Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – The Holy Father Benedict XVI reserved his last encounter on his pastoral visit to Cagliari for the youth of Sardinia. In the Piazza Yenne, after a greeting from two youth representatives who explained the problems and hopes of their peers, the Holy Father spoke: “Dear young people, you are the hope-filled future of this region, despite the difficulties of which we are all aware. I know your enthusiasm, the desires you nourish and the commitment you show in order to realize them. And I am not unaware of the difficulties and problems you face.” Among these, the Pope mentioned the blight of unemployment and precariousness, emigration, the exodus of the most original and enterprising forces, the consequent displacement from one's environment which sometimes leads to psychological and moral damage, even more than social problems.
“And what can we say", he added, "of the fact that in modern consumer society earnings and success have become the new idols before which so many prostrate themselves?...Possessing material goods and fame have substituted personal efforts to acquire a temperate spirit and form an authentic personality. There is a risk of becoming superficial, of taking dangerous shortcuts in search of success, thus giving life up to experiences that bring immediate satisfaction, but that are in themselves precarious and deceptive.”
Benedict XVI also recalled the encounter that his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, had held with the youth of Sardinia on October 20, 1985, during which he proposed three important values to them, for building a society of fraternity and solidarity. “They are still important today, and thus I can refer once more to them,” Benedict XVI said, placing the importance of the family in the first place. “You all experience the importance of the family, as sons and daughters; brothers and sisters,” Benedict XVI said. “But the capacity to form a new family cannot simply be a given assumption. You must prepare yourselves. In the past, traditional society was more helpful in forming and protecting a family. Today, however, it is not the same. Rather, that is to say it, it is so ‘on paper,’ but in reality, a different mentality has taken over. Other forms of cohabitation are admitted, and sometimes the term 'family' is used for unions that are not, in fact, families at all. Especially in our situation today, couples are much less able to defend the unity of the family, even at the cost of great sacrifices.” The Holy Father told the youth to re-appropriate the value of the family, to “love it nor just for the sake of tradition but as a mature and conscious choice. Love your families and prepare yourselves to love the one that, with God’s help, you will form yourselves.”
The second value is formed by a serious intellectual and moral formation, indispensable for planning and building a personal future and that of society. “The person who tries to offer you ‘discounts’ on this, is not interested in your true well-being,” the Pope affirmed, recalling the fact that “the crisis of a society begins when it no longer knows how to transmit its cultural heritage and its fundamental values to the new generations.” The Pope returned to the question of the “educational emergency” present in our day and that “in order to be faced, requires parents and teachers who are capable of sharing all that is good and true that they have experienced and reflected on, first-hand. The youth must be open, eager to learn and to go back to the original demands and manifestations of the heart.” “Be free, that is, on fire for the truth,” the Holy Father said, recalling that “Jesus said : ‘The truth will make you free', yet modern nihilism preaches the opposite: that freedom will make you true. There are, indeed, those who maintain that there is no truth, thus opening the way to rendering the concepts of good and evil meaningless, even making them interchangeable.”
Lastly, the food that we should always crave, that we should nourish ourselves on, for our personal growth and that of the family and society – the third value – is a sincere and profound faith. “When a sense of the presence and reality of God is lost, everything becomes 'flat' and is reduced to a single dimension. Everything is 'squashed' into the material plane. When everything is considered only in its utility, we no longer capture the essence of what surrounds us, and above all, of the people we meet. When the mystery of God is lost, the mystery of existence also disappears: things and people interest me not for themselves but in the degree to which they satisfy my needs. All this is a cultural reality that is in the air we breath before we are born and that permanently marks us. Faith, in this sense, before being a religious belief, is a way of experiencing reality, a way of thinking, an interior sensibility which enriches human beings.”
Lastly, the Holy Father told of an experience from the life of Saint Augustine and expressed his hope that each one of the youth may “rediscover God as meaning and foundation for all creatures,” and encouraged the youth to be docile to the power of the Spirit: “He will make you Christ’s witnesses. Not with words, but with acts, with a new life...and if you really discover God in the face of Christ, you will no longer think of the Church as an institution external to yourselves, but as your spiritual family, as we are living it right now.”
Before departing from the Cagliari-Elmas Airport to return to Rome, the Holy Father ended the encounter with the youth with these words: “Family, formation, and faith. Dear youth of Cagliari and of all Sardinia, like Pope John Paul II, I also wish to leave you with these three words, three words that you must make your own with the light and strength of the Spirit of Christ. May Our Lady of Bonaria, Patroness and sweet Queen of the Sardinians, guide you, protect you, and accompany you always.” (SL) (Agenzia Fides 9/9/2008)
