At the time of the Maccabees in the second century before Christ, we read about a political power imposing a Hellenistic pagan culture on the Jewish people. We are told in the book of Daniel that this was “a time unsurpassed in distress since the nation began until that time.” 

Bishop Bernard E. Shlesinger III

At that dark moment of history, a pagan nation strived to detach a people from their covenant with God. Fortunately, because God is always faithful to his people, this attempt of paganism failed to put the idea of a loving God out of the minds and hearts of all of his people. 

Today, many Christian parents recognize that we are living in another dark time where their children are being exposed to a secular humanism that promotes self-invention and self-affirmation. I sense their anxiety as they express concerns about the future faith of their children, while statistics indicate that young adults are abandoning the faith of their parents at an alarming rate. What may be done to hold back the tide of secular humanism? 

The popes that have governed during my time as a priest consistently stress that the path forward in evangelizing the next generation is by stressing the importance of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. 

St. John Paul II writes, “It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle.” 

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI writes, “Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction.” He also wrote, “Christianity is not an intellectual system, a collection of dogmas, or a moralism. Christianity is an encounter, a love story; it is an event.” 

Pope Francis writes, “Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.” 

For clergy, catechists and parents, we cannot simply talk about Christ or limit our children to having a catechetical knowledge of the faith alone; we need to extend to them a personal invitation to come encounter someone who can lead them out of darkness and free them from anxiety. We need to invite them like the Samaritan Woman who invited her people to come and see someone who told her everything about herself. After this people encountered Jesus in a personal way, they saw hope on their horizon.  

Let us prepare the way of the Lord this Advent by inviting our children to share their hopes and dreams with Jesus so they may discover that the life they are searching for can be fulfilled in him.