In a certain sense youth is less perilous than age, for it is more open, more generous, and more easily touched by love. The idealism and romance which fire and awake boyhood are kept alive throughout youth the golden time when as gods we walk the earth. Yet it has in spite of all this, nay, perhaps because of its very perfections and its wonderful powers, even greater dangers; it is more full of blessedness and more full of perils. The corruption of the best is worst, "and festering lilies smell far worse than weeds." The very fearlessness of youth, its love of independence, its fine belief in the nobility of the race, and its utter disregard of every criticism directed against those whom its soul loves, land it not unseldom in difficulties that are largely of its own manufacture. Nor are these difficulties of one sort only. They appeal to the many variously. For some they come in the form of doubts against faith, for the mind in its dawn of strength realizes far more of its powers and far less of its limitations; for others against purity, which the very splendour of their manhood itself creates; for others in a consuming passion for ease and the good things of this world. Life they feel is to be lived, not dawdled. They take the day while the sun is up, make use of every moment that comes and leave willingly to a later day the evil consequences that must follow. Even death they desperately disregard, because what they love is life, and not mere existence. They do not care for length of days, it is not with them (as it is with the old) a mere clinging to life, but a desire to live life to the very full.
Yet different as these temptations are in their appeal and in their manifestations, their cause is nearly always the same: selfishness, want of self-discipline, love of personal pleasure. Oh, that youth, which can be so generous, can be also so mean! Oh, that this golden age of divine perfection, when mind and heart and frame alike seem nearer to our vision of the gods, when the very intensity of pulsating life sweeps with tremulous hand the full strings of human harmonies - that this golden age should turn to tinsel and tawdry show! The youth that denies nothing to itself denies everything to others. The body is so splendid, the mind so eager, the affections so spontaneous, that they can hold themselves in against nothing. It seems a sin against youth to plot and counter-plot against its demands, to refuse it the least of its wishes, to renounce the fulfilment of any of its powers. So it happens that just that period of life which is most open to generous impulses, which is most unselfish in itself and most ready to espouse the cause of everything oppressed and to right every wrong, becomes turned from the high chivalry of its nature to a terrible selfishness. Parents are sacrificed, their rulings scorned, their advice ridiculed and despised. Even the sense of comradeship between father and son, daughter and mother, is swept aside for some friendship that is none too high. All the parents long labour of accumulating a sufficient competence for their children is accepted by these, not with gratitude, but merely as a personal tribute due to their powers and importance.
Indeed, the young must be heroes. Youth cannot rest in a humdrum life, either in things material or spiritual. It cannot continue to make monotonous and feeble efforts at anything for long. With a rush and an impetuosity it must carry its positions, or it will leave them half captured and then turn to some other occupation. Its only success is success. Now, to be heroic means to have self-control, to deny oneself. The body trained is more splendid than one allowed to grow without care: the lean flanks, the straight back, the corded muscles are due to frequent and continued exercise. The perfection of form is not achieved without much violence to the native love of ease. Oftentimes the tired feeling in the evening is due to too little exertion during the day, and is best dispelled not by giving in to it, but by vigorous though brief exercises. The mind cultivated by good education is more charming than the boorish brutality of an undisciplined wit. The well-cared-for appearance is more full of attraction than the slipshod and ungainly disorder of an unkempt man. So must the soul be subject to the rules of love, to the daily Mass if possible, to the regular attendance at the sacraments, to the unselfish regard for others convenience, to the restraint of thought and word and deed that tend to foulness. There alone shall I find that true asceticism which must stamp a true follower of Christ, that knightly denial of all that is evil, and that determined love of all that is fair and beautiful. I must be "the master of my heart, the captain of my soul."
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.