A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint John. Jesus said to his disciples, now that I go back to him who sent me, not one of you asks me, where are you going? Because I have had all this to say to you, you are overcome with grief. Yet I tell you the sober truth. It is much better for you that I go.
If I fail to go, the paraclete will never come to you. Whereas, if I go, I will send him to you. When he comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin, about justice, about condemnation. I repeat that. Our lord is telling his disciples that when the holy spirit comes, he will prove world is wrong about sin.
In other words, it talks about sin, but it's wrong about it, the sins that it claims to be sin. It's wrong about justice. It claims justice, but it's not Christ justice. And about condemnation, which is not the condemnation of God. Then our Lord continues, about sin, in that they refuse to believe in me.
About justice, from the fact that I go to the father and you can see me no more. About condemnation, for the prince of this world has been condemned. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.
There is a sentence in the opening prayer of this mass which struck me forcefully. We pray to god. I don't know whether you caught it or not. We pray to God. That's the opening prayer of the mass.
And as you know, the beginning and the end of anything are the two most important points. So the church, for this day for this day's mass within the period of the resurrection of our lord, asks us to pray to god almighty. Now listen. To restore the joy of our youth. Did you catch that?
We prayed that God would restore, in the light of the resurrection, the joy of our youth. Often enough, we we hear and even say, don't be silly. Don't try to recover your lost youth. Don't don't think of that when you go to holy communion that you're always going to feel what you did on your first holy communion. Don't think that religion is always going to mean what it meant on some very special occasions in your life.
We all have those peaks, and many of them come in our youth, in our early years. And so we are told to be mature. Don't be don't be childish. Be childlike maybe, but not childish. Don't go don't try to be a kid again.
Don't try to recover those joys of your youth. Yet that's what we pray for. We we ask God to restore the joy of our youth. Is it nonsense? Is the is the church putting on the lips of her minister?
The church is her in her official prayer? Is she praying nonsense or what? Oh, God, we prayed, restore the joy of my youth. Well, I think one reason that this struck me is that I've after about forty years, I am rereading Brideshead Revisited, you know, Evelyn Waugh's novel, which was serialized on TV during the winter. And after forty years, I didn't remember much about the book, only one or two things.
Now upon rereading it, and reading it carefully, one of the great things struck me. I don't know whether how many of you've read it, if you've read it, how much you remember of it. So I don't know if this may be just a gesture of futility. But the thing you have these two young men, Sebastian and Charles Ryder. They're about 19.
They meet each other at Oxford, and it's just one beautiful, joyful period. It is the joy of youth and a lot of innocence. And the way Evelyn Wall pictures this in Oxford, Saint Mary Street, he brings in Newman, how Newman walked those streets. He brings in the bells ringing. The the life that remember, these boys are only 19 or 20.
But here now, they have their own apartments, they have their own servant, they have their own bank account, no classes to go to. It's a gorgeous life. All life is opening up to them, and they enjoy it to the full. And maybe too much so, as in the aftermath. Because within two years, Sebastian is a is a is a first grade alcoholic.
His life is already ruined. Charles Ryder quits Oxford and goes to Paris and and tries to become an artist. Now, when this happens, when Ryder Charles Ryder leaves Sebastian's home after being balled out by Sebastian's mother, he looks back, and he says the key was turned in the lock of their lost joys. Can they be recovered? The church is praying to God almighty.
Notice that we pray to God to to restore the joys of our youth. We know what those joys are. That exuberant when you woke up in the morning, that day ahead of you, when Christmas vacation came, you know, it was eternity. It would never have an end. And when June came and school was out, we knew we were we were going to go hilariously in paradise on and on.
It would never end. We never thought of Labor Day coming. We knew it would never come. And everything fourth of July picnics, things took on a a liveliness. The first bicycle you owned or the first boater, the first camping trip you went on, the first fishing trip, these things were tremendous, and we rose to them.
The joy of our youth. And we pray to God that God will give it back to us. That's what we prayed in this mass. I'm not saying it. We prayed that, as solemn as it can be.
Oh, God, restore the joy of my youth. Now notice it. It's not restoring the youth of your joy. He's not gonna remake you and make your kids again or me. We didn't pray for that.
We prayed that as I am today, that God will give me the joy of my youth. When there was a lot of innocence, when there was a lot of expectation, when small things were enormous, when we had little fear, when we had little thought of security, when our pious practices, as we say now looking down on our noses a bit, you know, and very unrightly so, when they had so much meaning, stopping in the church on the way home from school to make a visit. You see, that's we're praying that these be restored to us. It's very easy to look upon Christianity, you know, as a barrel of despair. It's very easy to say that to be a Christian is just an awful, awful thing.
I have used that word because it is awe inspiring. Because who can look at the cross and say that's where God died? That's awe inspiring. And yet at the same time, Christianity is a joyful way of life. It's a joyful way of life.
You cannot cite a saint who was a sourpuss. I I I challenge you to give me one saint who was a sourpuss, who was a killjoy. And yet most of the saints had little in the way of the world's pleasures to be joyful about, very few of them, because they renounced the world. And in renouncing the world, they found God in a simpler, pure state, uncontaminated, or at least they tried to keep him uncontaminated. And in doing that, you see, there's where the joy came in.
That's where the joy comes. Because you have tied yourself to Jesus Christ. And it's Jesus Christ who said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. And if you carry my burden, you will find it light. You will find it light, Jesus said.
He didn't say you'd be relieved of it, but he said you would carry it with joy. And that's what we prayed for in this mass, that God will restore to us the joy of our youth, that exuberance of living. But we've gotta be sure that we're not living for a bicycle anymore. We've gotta be sure we're living for God. In the name of the father and of the son, holy spirit.
Amen.