JUVENTUD MARIANA VICENCIANA

Day full-blown and splendid — day of the immense sun, action, ambition, laughter....

Today I have been asked to speak with you about youth in the Church and in the world. In doing so, I will not disguise my intentions: I want to encourage you young people to live to the full the life that God has given you. I want to encourage you too to be fully alive, alert, active, responsible members of the Church and citizens of the world community.

2. In some parts of the world, religious practice has declined

dramatically among young people. In Rome, where I live, it is almost fashionable for a young person to say: “I’m not a believer.” Practice has fallen beneath 10% in Italy. In Spain, in the last five years, it has declined 13%. In France, some estimate it at 1%. What is the percentage of young people in the United States and Canada who believe deeply and who live out their beliefs? One astute writer here in North America says this: “The great problem confronting the churches today is indifference: “the massive absence of God from so much of the contemporary world — with all the final emptiness, religious cynicism, or meaninglessness of that experience.”^[1]

3. Though there are very significant differences in various parts of the world, increasingly young people have these characteristics in common:

· A deepening immersion in an “information culture.” Most young people today do not grow up in a “Catholic” culture, where their environment and a stable family setting support religious values. Many spend more time each week before the television than they do in school. They breathe in an environment which emphasizes the need to have more material things and to have them quickly, which often glorifies dream-like, but irresponsible, sexual relationships, which draws them to seek immediate gratification rather than work toward long-range goals that can be obtained only through patient, persevering, disciplined labor.

· Plasticity. Life changes quickly for young people. Rapid change is woven into the contemporary fabric of life. A century ago most people lived, worked, and died in their native village. Today, people change jobs, homes (and sometimes spouses or religious commitments) rapidly. Of course, the positive side of this plasticity is “flexibility” and “formability.”

· Hesitancy to make commitments. A young woman I know recently told me that she would never get married in the Church. She could not imagine saying that her marriage was “forever.” The word “forever” sticks in the throat of many young people. They have seen so many broken marriages, so many divided families, so many fractured religious commitments.

· Yearning love. Young people long to know how to love. The desire for significant relationships occupies a huge space in their agenda. In fact, a wise counselor once told me that, for many young people, it is the only item on the agenda. But many too are drawn toward transcendence. They are ultimately unsatisfied in the relationships they experience. They yearn for a love that goes beyond their everyday experience of love.

4. Contemporary research also tells us that a very significant number of young people seek:

· explicit religious goals: they want to know how to pray, to come in contact with God;

· explicit and worldwide service to the most needy^[2]: they want to make a contribution to life, to humanity, and even to leave home or country in order to do that.

It is interesting to note that these are key elements too in the charism of our Vincentian Family.

5. Our own Vincentian youth groups, thanks be to God, are growing remarkably. Today they have more than 62,000 members in about 45 countries. On February 2, 1999, the Holy See approved, for the first time, international statutes for our youth groups. Since that time, largely because of the incredible work of Daughters of Charity and Vincentians, I have been able to approve national statutes for our youth groups in 30 countries. In August 2000, we held in Rome the first General Assembly of our youth groups, with delegates coming from about 35 countries. They elected an international lay president and four lay members of an international council. We now have an International Secretariat in Madrid. It is staffed by young volunteers who come from the Philippines, Brazil and Mexico, offering three years of their lives to serve there.

6. On April 7, 1999, the Holy See approved the International Statutes for MISEVI (Vincentian Lay Missionaries). This newest member of our family has as its goal the sending of lay men and women to the missions ad gentes. MISEVI provides for their formation, their apostolic placement, their community setting, their economic sustenance, their human and spiritual support system, and their eventual reentry into their homeland. We now have permanent lay missionary communities in Honduras, Bolivia, Mozambique and Spain.

7. We talk today a great deal about marketing. It seems to me that much of contemporary society has sold youth the wrong dream: money, the need to have more and to have it right away, dream-like sex, the triumphant lone ranger. An interesting question to pose is this: who are the models young people seek to imitate: Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the saints and martyrs, Mother Teresa? Or are they more likely to be Michael Jordan, Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, and Venus Williams? As I see it, the challenge for us is this: Can we together sell young people Jesus’ dream?

