Mary
Dilecti Amici - Dear Friends
Blessed John Paul II's Apostolic Letter to the Youth of the world in the International Year for Young People, given on Palm Sunday 1985, at the very beginning of World Youth Days.- in English, French, German, Italian, Latin & Spanish
Part 1 ♦ - Part 2 ♦
Dear Friends, Good wishes for International Youth Year
1. "Always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you".
This is the exhortation that I address to you young people at the beginning of the present year. 1985 has been proclaimed by the United Nations Organization International Youth Year, and this is of great significance, first of all for yourselves, and also for people of all ages-individuals, communities and the whole of society. It is of particular significance also for the Church, as the custodian of fundamental truths and values and at the same time as the minister of the eternal destinies that man the great human family have in God himself.
Since man is the fundamental and at the same time the daily way of the Church, it is easy to understand why the Church attributes special importance to the period of youth as a key stage in the life of every human being. You young people are the ones who embody this youth: you are the youth of the nations and societies, the youth of every family and of all humanity; you are also the youth of the Church. We are all looking to you, for all of us, thanks to you, in a certain sense continually become young again. So your youth is not just your own property, your personal property or the property of a generation: it belongs to the whole of that space that every man traverses in his life's journey, and at the same time it is a special possession belonging to everyone. It is a possession of humanity itself.
In you there is hope, for you belong to the future, just as the future belongs to you. For hope is always linked to the future; it is the expectation of "future good things". As a Christian virtue, it is linked to the expectation of those eternal good things which God has promised to man in Jesus Christ. And at the same time, this hope, as both a Christian and a human virtue, is the expectation of the good things which man will build, using the talents given him by Providence.
In this sense the future belongs to you young people, just as it once belonged to the generation of those who are now adults, and precisely together with them it has become the present reality. Responsibility for this present reality and for its shape and many different forms lies first of all with adults. To you belongs responsibility for what will one day become reality together with yourselves, but which still lies in the future.
When we say that the future belongs to you, we are thinking in categories of human impermanence, which is always a journey towards the future. When we say that the future depends on you, we are thinking in ethical categories, according to the demands of moral responsibility, which requires us to attribute to man as a person-and to the communities and societies which are made up of persons-the fundamental value of human acts, resolves, undertaking and intentions.
This dimension is also a dimension proper to Christian and human hope. And in this dimension the first and principal wish that the Church expresses for you young people, through my lips, in this Year dedicated to Youth, is this: that you should "always be prepared to make a defence to any one who calls you to account for the hope that is in you".
Christ speaks to young people
2. These words, once written by the Apostle Peter to the first generation of Christians, have a relationship with the whole of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we shall see this relationship more clearly when we meditate upon Christ's conversation with the young man, recorded by the Evangelists. Among the many texts of the Bible this is the one that especially deserves to be recalled at this point.
To the question: "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?", Jesus replies first with the question: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone". Then he goes on: "You know the commandments: 'Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother'". With these words Jesus reminds his questioner of some of the main commandments of the Decalogue.
But the conversation does not end here. For the young man declares: "Teacher, all these things I have observed from my youth". Then, writes the Evangelist, "Jesus looking upon him loved him, and said to him, 'You lack one thing; go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'"
At this point the atmosphere of the meeting changes. The Evangelist writes that "at that saying his countenance fell, and he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions."
There are still other Gospel passages in which Jesus of Nazareth meets young people - particularly evocative are the two raisings from the dead: of the daughter of Jairus and of the son of the widow of Nain - but we can say without hesitation that the conversation mentioned above is the meeting which is the most complete and richest in content. It can also be said that this meeting has a more universal and timeless character, in other words that in a certain sense it holds good constantly and continually, throughout the centuries and generations. Christ speaks in this way to a young person, a boy or a girl; his conversation takes place in different parts of the world, in the midst of the different nations, races and cultures. Each of you in this conversation is potentially the one he will speak to.
At the same time, all the elements of the description and all the words uttered in that conversation by both sides have a significance which is absolutely essential, and have a specific weight. One can say that these words contain a particularly profound truth about man in general, and, above all, the truth about youth. They are really important for young people.
Permit me therefore to link my reflections in the present Letter mainly to this meeting and this Gospel text. Perhaps in this way it will be easier for you to develop your own conversation with Christ - a conversation which is of fundamental and essential importance for a young person.
Youth is a special treasure
3. We shall begin from what we find at the end of the Gospel text. The young man goes away sorrowful, "for he had great possessions".
There is no doubt that this expression refers to the material possessions of which the young man was owner or heir. Perhaps this is the situation of some, but it is not typical. And therefore the Evangelist's words suggest another way of putting the matter: it is a question of the fact that youth is in itself (independently of any material goods) a special treasure of man, of a young man or woman, and most often it is lived by young people as a specific treasure. I say most often, but not always, not invariably, for in the world there is no lack of people who for various reasons to not experience youth as a treasure. We shall have to speak of this separately.
There are however reasons - and they are also objective reasons - for thinking of youth as a special treasure that a person experiences at this particular period of his or her life. It is a period which is certainly distinguished from the period of childhood (it is precisely the time when one leaves the years of childhood), just as it is also distinguished from the period of full maturity. For the period of youth is the time of a particularly intense discovery of the human "I" and of the properties and capacities connected with it. Before the inner gaze of the developing personality of the - young man or woman, there is gradually and successively revealed that specific and in a sense unique and unrepeatable potentiality of a concrete humanity, in which there is as it were inscribed the whole plan of future life. Life presents itself as the carrying-out of that plan: as "self-fulfillment" .
