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A Sermon preached by the VERY REV. GREGORY OFIESH Pastor of St. Nicholas’ Church, San Francisco, California, on August
20, 1970 at the Chicago Archdiocesan Convention. Fr. Gregory is Chairman
of the Department of SOYO and Inter-Orthodox Youth Relations, and Spiritual
Advisor for the North American Council of SOYO. The text of his Sermon
was Matthew 21:43 “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will
be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits
thereof.”
FOUR STUDENTS SHOT DOWN ON COLLEGE CAMPUS!
STUDENTS ATTACK ADMINISTRATION BUILDING!
STUDENTS DEMAND PARTICIPATION IN PLANNING NEW CURRICULUM!
STUDENTS TEAR UP DRAFT CARDS AND FORBID R.O.T.C. ON CAMPUS!
STUDENTS ENCOUNTER POLICE AND NATIONAL GUARD ON CAMPUS!
STUDENTS SEEK NEW ANSWERS TO PROBLEMS WITH REGENTS!
YOUNG PEOPLE WANT TO SHARE IN NATIONAL POLICIES!
It
seems that in each period of history young people have cried out in frustration
and disappointment. They treat their parents as strangers: they go off
to strange lands: find a strange life: wear strange clothes and speak
in strange tongues.
Born in the struggles and pains of revolution, this country’s forefathers
often did not have enough food or clothes. They created a system rooted
in liberty, freedom and truth, secured and kept safe by their loved ones
and themselves. No period of history, no age or time has known the security,
the conveniences and the luxuries enjoyed by the people of today.
The most significant factors in our present age contributing towards
the formation of the new society are, namely, TECHNOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY,
and PSYCHIATRY.
Technological achievements and advancements following World War
II have offered more food, better clothing, bigger cars, bigger homes,
and papers of security that have made man quite independent. In addition,
man has created awesome weapons, and offered his sons in little wars to
protect his security and blessings. Thus, we live in affluence.
Scientific progress in psychiatry has enabled physicians and pharmacists
to develop a drug-oriented society. They have manufactured depressants
such as narcotics, sedatives, and tranquilizers, which affect the brain
and spinal cord to dull our fears and to ease our tensions and anxieties.
Hallucinogens and stimulants, which work on the central nervous system,
are employed extensively by medicine as psychoactive agents. LSD and STP
were originally prescribed to “open up” and study the psychotic behavior
of patients in mental hospitals. Stimulants were originally devised for
mild problems of depression and overweight: some of them, the amphetamines,
were at times taken by students to help them stay awake in preparing for
exams, or by truck drivers on long and lonesome trips. Consequently, drugs
have become an integral part of the faith and fiber of our society. We
are definitely a drug-prone society. Adults use drugs to answer all their
ills.
The youth of today, facing the decade of the 70’s, are also products
of the “new psychology.” Psychology in the family gave children a keen
and new sense of independence. In this present age, technology, psychiatry,
and psychology have exploded the bomb of the new age, and the fruits have
begun to ripen.
Their precepts taught the children of the new generation how to
take care of “their’’ own room, how to fix “their’’ own
bed, how to dress “themselves.” They were led to be self-expressive individualists.
They were blessed by their parents with their own money, with their own car, and with their own job.
What is now at stake? The value of the family—the place of parents—the
honor and respect to society and to the neighborhood— should young people
respect their parents? Do they view their parents experiences as relevant
in their own lives? Their goals vary considerably from those of their
parents.
This is our society of today. No society in history has ever had
to deal with a mass educated self-expressive, and technologically prone
youth. There are approximately 24 million young people between the ages
of 18 and 24. The largest majority of them are directly confronted with
international politics. It is relevant to their lives. They will either
have to or not have to go to Vietnam. They will either go to college or
face a technological society which will make them “mere laborers” in a
space age. They know that they will live in one town and perhaps work
in another. They fill the emptiness with material goods. Young people
want to maintain control over their lives. We taught them how important
they were, and now in a sense of fear, they want to protect themselves.
According to the Fortune-Yankelovich survey, 60% of our young people
are pursuing fairly conventional career objectives. They are concerned
with higher education because of what it will offer socially and materially.
Almost 9 million of the younger generation today are in or have been to
college. The other vice, or are pursuing vocations. Of the 9 million
in college, approximately 6 million are pursuing well-defined objectives.
The thoughts and sentiments of this group are remarkably similar to those
who have never attended college. They both share values of a common nature.
The hard core problem exists in the remaining 3 million, who are naturally
in the minority, but are particularly identified by their lack of concern
about making money. They are invariably directed toward the Humanities
in college. Here they find their counterparts in the same dress and in
the same philosophy—yes, there are progenitors in the new left—the college
professors.
The faculty, especially in the Humanities, is the last leading
force drawing this 3 million, who are undecided, bored, restless, unwilling
to go to Vietnam, and finally, are disgusted with themselves and with
life.
Now only 10% of this 3 million are extremely interested in finding
challenges intellectually relevant to themselves and to society. They
have embraced positions that are controversial and dissenting in relation
to critical national and international issues. This 10% has organized
The New Movement. The two basic goals of The Movement are—one, that the
individual must share in the social decisions affecting his life; and
two, that society must organize the vehicle for this to take place.