To use the play on words of a contemporary writer, we live in an era of “clashing symbols.” The values that our faith presents and the values that our culture presents often collide with a discordant clang.^[3]

The important thing for all of us, whether young or old, is that we grow continually. Otherwise, we stagnate and die. That is why today I encourage you, as young people, to sing a new song. What shall youth’s song be like at the beginning of the third millennium?

I have known so many young people who know only one song in life. It is a song that they have heard repeatedly on television or whose lyrics are written in newspapers and magazines or on billboards along the street or signs in store windows. This song has an enticing, seductive melody. It encourages them to have and not to be satisfied until they have more and more and more. It urges them to look out for themselves. It emphasizes immediate gratification and shies away from a long-term vision which in our violent society seems distant and uncertain. In its worst version this song substitutes alcohol or drugs or irresponsible sex for the word of God, for concern about the world’s less fortunate, and for solidarity with others in building genuine human relationships.

This seems so obvious, but there is nothing more important. To use a phrase of St. Paul,^[4] all Christian life aims at “putting on the Lord Jesus Christ.” For all the evangelists, Jesus is the absolute center. “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” Jesus says, “no one comes to the Father except through me.” “I am the vine.” “I am the gate.” “I am the shepherd.” “I am the light.” “I am the true bread come down from heaven. The one who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood will live forever.” St. Vincent de Paul once wrote to one of his closest friends: “Remember, we live in Jesus Christ by the death of Jesus Christ and we ought to die in Jesus Christ by the life of Jesus Christ. Our life ought to be hidden in Jesus Christ and full of Jesus Christ and in order to die like Jesus Christ it is necessary to live like Jesus Christ.”^[5]

Today I encourage you to make a commitment that, I assure you, will slowly change your life. Spend a quarter of an hour each day with the Lord in silent, meditative prayer. This is not an easy commitment to keep in the midst of a busy schedule at school or at work or at home. But find a place where, in the words of Matthew’s gospel, you can shut the door on the noise of the world and talk to the Lord and listen to him. Read a small passage from the New Testament if you should like, sitting in a chair in your room and ask the Lord, “Lord, what are you saying to me? What do you want me to do today?”

If you learn to live in the presence of the Lord, to ponder his word, and to love him deeply, then you will surely sing a deeply spiritual song in life.

Learn to work with and pray with others too. In a document written about a year and a half ago, Pope John Paul II says this: “Our Christian communities must become genuine 'schools’ of prayer, where the meeting with Christ is expressed not just in imploring help but also in thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly 'falls in love.’ Intense prayer, yes, but it does not distract us from our commitment to history: by opening our heart to the love of God it also opens it to the love of our brothers and sisters, and makes us capable of shaping history according to God’s plan.”^[6]

So our prayer together should lead to action together. Divorced from action, prayer can turn escapist. It can lose itself in fantasy and create illusions of holiness. But on the other hand, service divorced from prayer can become shallow. It can have a driven quality to it. It can become an addiction.

A healthy spirituality is at its best when it holds prayer and action in dynamic tension with one another. St. Vincent de Paul had the wonderful gift of being an incredibly active man. Yet, at the same time, all of those who lived around him regarded him as a contemplative.

The world community, because of rapid transportation and communication, is becoming ever smaller and smaller, but the gap between the rich and the poor is becoming ever larger and larger. It is hard for most of us here to imagine the terrible imbalance in the distribution of this world’s goods because we usually do not come face to face with the poorest of the poor. Let me give you just one example. Just three weeks ago, on July 1, Time magazine published some remarkable statistics about Africa. The question posed was this: What percentage of the population in various African countries lives on less than $1 a day?

That is just an example from Africa. There are millions of people on every continent who live in dire poverty. I encourage you who are members of our Vincentian Family to open your heart to them more and more as did Vincent de Paul. Make the poor a key element in your vision of the world, in your spirituality. Find practical ways of serving the poor even as you study or work now, or later on wherever you may be. Ask yourself continually: What is the deepest need of the poor person who is crying out to me? What is the AIDS patient’s acutest pain? What is the sick person in his or her home or in a hospital really seeking? What are the children in school where I work or where I visit calling out for.

Be a bearer of good news. Bring the Spirit of the Lord with you wherever you go. In the presence of a person filled with God’s Spirit, people come alive. They dream new dreams and see new visions. The Spirit of the Lord inflames something in their hearts. They begin to hear the deepest voices of reality. They begin to see the possibility of a new heaven and a new earth. They become freed from the inner bonds that hold them back and become eager to pour out their lives with a new and deeper generosity.