The question naturally deserves an explanation from many points of view; but to express it in a few words, one can say that the treasure which is youth reveals itself in precisely this shape or form. This is the treasure of discovering and at the same time of organizing, choosing, foreseeing and making the first personal decisions, decisions that will be important for the future in the strictly personal dimension of human existence. At the same time, these decisions are of considerable social importance. The young man in the Gospel was precisely in this existential phase, as we can deduce from the questions he asks in his conversation with Jesus. Therefore also the final words about "great possessions" - meaning wealth - can be understood precisely in this sense: the treasure which is youth itself.
But we must ask the question: does this treasure of youth necessarily alienate man from Christ? The Evangelist certainly does not say this: rather, an examination of the text leads us to a different conclusion. The decision to go away from Christ was definitively influenced only by external riches, what the young man possessed ("possessions"). Not by what he was! What he was, as precisely a young man - the interior treasure hidden in youth - had led him to Jesus. And it had also impelled him to ask those questions which in the clearest way concern the plan for the whole of life. What must I do? "What must I do to inherit eternal life?". What must I do so that my life may have full value and full meaning?
The youth of each one of you, dear friends, is a treasure that is manifested precisely in these questions. Man asks himself these questions throughout his life. But in the time of youth they are particularly urgent, indeed insistent. And it is good that this is so. These questions precisely show the dynamism of the development of the human personality, the dynamism which is proper to your age. You ask yourselves these questions sometimes with impatience, and at the same time you yourselves understand that the reply to them cannot be hurried or superficial the reply must have a specific and definitive weight. It is a question here of a reply that concerns the whole of life, that embraces the whole of human existence.
These essential questions are asked in a special way by those members of your generation whose lives have been weighed down since childhood by suffering: by some physical lack or defect, some handicap or limitation, or by a difficult family or social situation. If at the same time their minds develop normally, the question about the meaning and value of life becomes for them all the more essential and also particularly tragic, for from the very beginning the question is marked by the pain of existence. And how many such young people there are among the multitudes of young people all over the world! In the different nations and societies; in individual families! How many are forced from childhood to live in an institution or hospital, condemned to a certain passivity which can make them begin to feel that they are of no use to humanity!
So can we say that their youth too is a interior treasure? To whom should we put this question? To whom should they put this essential question? It seems that here Christ alone is the competent one to ask, the one whom no one can fully replace.
God is Love
4. Christ replies to the young man in the Gospel. He says: "No one is good but God alone". We have already heard what the young man had asked: "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?". How must I act so that my life will have meaning and value? We could translate his question into the language of our own times. In this context Christ's answer means this: only God is the ultimate basis of all values; only he gives the definitive meaning to our human existence.
Only God is good, which means this: in him and him alone all values have their first source and final completion; he is "the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end". Only in him do values and their authenticity and definitive confirmation. Without him - without the reference to God - the whole world of created values remains as it were suspended in an absolute vacuum. It also loses its transparency, its expressiveness. Evil is put forward as a good and good itself is rejected. Are we not shown this by the very experience of our own time, wherever God has been removed beyond the limits of evaluations, estimations and actions?
Why is God alone good? Because he is love. Christ gives this answer in the words of the Gospel, and above all by the witness of his own life and death: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son". God is good precisely because he "is love".
As we have said, the question about the value of life, about the meaning of life, forms part of the singular treasure of youth. It comes from the very heart of the riches and the anxieties linked with that plan for life that must be undertaken and carried out. Still more so, when youth is tested by personal suffering, or is profoundly aware of the suffering of others; when it experiences a powerful shock at the sight of the many kinds of evil that exist in the world; finally, when it comes face to face with the mystery of sin, of human iniquity (mysterium iniquitatis). Christ's reply is this: "Only God is good"; only God is love. This reply may seem difficult, but at the same time it is firm and it is true; it bears within itself the definitive solution. How I pray that you, my young friends, will hear Christ's reply in the most personal way possible; that you will and the interior path which enables you to grasp it, accept it and undertake its accomplishment!
Such is Christ in the conversation with the young man. Such is Christ in the conversation with each of you. When you say:"Good Teacher", he asks: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone". And therefore: the fact that I am good bears witness to God. "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Thus speaks Christ, the teacher and friend, Christ crucified and risen: always the same yesterday and today and for ever.
This is the kernel, the essential point of the reply to these questions which you young people put to him through the treasure which is within you, which is rooted in your youth. Your youth opens different prospects before you; it offers you as a task the plan for the whole of your lives. Hence the question about values; hence the question about the meaning of life, about truth, about good and evil. When Christ in his reply to you tells you to refer all this to God, at the same time he shows you what the source and foundation of this is in yourselves. For each one of you is the image and likeness of God through the very act of creation. Precisely this image and likeness makes you put the questions that you must ask yourselves. These questions show how man without God cannot understand himself, and cannot even fulfil himself without God. Jesus Christ came into the world first of all in order to make each one of us aware of this. Without him this fundamental dimension of the truth about man would easily sink into obscurity. However, "the light has come into the world", "and the darkness has not overcome it".
The question about eternal life
5. What must I do so that my life may have value, have meaning? This earnest question comes from the lips of the young man in the Gospel in the following form: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Is a person who puts the question in this form speaking a language still intelligible to the people of today? Are we not the generation whose horizon of existence is completely filled by the world and temporal progress? We think primarily in earthly categories. If we go beyond the limits of our planet, we do so in order to launch interplanetary flights, transmit signals to the other planets and send cosmic probes in their direction.
All this has become the content of our modern civilization. Science together with technology has discovered in an incomparable way man's possibilities with regard to matter, and they have also succeeded in dominating the interior world of his thoughts, capacities, tendencies and passions.
