Alone in a quiet chapel in Eastern Europe , a young woman is making a retreat. Without warning she suddenly feels that she
is being hugged from behind with a great tenderness. She did not move an inch
because she knew that no one else was in the chapel. She had been hugged by God,
she told me.
On a hillside in a Mediterranean
country a lorry is out of control, sliding down a narrow coastal road. It turns
over and slides to a halt inches from a family car parked at a view point on
the cliff edge. Watching from the back seat of the car is a fourteen year old
boy who looks up at the huge juggernaut in shock. As he looks he is overcome
with a sense of God’s goodness and protection for him and his family. Despite
the shock he feels a great peace and safety. God’s hand has moved in his life.
It is the evening before his Granddad’s
funeral and a young Belgian sits thinking about life and death. Suddenly he is
overwhelmed by a feeling that everything is one and that somehow everything is
God. It came with a huge sense of being loved and a strong sense of peace.
These stories emerged easily from a
series of short conversations during a Salesian Youth event in Brussels called Eurizon. There were fourteen European national groups
involved. All of those interviewed were able to recount an experience that
brought them close to a presence or a power in their lives that was different
from their normal sense of awareness.
The young people all spoke excellent
English but they still found that words failed them in this area of experience.
“I felt huge as a person, as if I filled the whole world, but very small and
vulnerable too” one young person reported. Another person said simply “I felt
like I was part of everything” None of the young people felt they had expressed
themselves clearly enough because as one said “the experience was too big for
words.”
Interestingly, few of the young
people had ever spoken about these experiences to anyone else. It was too
intense and personal according to some, too vague or strange according to
others. When they were shared it was more likely to be with a friend rather
than a family member. The experiences all happened alone, even if others were
around, and were recognised as intended only for the individual concerned.
Sat on a cliff top in Malta
a young adult is overcome by the beauty of the view. She is overcome too by a
sense of peace and calm that seems to come from inside and soak into her from
the outside as well. It is an experience that she goes back to when she feels
low in spirit or in confidence. The girl hugged by God in the chapel finds that
the memory of that experience sustains her through hard times and gives her an
inner strength, a sense of partnership with God. The boy involved in the lorry
accident above is strengthened in his trust in God and he finds it easier to do
the right thing when under pressure.
All of these young people recognise
the sacred nature of these experiences that have so much in common with each
other. But there were also some differences in the way that different
nationalities spoke about such moments in their lives.
Young adults from Eastern
Europe were quicker to name such experiences as religious, as from
God. Those from Western Europe were sometimes
reluctant to put any religious label on their increased awareness. For the
eastern Europeans it seems that these experiences confirm their formal
religious faith and for western Europeans the experience seems to challenge
formal faith.
For eastern Europeans there was a
strong sense of duty emerging from the experience. They came away with a sense
of obligation to do the right thing and to live morally and peacefully
alongside others. For western Europeans the moral and social sense was almost
entirely absent, to be replaced by an intense personal feeling. They were less
likely than eastern Europeans to connect their experience to church or an
external moral code.
For eastern European youth, church
seems to be offering a strong setting for interpreting these experiences in a religious
language. The church is seen as a trusted friend, a sustainer of people in time
of war and oppression and a stable focus when government and politics are in
chaos. In the west the church is seen as well meaning but out of touch with
reality for young adults. Therefore the young person may prefer to hang on to
the vague personal nature of the experience and is far less likely to share it
with others. It becomes a privatised experience.
For all these young people the
experiences have been life changing. For one Belgian it leads her to appreciate
nature and to keep searching it for a sense of the sacred. For another eastern
European, the experience has strengthened his conscience to do the right thing
and admit his faults more often. For another western European youth, his sense
of empathy has increased alongside a respect for nature and the environment.
For another it is the challenge of coping with an illness through the energy of
dream where she is embraced by a figure of Mary the mother of Jesus. For
another it is the ability to work hard for exams with a sense of purpose and
energy that were not there before the experience happened.
These life-changing experiences are
scattered through young lives in a way that should reassure that they are never
far from the presence of God. What they make of them depends very much on how
the young people feel about their church and culture. I will leave one of the
young voices to have the final word:
“I felt hugged from behind. It was so real,
a real presence, that I had to look behind me to check. There was no one there.
I felt so strong, so filled with life. I was connected to everything and
everyone. Whatever happens to me, I know I can live from this experience for
many years.”