Sing this liberation song with others too. Live as an active member of a community of faith. Join youth groups and form youth groups. Breathe in and breathe out God’s spirit with others. Become a “multiplying agent” of God’s Spirit, an ambassador. Pass on generously to others the gifts of the Spirit that you yourself have received.

When others are afraid as they look to the future, breathe out the Lord’s Spirit on them. Say to them, as Jesus says to us again and again: Do not be afraid when some chaos upsets the orderly patterns of life. Do not be afraid of the ups and downs of history. Do not be afraid when darkness descends, because light will shine in the darkness. Do not be afraid if your numbers as believers become smaller, because I can raise up a multitude from a faith-filled remnant. Do not be afraid when death approaches, because I have overcome death. Do not be afraid because I am with you. I am life in the midst of darkness. I am joy in the midst of sorrow. I am hope in the midst of despair. I am alive in your midst and I have come to set you free.

The most recent meeting of the world’s bishops wrote this rousing message to young people:

You, young people, you are “sentinels of the morning.” ... How is the Lord of history asking you to build a civilization of love? You have a keen sense of what honesty and sincerity require. You do not want to be caught up into divisive ethnic struggles nor poisoned by the gangrene of corruption. How can we be disciples of Jesus together and put into practice Christ’s teaching on the Mount of the Beatitudes?

The sentinel in the ancient world was a guard standing on the city walls looking toward the east to catch the first glimpse of the rising sun. Since there were no clocks or bell towers in those days, he beat a drum or rang a gong to wake up the city.

In a Christian worldview, the rising sun is Jesus, the Risen Lord. Oh how I urge you to rouse the world to his presence. Do not settle for indifference. Do not be lulled to sleep by continual hunger for material possessions or an overabundant diet of them. Be deeply aware yourself of the presence of Jesus the Risen Lord, the Rising Sun, and develop a profoundly gospel-centered, service-centered spirituality in your own life.

· where evangelical charity reigns among us and then radiates out to others, especially the poor;

· where we engage in prayer peacefully and faithfully and are able to share our prayer naturally with others too;

· where we support one another and enjoy one another as friends and are also able to share that friendship with the poor who surround us;

· where we encourage one another to renounce immediate gratification for the sake of more important life goals.

While you are still young, be sure to develop an international dimension in your life. We live in the global community. Today events everywhere in the world influence us. If the yen is weak, the New York Stock Market dives. If there is violence in Central America, the number of undocumented people in Los Angeles increases dramatically. I urge you to see the plight of the poor throughout the world, as St. Vincent de Paul did. He lived in an era when most people died within five miles of their birthplace, but he established two international communities that spread quickly from France to Poland, Italy, Algeria, Madagascar, Ireland, Scotland, and that today is in 140 countries throughout the world. I encourage you to look at the newest member of our Vincentian Family, MISEVI, Vincentian Lay Missionaries. It has a well worked out statute for sending people to mission countries to offer their service to the poor for from three to five years.

More than 2500 years ago, reflecting gratefully on the mystery of God, the composer of one of the psalms^[7] cried out, “I will sing and make music for the Lord.” I encourage you today to sing a new song. Sing a deeply spiritual song, not a solo, but a harmonious symphony, a song of service, a liberation song, a wake-up song in the world, a global song. Join the poor in your song. Join other young people in it too. Let it be a rousing, beautiful, melodic hymn, and let it be a mighty chorus resounding to the glory of God and ringing out as good news in the ears of the poor.

^[1]Michael J. Buckley, “Education Marked with the Sign of the Cross,” in America 163 (August 25 - September 1, 1990; # 5) 101.

^[2]Cf. Albert di Ianni, "Religious Vocations: New Signs of the Times," Review for Religious 52 (# 5; September-October 1993) 745-763. Also, D. Nygren and M. Ukeritis, The Future of Religious Orders in the United States (Connecticut: Praeger Press, 1993) 251.

^[3]Michael Paul Gallagher, Clashing Symbols (New York: Paulist Press, 1998).

^[4]Rom 13:14.

^[5]SV I, 295.

^[6]Novo Millennio Ineunte, 33.

^[7]Ps 27:6.