But at the same time it is clear that, when we place ourselves in the presence of Christ, when he becomes the confidant of the questionings of our youth, we cannot put the question differently from how that young man put it: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Any other question about the meaning and value of our life would be, in the presence of Christ, insufficient and unessential.
For Christ is not only the "good teacher" who shows the paths of life on earth. He is the witness to that definitive destiny which the human person has in God himself. He is the witness to man's immortality. The Gospel which he proclaimed with his lips is definitively sealed by the Cross and the Resurrection in the Paschal Mystery. "Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him". In his Resurrection Christ has also become the permanent "sign of contradiction" before all programmes incapable of leading man beyond the frontier of death. Indeed at this frontier they silence all man's questionings about the value and meaning of life. In the face of all these programmes, the various ways of looking at the world and the various ideologies, Christ constantly repeats: "I am the resurrection and the life."
And so, dear brothers and dear sisters, if you wish to talk to Christ and to accept all the truth of his testimony, you must on the one hand "love the world" - for God "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" - and at the same time you must acquire interior detachment with regard to all this rich and fascinating reality that makes up "the world". You must make up your mind to ask the question about eternal life. For, the form of this world is passing away", and each of us is subject to this passing. Man is born with the prospect of the day of his death in the dimension of the visible world; at the same time, man, whose interior reason for existence is to go beyond himself, also bears within himself everything whereby he goes beyond the world.
Everything whereby man, in himself, goes beyond the world - though he is rooted in it - is explained by the image and likeness of God which is inscribed in humanity from the beginning. And everything whereby man goes beyond the world not only justifies the question about eternal life but in fact makes it indispensable. This is the question that people have long been asking themselves, not only in the sphere of Christianity but also outside it. You too must find the courage to ask it, like the young man in the Gospel. Christianity teaches us to understand temporal existence from the perspective of the Kingdom of God, from the perspective of eternal life. Without eternal life, temporal existence, however rich, however highly developed in all aspects, in the end brings man nothing other than the ineluctable necessity of death.
Now there is an opposition between youth and death. Death seems far distant from youth. And it is. But since youth means the plan for the whole of life - the plan drawn up in accordance with the criterion of meaning and value during youth too it is essential to ask the question about the end. Human experience left to itself says the same as Sacred Scripture: "It is appointed for men to die once". The inspired writer adds: "And after that comes judgment". And Christ says: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die". So ask Christ, like the young man in the Gospel: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
On morality and conscience
6. To this question Jesus replies: "You know the commandments", and he immediately lists these commandments, which form part of the Decalogue. Moses received them one day on Mount Sinai, at the moment of the Covenant of God with Israel. They were written on tablets of stone and for every Israelite were the daily indication of the path to be taken. The young man who speaks to Christ naturally knows by heart the commandments of the Decalogue; indeed, he can declare with joy: "All these things I have observed from my youth."
We have to presuppose that in the dialogue which Christ develops with each one of you young people the same question is repeated: "Do you know the commandments?" It will be infallibly repeated, because the commandments form part of the Covenant between God and humanity. The commandments determine the essential bases of behavior, decide the moral value of human acts, and remain in organic relationship with man's vocation to eternal life, with the establishment of God's Kingdom in people and among people. In the words of divine Revelation is inscribed the clear code of morality, of which the tablets of the Decalogue of Mount Sinai remain the key- point, and the culmination of which is found in the Gospel: in the Sermon on the Mount and in the commandment of love.
At the same time this code of morality is written in yet another form. It is inscribed in the moral conscience of humanity, in such a way that those who do not know the commandments, in other words the law revealed by God, "are a law to themselves". Thus writes Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans, and he immediately adds: "They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness".
Here we touch upon matters of supreme importance for your youth and for that plan of life that emerges from it.
This plan accepts the prospect of eternal life first of all through the truth of the deeds on which it will be built. This truth of deeds has its foundation in that twofold presentation of the moral law: the one written on the tablets of the Decalogue of Moses and in the Gospel, and the one inscribed in man's moral conscience. And the conscience "presents itself as a witness" to that law, as Saint Paul writes. This conscience - in the words of the Letter to the Romans - is the "conflicting thoughts" which "accuse or perhaps excuse them". Everyone knows how closely these words correspond to our interior reality: each of us from our youth experiences the voice of conscience.
Therefore when Jesus, in his conversation with the young man, lists the commandments: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother", the upright conscience responds with an interior reaction to man's corresponding deeds: it accuses or excuses. But the conscience must not be distorted; the fundamental formulation of the principles of morality must not surrender to deformation by any kind of relativism or utilitarianism.
Dear young friends! The response which Jesus gives to his questioner in the Gospel is addressed to each one of you. Christ asks you about the state of your moral awareness, and at the same time he questions you about the state of your conscience. This is a key question for man: it is the fundamental question of your youth, one that concerns the whole plan of life which must be formed precisely in youth. Its value is the one most closely connected with the relationship of each of you with moral good and evil. The value of this plan depends in an essential way on the authenticity and rectitude of your conscience. It also depends on its sensitivity.
So we find ourselves here at a crucial moment, when at every step time and eternity meet at a level which is proper to man. It is the level of the conscience, the level of moral values: the conscience is the most important dimension of time and history. For history is written not only by the events which in a certain sense happen "from outside"; it is written first of all "from within": it is the history of human consciences, of moral victories and defeats. Here too the essential greatness of man finds its foundation: his authentically human dignity. This is that interior treasure whereby man continually goes beyond himself in the direction of eternity. If it is true that "it is established that people would die only once", it is also true that man carries with him the treasure of conscience, the deposit of good and evil, across the frontier of death, in order that, in the sight of him who is holiness itself, he may find the ultimate and definitive truth about his whole life: "after that comes judgment".
