Many years ago young ladies graduating from Alverno High School in Sierra Madre, then known as Alverno Heights Academy, were given a laminated plaque inscribed with the Prayer of St Francis. It was an appropriate gesture --- Franciscan nuns operated the school.
As a high school senior anxious for nothing more than to leave the school and everything about it behind, I put the plaque in a "safe place." Recently the "safe place" was purged of cards, notes and bits and pieces of things that must have been important when they were carefully stashed away but have little meaning today. The plaque, yellowed, cracked by age and long forgotten, with the picture of St Francis and the prayer, was discovered. As I read the prayer it struck me how its meaning to a high school student and its meaning today were very different. Years of living change one's perspective.
Lord, make me a channel of your peace. W here there is hatred, let me bring love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union.
In the era of the Vietnam War, the activism and marches of Martin Luther King and the boycotts and unionizing efforts of Caesar Chavez, these words gave validation to many students in their efforts to make the world a better place. While these efforts are still compelling the same words today, many years later, bring to mind fractured or broken relationships and the need to mend them. Thoughts become personal rather than global.
Where there is doubt, faith…
The faith of a teenager and that of an adult are not the same. Faith, experienced as a young person, is sometimes based on the emotions of the current experience or the family tradition. Faith can easily be pushed aside or put off for another time. Difficulties or disappointments can cause the fervent teen to become a doubting adult. Most young people question their faith and their church, sometimes to the chagrin of the adults. However, the questioning young person, hesitant to take on values that might not be his or hers, often becomes the greatest defender and teacher of the faith in their later years.
Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness joy.
At 18 despair, darkness and sadness are not always over profound losses or issues.
Sometime the darkest hours came when friends, both platonic and otherwise, had better things to do than stick around. The adult understands deeper feelings of despair, darkness and sadness due to a lifetime of experiences and people coming and going in and out of their lives.
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love…it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.
How long it takes us to realize that the world does not revolve around only us and our needs and desires! The teenager, acting in a developmentally appropriate manner, is self conscious to the point of thinking he or she may be the center of everyone's thoughts.
With age comes the realization that most people are hardly aware of the things we worry about, and that reaching out in friendship and caring for others is what really matters.
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Young people are so full of life and enthusiasm that death is not something they usually consider. They see life as full of promise and opportunity. Death is for the "old folks."
The "old folks," on the other hand, realize the fragility of life and the importance of preparing for the end of their life in both a practical and spiritual way.
When the principal of Alverno passed out the prayer plaques many years ago, I am pretty confident she did not expect any of us to be referring to them nearly 40 years later. Or, maybe because she was the adult with experience far beyond that of any 17- or 18-year-old girl, she knew exactly what would happen.
So much has changed in the years since graduating from high school. The question for each of us is: How have I changed? Anne Hansen is a parent education consultant and a parishioner at Blessed Junípero Serra Church, Camarillo. Her e-mail address is familymail@aol.com.
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