An important question today: What can be done about Orthodox young people? Are not many of them losing faith and straying from the Church? The answer of many to this question is: dances, picnics, social gatherings. But this is a worldly answer - as though gathering people together were an end in itself, and a short prayer or talk sufficient to make the occasion ‘religious’ and 'Christian.’ But these things pass and are forgotten, and no one is the more Christian for them.
What does youth want? Not many are really satisfied by the pursuit of pleasure - that is an escape; nor by lectures (though an occasional appropriate lecture might do some good). Youth is full of ideals and wishes to do something to serve these ideals. The answer for someone who wishes to work with youth and to keep them in the Church is to give them something to do, something useful and at the same time idealistic.
Just a minute - just a minute. Now, hold on, Mr. Potter. You’re right when you say my father was no businessman. I know that. Why he ever started this cheap, penny-ante Building and Loan, I’ll never know. But neither you nor anyone else can say anything against his character, because his whole life was - why, in the twenty-five years since he and Uncle Billy started this thing, he never once thought of himself. Isn’t that right, Uncle Billy? He didn’t save enough money to send Harry to school, let alone me. But he did help a few people get out of your slums, Mr. Potter, and what’s wrong with that? Why - here, you’re all businessmen here. Doesn’t it make them better citizens? Doesn’t it make them better customers? You - you said - what’d you say a minute ago? They had to wait and save their money before they even ought to think of a decent home. Wait? Wait for what? Until their children grow up and leave them? Until they’re so old and broken down that they… Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well, in my book he died a much richer man than you’ll ever be."