This is just what happens in the conscience: in the interior truth of our acts, in a certain sense, there is constantly present the dimension of eternal life. And simultaneously the same conscience, through moral values, imprints the most expressive seal upon the life of the generations, upon the history and culture of human environments, societies, nations and of all humanity.
In this field how much depends on each one of you!
Such is Christ in the conversation with the young man. Such is Christ in the conversation with each of you. When you say:"Good Teacher", he asks: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone". And therefore: the fact that I am good bears witness to God. "He who has seen me has seen the Father." Thus speaks Christ, the teacher and friend, Christ crucified and risen: always the same yesterday and today and for ever.
This is the kernel, the essential point of the reply to these questions which you young people put to him through the treasure which is within you, which is rooted in your youth. Your youth opens different prospects before you; it offers you as a task the plan for the whole of your lives. Hence the question about values; hence the question about the meaning of life, about truth, about good and evil. When Christ in his reply to you tells you to refer all this to God, at the same time he shows you what the source and foundation of this is in yourselves. For each one of you is the image and likeness of God through the very act of creation. Precisely this image and likeness makes you put the questions that you must ask yourselves. These questions show how man without God cannot understand himself, and cannot even fulfil himself without God. Jesus Christ came into the world first of all in order to make each one of us aware of this. Without him this fundamental dimension of the truth about man would easily sink into obscurity. However, "the light has come into the world", "and the darkness has not overcome it".
The question about eternal life
5. What must I do so that my life may have value, have meaning? This earnest question comes from the lips of the young man in the Gospel in the following form: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Is a person who puts the question in this form speaking a language still intelligible to the people of today? Are we not the generation whose horizon of existence is completely filled by the world and temporal progress? We think primarily in earthly categories. If we go beyond the limits of our planet, we do so in order to launch interplanetary flights, transmit signals to the other planets and send cosmic probes in their direction.
All this has become the content of our modern civilization. Science together with technology has discovered in an incomparable way man's possibilities with regard to matter, and they have also succeeded in dominating the interior world of his thoughts, capacities, tendencies and passions.
But at the same time it is clear that, when we place ourselves in the presence of Christ, when he becomes the confidant of the questionings of our youth, we cannot put the question differently from how that young man put it: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" Any other question about the meaning and value of our life would be, in the presence of Christ, insufficient and unessential.
For Christ is not only the "good teacher" who shows the paths of life on earth. He is the witness to that definitive destiny which the human person has in God himself. He is the witness to man's immortality. The Gospel which he proclaimed with his lips is definitively sealed by the Cross and the Resurrection in the Paschal Mystery. "Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him". In his Resurrection Christ has also become the permanent "sign of contradiction" before all programmes incapable of leading man beyond the frontier of death. Indeed at this frontier they silence all man's questionings about the value and meaning of life. In the face of all these programmes, the various ways of looking at the world and the various ideologies, Christ constantly repeats: "I am the resurrection and the life."
And so, dear brothers and dear sisters, if you wish to talk to Christ and to accept all the truth of his testimony, you must on the one hand "love the world" - for God "so loved the world that he gave his only Son" - and at the same time you must acquire interior detachment with regard to all this rich and fascinating reality that makes up "the world". You must make up your mind to ask the question about eternal life. For, the form of this world is passing away", and each of us is subject to this passing. Man is born with the prospect of the day of his death in the dimension of the visible world; at the same time, man, whose interior reason for existence is to go beyond himself, also bears within himself everything whereby he goes beyond the world.
Everything whereby man, in himself, goes beyond the world - though he is rooted in it - is explained by the image and likeness of God which is inscribed in humanity from the beginning. And everything whereby man goes beyond the world not only justifies the question about eternal life but in fact makes it indispensable. This is the question that people have long been asking themselves, not only in the sphere of Christianity but also outside it. You too must find the courage to ask it, like the young man in the Gospel. Christianity teaches us to understand temporal existence from the perspective of the Kingdom of God, from the perspective of eternal life. Without eternal life, temporal existence, however rich, however highly developed in all aspects, in the end brings man nothing other than the ineluctable necessity of death.
Now there is an opposition between youth and death. Death seems far distant from youth. And it is. But since youth means the plan for the whole of life - the plan drawn up in accordance with the criterion of meaning and value during youth too it is essential to ask the question about the end. Human experience left to itself says the same as Sacred Scripture: "It is appointed for men to die once". The inspired writer adds: "And after that comes judgment". And Christ says: "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die". So ask Christ, like the young man in the Gospel: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"
On morality and conscience
6. To this question Jesus replies: "You know the commandments", and he immediately lists these commandments, which form part of the Decalogue. Moses received them one day on Mount Sinai, at the moment of the Covenant of God with Israel. They were written on tablets of stone and for every Israelite were the daily indication of the path to be taken. The young man who speaks to Christ naturally knows by heart the commandments of the Decalogue; indeed, he can declare with joy: "All these things I have observed from my youth."
We have to presuppose that in the dialogue which Christ develops with each one of you young people the same question is repeated: "Do you know the commandments?" It will be infallibly repeated, because the commandments form part of the Covenant between God and humanity. The commandments determine the essential bases of behavior, decide the moral value of human acts, and remain in organic relationship with man's vocation to eternal life, with the establishment of God's Kingdom in people and among people. In the words of divine Revelation is inscribed the clear code of morality, of which the tablets of the Decalogue of Mount Sinai remain the key- point, and the culmination of which is found in the Gospel: in the Sermon on the Mount and in the commandment of love.
