| Young Men Rise Up |
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 Kairos Catholic Journal: Volume 19, Issue 9 “It is the voice of Christ himself, more powerful than the death that lurks within us and around us, a voice calling young men to see how much more is possible than they think and to enter that new world of possibility as they become the men which God has created them to be, alive to their masculinity as Christ was to his.” With these words from the introduction, Canberra Archbishop Mark Coleridge set the stage for Young Men Rise Up, the latest book from the founder of the Missionaries of God’s Love, Fr Ken Barker. Young Men Rise Up, which was launched in Melbourne on 16 May by associate Professor Tracey Rowland of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family, is a book that carries the mark of Fr Barker’s own breadth of experience from years of working pastorally with young men. Most recently, it comes from his involvement with the Young Men of God movement, a support movement for young men that began in Canberra, and is now spreading to other parts of Australia. Young Men Rise Up speaks boldly to the young men of our generation. It is a book that communicates Christ’s words of invitation and challenge to young men to embrace the call and the journey towards responsibility, integrity, commitment and human maturity in all parts of their lives. As Professor Rowland commented in her launch speech, Fr Barker’s challenge to young men is profoundly Christocentric – it is the encounter with the person of Jesus that informs the whole approach found in the book. The title of the book is drawn from the story in Luke’s Gospel of the widow of Nain. In this deeply moving story, Jesus encounters a widow overcome with sorrow as she follows the funeral procession of her only son. We experience Jesus’ tremendous grief at the death and his compassion for the woman. He lays his hand upon her dead son, and draws him back to life with the command: “Young man, rise up!” Fr Barker spoke to those gathered at the launch about his own deep sense of Jesus’ desire to do the same thing in the lives of young men today. Jesus seeks to bring life out of the areas of destruction and damage that undermine the enormous potential of young men, and the truth of their dignity in God. Fr Barker grounds his challenge to young men in the invitation to be open to encounter, in a personal way, the total, unconditional love of God revealed in its fullness in the person of Jesus. Fr Barker is deeply convinced of the capacity for this encounter to give birth to a continuing relationship with Jesus, from which comes the power for authentic, life-giving transformation. In his book, he seeks to ‘put flesh’ on this transformation, to map out something of its concrete unfolding in the life of young men by calling them firmly to a life of virtue. Within the framework of the four traditional cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, Fr Barker seeks to empower young men for real and lasting change in their lives. He desires to enable them to begin to make the concrete choices across all the areas of their lives that will form them more and more in lives of integrity, so as to become men for others. The book openly recognises the very real difficulties faced by young men today. As Fr Barker points out, these difficulties come largely from a culture that promotes a recreational attitude towards sex, widespread substance abuse, irresponsibility towards alcohol, incapacity to commit to long-term relationships, and a relativism in which the only ‘truth’ is your own ‘truth’ or my own ‘truth’ or the ‘truth’ that has won the consent of the majority. In confronting these issues, the book draws on the accumulated wisdom of two thousand years of the Church’s history, experience and reflection, and applies this timeless wisdom to contemporary situations. It is grounded in the Sacred Scriptures and draws from the challenges faced by the great men of faith, in order to present to young men today inspiring male role models. Some of the great saints that Fr Barker presents to us – Augustine, Pier Giorgio Frassati, Marcel Callo, Miguel Pro, Thomas More, Maximilian Kolbe – have sought to respond with great integrity to the often very challenging historical, social and political situations in which they have found themselves. Having done so, these saints now serve to provide inspiration for young men today who struggle with the same issues, though in their own distinct set of historical, social and cultural circumstances. Young Men Rise Up also witnesses to Jesus’ power to change lives through numerous personal testimonies from men with whom Fr Barker has worked pastorally over the years. These testimonies come from men caught in the midst of very real difficulties, disorders or personal brokenness. They have discovered in Jesus the grace to rise up, and the transformative power to move forward with new confidence. They have discovered anew, or for the first time, the truth of their God-given dignity and have begun the journey into greater responsibility and the maturity to which this dignity calls them. Bishop Julian Porteous of Sydney, in his comments at the Sydney launch of the book, noted that for young men today “it is not enough to expect them to recognise and live by the truth”. “There is a need for an exposure to truly life-giving and healing sources … Fr Barker’s book comes at an important time. Young men need assistance and guidance. They need a picture of what a real man is like. They need true models of manhood. They need to be able to deal with and overcome those things that may be crippling their personal growth. There is a need to present a vision of what true masculinity for young men today is like.” It is clearly Fr Barker’s hope that Young Men Rise Up will help to provide such a vision. It unashamedly invites young men to embrace the call to relationship with Jesus, to embrace the deep interior liberation and freedom that this relationship can form within them, and to move from this place to become leaders, grounded in truth and love and their own security of identity, within the Church and within the world. It is a book of hope and promise not only for young men but also their parents, teachers and mentors. |