The Purpose of Youth

The Holy Martyr Aquilina of Byblos

I've been slowly pushing myself out of the mindset that I "have to make my 20's count." I find issue with phrases like "youth is wasted on the young." I have and admittedly still give in to the pervading fog of youth worship that seems to blind my American culture. The heroes in movies and books are young twenty-somethings or teens out trying to make something of themselves or find their own way.

Perhaps every generation has had these thoughts and ours currently has the loudest platform to put them on display. Still, I do not think it is healthy. People, regardless of age, religion or social class always offer the suggestion of not getting married or settling or having kids too soon because that would be "settling down too young."

I am all for making memories. But is that the main thing I should be trying to attain? Good memories? Do I just want to die and grow old thinking of the "good ole' days?" Do such days exist?

Perhaps nostalgia is nothing but prelest and vapor.

Perhaps this is why one monk says, "do not trust your own thoughts." You never remember things as they occurred. Memories serve a purpose. But that purpose, for the sake of my faith, should grasp more than reminiscence.

As an Orthodox Christian, I have found two purposes for memories:

1. To remember that you are dying. We are slowly eroding with an expiration date unknown. We should use our time in such a way as to realize that judgment is coming and there is more scrutiny upon those who claim the title "Christian."

2. To remember that you can't trust yourself. Experimentation and trial/error have their place. But they are not rules that should govern youth. We are fickle and are quick to experience wanderlust at the picture of a mountain or hunger at the sight of a burger commercial. In Orthodoxy, we call these passions, desires that have nothing to do with necessity. When kept under control they're fine. WHEN.

What purpose then does youth serve for me as an Orthodox Christian?

Martyrdom.

St. Nikilai Velimorivic says that we need not especially seek to be martyred bodily, for the whole of Christian life is a sort of martyrdom. For those who don't know, the word martyr means "witness."

The holy martyr Aquilina of Byblos devoted her youth not to passing fancy or the satisfying of her appetites. But godliness and holiness and spreading the gospel where she lived. She was killed for her faith when she was 12.

Her story fills me with compunction at the thought of how I've wasted my youth on things that do not necessarily equate to matters eternal. Have I not remembered the Lord's words? "And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life." Matthew 19:29

Why then is abandoning such a chore? Why then the excuses of "you don't have to do that to be religious?" For as much as my generation disdains the word religion, they are indeed very religious, very put together and dogmatic in their beliefs. It is just disguised in hyper individualism.

Alexander Schmemann says that Orthodoxy isn't a religion because it is much more a way of existing. It is has feasts and rules and holidays and a household and economics for that household. It has ways to act and think. It provides a way to be.

And the way that it provides us to be is martyrdom.