At the same time this code of morality is written in yet another form. It is inscribed in the moral conscience of humanity, in such a way that those who do not know the commandments, in other words the law revealed by God, "are a law to themselves". Thus writes Saint Paul in his Letter to the Romans, and he immediately adds: "They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness".
Here we touch upon matters of supreme importance for your youth and for that plan of life that emerges from it.
This plan accepts the prospect of eternal life first of all through the truth of the deeds on which it will be built. This truth of deeds has its foundation in that twofold presentation of the moral law: the one written on the tablets of the Decalogue of Moses and in the Gospel, and the one inscribed in man's moral conscience. And the conscience "presents itself as a witness" to that law, as Saint Paul writes. This conscience - in the words of the Letter to the Romans - is the "conflicting thoughts" which "accuse or perhaps excuse them". Everyone knows how closely these words correspond to our interior reality: each of us from our youth experiences the voice of conscience.
Therefore when Jesus, in his conversation with the young man, lists the commandments: "Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honour your father and mother", the upright conscience responds with an interior reaction to man's corresponding deeds: it accuses or excuses. But the conscience must not be distorted; the fundamental formulation of the principles of morality must not surrender to deformation by any kind of relativism or utilitarianism.
Dear young friends! The response which Jesus gives to his questioner in the Gospel is addressed to each one of you. Christ asks you about the state of your moral awareness, and at the same time he questions you about the state of your conscience. This is a key question for man: it is the fundamental question of your youth, one that concerns the whole plan of life which must be formed precisely in youth. Its value is the one most closely connected with the relationship of each of you with moral good and evil. The value of this plan depends in an essential way on the authenticity and rectitude of your conscience. It also depends on its sensitivity.
So we find ourselves here at a crucial moment, when at every step time and eternity meet at a level which is proper to man. It is the level of the conscience, the level of moral values: the conscience is the most important dimension of time and history. For history is written not only by the events which in a certain sense happen "from outside"; it is written first of all "from within": it is the history of human consciences, of moral victories and defeats. Here too the essential greatness of man finds its foundation: his authentically human dignity. This is that interior treasure whereby man continually goes beyond himself in the direction of eternity. If it is true that "it is established that people would die only once", it is also true that man carries with him the treasure of conscience, the deposit of good and evil, across the frontier of death, in order that, in the sight of him who is holiness itself, he may find the ultimate and definitive truth about his whole life: "after that comes judgment".
This is just what happens in the conscience: in the interior truth of our acts, in a certain sense, there is constantly present the dimension of eternal life. And simultaneously the same conscience, through moral values, imprints the most expressive seal upon the life of the generations, upon the history and culture of human environments, societies, nations and of all humanity.
In this field how much depends on each one of you!
"Jesus, looking upon him, loved him"
7. Continuing our examination of Christ's conversation with the young man, we now enter another phase. It is a new and decisive one. The young man has received the essential and fundamental response to the question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" and this response coincides with the whole journey of his life up to this point: "All these I have observed from my youth". How ardently I hope that the journey of the life of each one of you up to this point has similarly coincided with Christ's response! Indeed, it is my hope that your youth will provide you with a sturdy basis of sound principles, that your conscience will attain in these years of your youth that mature clearsightedness that during your whole lives will enable each one of you to remain always a "person of conscience", a "person of principles", a "person who inspires trust", in other words, a person who is credible. The moral personality formed in this way constitutes the most important contribution that you can make to life in the community, to the family, to society, to professional activity and also to cultural and political activity, and finally to the community of the Church - to all those spheres with which you are already or will one day be connected.
It is a question here of a full and profound human authenticity and of an equal authenticity of the development of the human personality, female or male, with all the characteristics which make up the unrepeatable features of this personality, and which at the same time and in different ways have an impact on the life of the community and of the various environments, beginning with the family. Each one of you must in some way contribute to the richness of these communities, first of all by means of what he or she is. Is it not in this direction that the youth which is the "personal" treasure of each of you tends? Man sees himself, his own humanity, both as his own interior world and as the specific area of his being "with others", "for others".
Precisely here the commandments of the Decalogue and of the Gospel take on a decisive meaning, especially the commandment of love which opens the human person to God and neighbor. For charity is the "`bond of perfection". Through charity, man and human fraternity come to fuller maturity. For this reason, love is the greatest and the first of all the commandments, as Christ teaches; and in it all the others are included and made one.
My wish for each of you therefore is that the paths of your youth may meet in Christ, that you may be able to confirm before him, by the witness of your consciences, this evangelical moral code, to the values of which so many individuals of noble spirit have in the course of the generations in some way drawn near.
This is not the appropriate place for quoting the confirmations of this fact which run through the whole history of humanity. What is certain is that from the most ancient times the dictate of conscience has guided every human subject towards an objective moral norm which finds concrete expression in respect for the other person and in the principle of not doing to that person what one would not wish done to oneself.
Here we see already clearly emerging that objective morality of which Saint Paul declares that it is "written on their hearts" and that "their conscience also bears witness" to it. The Christian readily perceives in it a ray from the creating Word that enlightens every man; and precisely because he is a follower of that Word made flesh he rises to the higher law of the Gospel which positively imposes upon him - in the commandment of love-the duty to do to neighbor all the good that he would wish to be done to himself. He thus seals the inner voice of conscience with absolute acceptance of Christ and his word.
It is also my hope that, after you have made the discernment of the essential and important questions for you youth, for the plan of the whole life that lies before you, you will experience what the Gospel means when it says: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him". May you experience a look like that! May you experience the truth that he, Christ, looks upon you with love!