Splintered and fragmentized, we find such groups as the SDS (Students
For A Democratic Society), which took credit for precipitating the many
disturbances at Berkeley, San Francisco State College, and Columbia. Others,
such as The Resistance, The National Mobilization Committee To End The
War In Vietnam, The New University Conference, Resist, belong to various
extremes of the left. They have united their goals with the fantastic
literary talent of their peers in the field of journalism — namely, two
news services, The Liberation News Service - New York, and The Liberation
News Service – Massachusetts, as well as the Underground Press Syndicate.
They have become the media for The Movement to reach out to its adherents.
This group of political activists, wearing strange clothes, taking weird
drugs, dancing to strange music, and seeking the unknown God, will,
I predict, pose a national threat.
This militant active group,
emotionally unstable, will employ violence to attain its goals. These
young people have unconsciously reacted with destruction in retaliation
to their parents and to the establishment—from toys in their childhood
to the Administration building as young adults. Disturbed and confused,
they are lost and dangerous. They could lead this country to extreme Leftism
on the one side, or cause a Hitler on the other side of the pendulum.
The remaining so-called silent majority of our youth—except for
the international political situation—have found in essence the same pattern
of life as society as a whole. They are concerned with ecology and pollution,
violence and immorality. They want to face and destroy bigotry and poverty.
They want to know why the world’s wealthiest nation will let a large portion
of its population live in the ghetto.
These young people, men and women, have made fantastic strides,
even in business. No other period of history has found such a youth revolution
in big business. Young executives, in their twenties, have been offered,
and have reformed the most challenging of enterprises. No other generation
has made progress as our youth of today has made and will continue to
make.
They tell it as it is. Ponder upon the words of a song,
“Mr. Businessman,” written by Ray Stevens:
“Itemize the things you covet as you squander through your life:
Bigger cars, bigger houses, term insurance for your wife.
Tuesday evenings with your harlot, and
On Wednesday it’s your Charlatan
Analyst— He’s High up on your list.
You’ve got air-conditioned sinuses and dark, disturbing doubt
About religion, and you keep those cards and letters going out.”
The new place of rock, soul, country and western music has been
a major victory for the new culture, yet the young people have not thrown
out the cultured favorites of the past. They appreciate the sights and
sounds of Frank Sinatra, and Sergio Mendez, Beethoven, or Bartok.
Young people today dominate culture in America—namely in the theatre,
fashions, art, literature and music. They are expressing their “thing”
in practically every facet and level of society.
Why the big difference between the political activists on the one
hand, and the mainstream college, married or single, young adult? The
family and the Church in each of these situations have built upon the
advancements of technology and the other sciences. These parents have
given their young people not simply a sense of individuality, but also
a sense of cohesiveness within the family. They merely took the advancements
of the new sciences to build upon the tradition they themselves received
from their fathers. The real core of young people even in the activist
groups will return to the mainstream if the basic values of family and
respect for society have been realized in the home and in the school.
They were taught the relevance of their own lives because their family
life was real to them. Parents taught their child to stand as an individual,
but within the framework and fiber of the family. They taught their child
that his name, as well as his family’s name, and the community,
were very important to him. The ambivalence and impetuousness of youth
were minimized by the concern of his family and teachers. Not only was I important, but we were important. We did not fear insecurity
because we were secure unto each other.
The Church of today cannot stand outside of us as a museum merely
to be gazed upon and admired, nor as a theatrical production wherein we
are entertained, nor as a pharmaceutical center for concoctions to relieve
our maladies; but the Church must be relevant in our lives. The Church is the kingdom of God. We must initiate programs in which family
awareness becomes an awareness to the child that he belongs to the family
of God.
The same commitment to the family becomes the commitment to the
Church. We need these experiences as we call the Holy Spirit to become
real within us. We need to teach our young people that the church is concerned
for them. They must be involved in retreats in order to meditate and examine
their lives. They must feel the euphoria of living through fasting. They
must be involved in camp programs where they can be with younger brothers
and sisters, teaching them to share and live with one another. We must
teach them that the spirit of God is dwelling within them when they visit
the elderly and the sick. We must initiate tutorial programs to aid and
assist the underprivileges. We must teach them that man does not live
for bread alone. Young people must develop a moral fiber and a strength
in order that their own lives will reflect the image of Christ. That instead
of fears and pills, drugs and violence, that each man is our brother,
and that we must “run with Jesus,” to each of them, as Christ ran to us.
That the Liturgy must become that beautiful stream that carries us unto
the Kingdom of God, where each of us, as a new person, partakes of the
new and unique life and transforms the world, our nation, our family,
and ourselves——unto Christ.
Our young people today are more intellectual, more sophisticated,
and are more concerned than ever before in history. They are real—I believe
in them. They do not want to stand on the mountaintop to gaze down into
the valley in awe. They want to jump; and they want to get into the thick
of things. Are we ready to let them?
Our young people cry for leadership and to witness Christ—and what
do we give them—sterile and empty sermons? Dances and parties? They want
to MOVE—they want to experience the new life—the Orthodox Christian young
person with this beautiful embodiment of truth wants to go out into the
world as the Master said; and we do not let him.
1.
I was hungry—and you gave me no meat
2.
I was thirsty—and you gave me no drink
3.
I was naked—and ye clothed me not
4.
I was in prison——and no one visited me
5. I was a stranger——and ye took me not in
What did the Master say—?
“When you have not done it unto the least of these My brethren
Ye have not done it unto Me.”
“And a child shall lead thee.”
From Word
Magazine
Publication of the Antiochian Orthodox
Christian Archdiocese of North America
September 1970
pp. 12-13
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