the particular person we like, that we can approach the Christian ideal of loving the person we do not like. Jesus would never have got on that cross to die for people he neither knew nor liked, if he had not been brought up to love the people he knew and liked. He was on the cross for Mary as well as for Herod. We appreciate the God of creation through that very creation. We get to know love by loving. We get to know the God who cares and loves by loving and being loved. By relating to a loved one. And that is spirituality.

 And at times we reflect alone and with our loved one on the way we have learned to love. And that is spirituality. And we take love to church with us and we share love and we receive love and we then have time to stop and think and express our gratitude for our love and for our lover and for those that God puts in our way to be loved. And that is spirituality. Because we realise that it is by loving and being loved and learning to love and learning to accept love that then we are in God country. We are in the place where God can ask us to do what we would never attempt if we were alone. But by being with our loved one we realise we are not alone. And we take a chance and devote our life to love. And that is spirituality. And we think of the future and we wonder if it will always be like this and we decide that it doesn’t really matter because we are committing ourselves to people today not to a system. And that is spirituality.

 And we challenge people who do not love and we challenge people who have forgotten how to love and we realise we are big enough to accept whatever the world will bring. And that is spirituality. And every now and again we walk in the street and we see a boy without a home and a widow without a partner and a girl without an ambition in life and we thank God for giving us these things. And that is spirituality. And we wonder what we can do to help those people. And that is spirituality. And we do it. And that is spirituality. And also in the street or in church or at home or in the car we reflect on the person we are and we say a swift thank you for being the kind of person I am and having the friends I have and being given the opportunities I am given to make the most of myself by simply loving others: the one I like and love, the others I love and don’t particularly like. And that is spirituality.

 In time I may go on one of the weekend retreats or one of those days of recollection or say the Prayer of the Church before weekday morning Mass. But for the moment I have enough to be going on with.