He looks with love upon every human being. The Gospel confirms this at every step. One can also say that this "loving look" of Christ contains, as it were, a summary and synthesis of the entire Good News. If we would seek the beginning of this look, we must turn back to the Book of Genesis, to that instant when, after the creation of man "male and female", God saw that "it was very good". That very first look of the Creator is reflected in the look of Christ which accompanies his conversation with the young man in the Gospel.
We know that Christ will confirm and seal this look with the redemptive Sacrifice of the Cross, because precisely by means of this Sacrifice that "look' reached a particular depth of love. In it is contained an affirmation of man and of humanity such as only he is capable of-Christ the Redeemer and Bridegroom. Only he "knows what is in every man": he knows man's weakness, but he also and above all knows his dignity.
My wish for each of you is that you may discover this look of Christ, and experience it in all its depth. I do not know at what moment in your life. I think that it will happen when you need it most: perhaps in suffering, perhaps together with the witness of a pure conscience, as in the case of that young man in the Gospel, or perhaps precisely in an opposite situation: together with the sense of guilt, with remorse of conscience. For Christ looked at Peter too in the hour of his fall: when he had 3 times denied his Master.
Man needs this loving look. He needs to know that he is loved, loved eternally and chosen from eternity. At the same time, this eternal love of divine election accompanies man during life as Christ's look of love. And perhaps most powerfully at the moment of trial, humiliation, persecution, defeat, when our humanity is as it were blotted out in the eyes of other people, insulted and trampled upon. At that moment the awareness that the Father has always loved us in his Son, that Christ always loves each of us, becomes a solid support for our whole human existence. When everything would make us doubt ourselves and the meaning of our life, then this look of Christ, the awareness of the love that in him has shown itself more powerful than any evil and destruction, this awareness enables us to survive.
My wish for you then is that you may experience what the young man in the Gospel experienced: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him".
7. Continuing our examination of Christ's conversation with the young man, we now enter another phase. It is a new and decisive one. The young man has received the essential and fundamental response to the question: "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" and this response coincides with the whole journey of his life up to this point: "All these I have observed from my youth". How ardently I hope that the journey of the life of each one of you up to this point has similarly coincided with Christ's response! Indeed, it is my hope that your youth will provide you with a sturdy basis of sound principles, that your conscience will attain in these years of your youth that mature clearsightedness that during your whole lives will enable each one of you to remain always a "person of conscience", a "person of principles", a "person who inspires trust", in other words, a person who is credible. The moral personality formed in this way constitutes the most important contribution that you can make to life in the community, to the family, to society, to professional activity and also to cultural and political activity, and finally to the community of the Church - to all those spheres with which you are already or will one day be connected.
It is a question here of a full and profound human authenticity and of an equal authenticity of the development of the human personality, female or male, with all the characteristics which make up the unrepeatable features of this personality, and which at the same time and in different ways have an impact on the life of the community and of the various environments, beginning with the family. Each one of you must in some way contribute to the richness of these communities, first of all by means of what he or she is. Is it not in this direction that the youth which is the "personal" treasure of each of you tends? Man sees himself, his own humanity, both as his own interior world and as the specific area of his being "with others", "for others".
Precisely here the commandments of the Decalogue and of the Gospel take on a decisive meaning, especially the commandment of love which opens the human person to God and neighbor. For charity is the "`bond of perfection". Through charity, man and human fraternity come to fuller maturity. For this reason, love is the greatest and the first of all the commandments, as Christ teaches; and in it all the others are included and made one.
My wish for each of you therefore is that the paths of your youth may meet in Christ, that you may be able to confirm before him, by the witness of your consciences, this evangelical moral code, to the values of which so many individuals of noble spirit have in the course of the generations in some way drawn near.
This is not the appropriate place for quoting the confirmations of this fact which run through the whole history of humanity. What is certain is that from the most ancient times the dictate of conscience has guided every human subject towards an objective moral norm which finds concrete expression in respect for the other person and in the principle of not doing to that person what one would not wish done to oneself.
Here we see already clearly emerging that objective morality of which Saint Paul declares that it is "written on their hearts" and that "their conscience also bears witness" to it. The Christian readily perceives in it a ray from the creating Word that enlightens every man; and precisely because he is a follower of that Word made flesh he rises to the higher law of the Gospel which positively imposes upon him - in the commandment of love-the duty to do to neighbor all the good that he would wish to be done to himself. He thus seals the inner voice of conscience with absolute acceptance of Christ and his word.
It is also my hope that, after you have made the discernment of the essential and important questions for you youth, for the plan of the whole life that lies before you, you will experience what the Gospel means when it says: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him". May you experience a look like that! May you experience the truth that he, Christ, looks upon you with love!
He looks with love upon every human being. The Gospel confirms this at every step. One can also say that this "loving look" of Christ contains, as it were, a summary and synthesis of the entire Good News. If we would seek the beginning of this look, we must turn back to the Book of Genesis, to that instant when, after the creation of man "male and female", God saw that "it was very good". That very first look of the Creator is reflected in the look of Christ which accompanies his conversation with the young man in the Gospel.
We know that Christ will confirm and seal this look with the redemptive Sacrifice of the Cross, because precisely by means of this Sacrifice that "look' reached a particular depth of love. In it is contained an affirmation of man and of humanity such as only he is capable of-Christ the Redeemer and Bridegroom. Only he "knows what is in every man": he knows man's weakness, but he also and above all knows his dignity.
My wish for each of you is that you may discover this look of Christ, and experience it in all its depth. I do not know at what moment in your life. I think that it will happen when you need it most: perhaps in suffering, perhaps together with the witness of a pure conscience, as in the case of that young man in the Gospel, or perhaps precisely in an opposite situation: together with the sense of guilt, with remorse of conscience. For Christ looked at Peter too in the hour of his fall: when he had 3 times denied his Master.
Man needs this loving look. He needs to know that he is loved, loved eternally and chosen from eternity. At the same time, this eternal love of divine election accompanies man during life as Christ's look of love. And perhaps most powerfully at the moment of trial, humiliation, persecution, defeat, when our humanity is as it were blotted out in the eyes of other people, insulted and trampled upon. At that moment the awareness that the Father has always loved us in his Son, that Christ always loves each of us, becomes a solid support for our whole human existence. When everything would make us doubt ourselves and the meaning of our life, then this look of Christ, the awareness of the love that in him has shown itself more powerful than any evil and destruction, this awareness enables us to survive.
My wish for you then is that you may experience what the young man in the Gospel experienced: "Jesus, looking upon him, loved him".
"Follow me"
8. From an examination of the Gospel text we see that this look was, so to speak, Christ's response to the testimony which the young man had given of his life up to that moment, of having acted according to God's commandments: "All these I have observed from my youth."
At the same time, this "look of love" was the introduction to the concluding phase of the conversation. In Matthew's account, it was the young man himself who opened this phase, since not only did he declare the personal fidelity to the commandments of the Decalogue which had marked all his previous conduct, but at the same time he asked a new question. In fact he asked: "What do I still lack?"
This question is a very important one. It shows that in the moral conscience of a person and more precisely of a young person who is forming the plan for his or her whole life, there is hidden an aspiration to "something more". This aspiration makes itself felt in various ways, and we can also observe it among those who seem to be far from our religion.
Among the followers of non-Christian religions, especially Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, we find that for thousands of years there have been hosts of "spiritual men", individuals who often from early youth leave everything in order to live in poverty and purity in the quest for the Absolute that exists beyond the appearances of material things. They strive to attain a state of perfect liberation, they take refuge in God with love and confidence, and with all their souls try to submit to his hidden decrees. They seem impelled by a mysterious inner voice which makes itself heard in their spirit, as it were echoing Saint Paul's words: "The form of this world is passing away", and which guides them to seek things which are greater and more enduring: "Seek the things that are above." They seek the goal with all their strength, working hard to purify their spirit and sometimes reaching the point of making their lives a gift of love to the godhead. They thus become living examples to the people around them, by their very conduct showing the primacy of eternal values over the elusive and sometimes ambiguous values of the society in which they live.
But it is in the Gospel that the aspiration to perfection, to "something more", finds its explicit point of reference. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ confirms the whole moral law, at the centre of which are the Mosaic tablets of the Ten Commandments. But at the same time he confers upon these commandments a new, evangelical meaning. And, as we have already said, it is all concentrated around love, not only as a commandment but also as a gift: "The love of Christ has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us".
In this new context one also comes to understand the programme of the eight Beatitudes which begins the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel.
In this same context the series of commandments which constitute the fundamental code of Christian morality is completed by the series of evangelical counsels, which in a special way express and make concrete Christ's call to perfection, which is a call to holiness.
When the young man asks about the "more": "What do I still lack?", Jesus looks upon him with love, and this love finds here a new meaning. Man is carried interiorly, by the hand of the Holy Spirit, from a life according to the commandments to a life in the awareness of the gift, and Christ's loving look expresses this interior "transition". And Jesus says: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
Yes, my dear young friends! The Christian is capable of living in the dimension of gift. Indeed, this dimension is not only "higher" than the dimension of mere moral obligations known from the commandments but it is also "deeper" and more fundamental. It bears witness to a fuller expression of that plan of life which we begin to construct in our youth. The dimension of gift also creates the mature outline of every human and Christian vocation, as will be said later on.
At this moment, however, I wish to speak to you about the particular meaning of the words which Christ said to the young man. And I do this in the conviction that Christ addresses them in the Church to some of his young questioners in every generation. In ours too. His words therefore signify a particular vocation in the community of the People of God. The Church finds Christ's "Follow me" at the beginning of every call to service in the ministerial priesthood, which simultaneously in the Catholic Church of the Latin Rite is linked to the conscious and free choice of celibacy. The Church finds the same "follow me" of Christ at the beginning of the religious vocation, whereby, through the profession of the evangelical counsels (chastity, poverty and obedience), a man or woman recognizes as his or her own the programme of life which Christ himself lived on earth, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. By professing religious vows, such individuals commit themselves to bearing a particular witness to the love of God above all things, and likewise to that call to union with God in eternity which is directed to everyone. But there is a need for some to bear an exceptional witness to this before other people.
I limit myself merely to mentioning this matter in the present Letter, since it has already been more fully presented elsewhere and on a number of occasions. I mention it here because in the context of Christ's conversation with the young man it acquires a particular clarity, especially the question of evangelical poverty. I also mention it because Christ's call "Follow me", precisely in this exceptional and charismatic sense, usually makes itself heard in youth; sometimes it is even heard in childhood.
It is for this reason that I wish to say this to all of you young people, in this important phase of the development of your personality as a man or a woman: if such a call comes into your heart, do not silence it! Let it develop into the maturity of a vocation! Respond to it through prayer and fidelity to the commandments! For "the harvest is plentiful" and there is an enormous need for many to be reached by Christ's call "Follow me". There is an enormous need for priests according to the heart of God - and the Church and the world of today have an enormous need of the witness of a life given without reserve to God: the witness of that nuptial love of Christ himself which in a particular way will make the Kingdom of God present among people and bring it nearer to the world.
Permit me then to complete still further the words of Christ the Lord about the harvest being plentiful. Yes, this harvest of the Gospel is plentiful, this harvest of salvation! "But the labourers are few!". Perhaps this is felt more keenly today than in the past, especially in certain countries, as also in certain Institutes of consecrated life and similar Institutes.
"Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest", continues Christ. And these words, especially in our times, become a programme of prayer and action for more priestly and religious vocations. With this programme the Church addresses herself to you, to youth. And you too: pray! And if the fruit of this prayer of the Church comes to life in the depths of your heart, listen to the Master as he says: "Follow me
8. From an examination of the Gospel text we see that this look was, so to speak, Christ's response to the testimony which the young man had given of his life up to that moment, of having acted according to God's commandments: "All these I have observed from my youth."
At the same time, this "look of love" was the introduction to the concluding phase of the conversation. In Matthew's account, it was the young man himself who opened this phase, since not only did he declare the personal fidelity to the commandments of the Decalogue which had marked all his previous conduct, but at the same time he asked a new question. In fact he asked: "What do I still lack?"
This question is a very important one. It shows that in the moral conscience of a person and more precisely of a young person who is forming the plan for his or her whole life, there is hidden an aspiration to "something more". This aspiration makes itself felt in various ways, and we can also observe it among those who seem to be far from our religion.
Among the followers of non-Christian religions, especially Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, we find that for thousands of years there have been hosts of "spiritual men", individuals who often from early youth leave everything in order to live in poverty and purity in the quest for the Absolute that exists beyond the appearances of material things. They strive to attain a state of perfect liberation, they take refuge in God with love and confidence, and with all their souls try to submit to his hidden decrees. They seem impelled by a mysterious inner voice which makes itself heard in their spirit, as it were echoing Saint Paul's words: "The form of this world is passing away", and which guides them to seek things which are greater and more enduring: "Seek the things that are above." They seek the goal with all their strength, working hard to purify their spirit and sometimes reaching the point of making their lives a gift of love to the godhead. They thus become living examples to the people around them, by their very conduct showing the primacy of eternal values over the elusive and sometimes ambiguous values of the society in which they live.
But it is in the Gospel that the aspiration to perfection, to "something more", finds its explicit point of reference. In the Sermon on the Mount Christ confirms the whole moral law, at the centre of which are the Mosaic tablets of the Ten Commandments. But at the same time he confers upon these commandments a new, evangelical meaning. And, as we have already said, it is all concentrated around love, not only as a commandment but also as a gift: "The love of Christ has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us".
In this new context one also comes to understand the programme of the eight Beatitudes which begins the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's Gospel.
In this same context the series of commandments which constitute the fundamental code of Christian morality is completed by the series of evangelical counsels, which in a special way express and make concrete Christ's call to perfection, which is a call to holiness.
When the young man asks about the "more": "What do I still lack?", Jesus looks upon him with love, and this love finds here a new meaning. Man is carried interiorly, by the hand of the Holy Spirit, from a life according to the commandments to a life in the awareness of the gift, and Christ's loving look expresses this interior "transition". And Jesus says: "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
Yes, my dear young friends! The Christian is capable of living in the dimension of gift. Indeed, this dimension is not only "higher" than the dimension of mere moral obligations known from the commandments but it is also "deeper" and more fundamental. It bears witness to a fuller expression of that plan of life which we begin to construct in our youth. The dimension of gift also creates the mature outline of every human and Christian vocation, as will be said later on.
At this moment, however, I wish to speak to you about the particular meaning of the words which Christ said to the young man. And I do this in the conviction that Christ addresses them in the Church to some of his young questioners in every generation. In ours too. His words therefore signify a particular vocation in the community of the People of God. The Church finds Christ's "Follow me" at the beginning of every call to service in the ministerial priesthood, which simultaneously in the Catholic Church of the Latin Rite is linked to the conscious and free choice of celibacy. The Church finds the same "follow me" of Christ at the beginning of the religious vocation, whereby, through the profession of the evangelical counsels (chastity, poverty and obedience), a man or woman recognizes as his or her own the programme of life which Christ himself lived on earth, for the sake of the Kingdom of God. By professing religious vows, such individuals commit themselves to bearing a particular witness to the love of God above all things, and likewise to that call to union with God in eternity which is directed to everyone. But there is a need for some to bear an exceptional witness to this before other people.
I limit myself merely to mentioning this matter in the present Letter, since it has already been more fully presented elsewhere and on a number of occasions. I mention it here because in the context of Christ's conversation with the young man it acquires a particular clarity, especially the question of evangelical poverty. I also mention it because Christ's call "Follow me", precisely in this exceptional and charismatic sense, usually makes itself heard in youth; sometimes it is even heard in childhood.
It is for this reason that I wish to say this to all of you young people, in this important phase of the development of your personality as a man or a woman: if such a call comes into your heart, do not silence it! Let it develop into the maturity of a vocation! Respond to it through prayer and fidelity to the commandments! For "the harvest is plentiful" and there is an enormous need for many to be reached by Christ's call "Follow me". There is an enormous need for priests according to the heart of God - and the Church and the world of today have an enormous need of the witness of a life given without reserve to God: the witness of that nuptial love of Christ himself which in a particular way will make the Kingdom of God present among people and bring it nearer to the world.
Permit me then to complete still further the words of Christ the Lord about the harvest being plentiful. Yes, this harvest of the Gospel is plentiful, this harvest of salvation! "But the labourers are few!". Perhaps this is felt more keenly today than in the past, especially in certain countries, as also in certain Institutes of consecrated life and similar Institutes.
"Pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest", continues Christ. And these words, especially in our times, become a programme of prayer and action for more priestly and religious vocations. With this programme the Church addresses herself to you, to youth. And you too: pray! And if the fruit of this prayer of the Church comes to life in the depths of your heart, listen to the Master as he says: "Follow me
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