Holy Mass at the Youth Fair, Munich (19 November 1980)

On 19 November 1980, the Holy Father celebrated Holy Mass at the Youth Fair in Munich, Bavaria. In his Sermon, the Pope spoke of the “harvest” in the Gospel reading as a human maturation, including and especially the spiritual dimension. 

Dear brothers and sisters,
dear youth!

1. When Christ speaks about the kingdom of God, he often uses images and parables. His metaphor for the “harvest” of the “great harvest” had to remind his listeners of that yearly, so longed-for time when one could finally get ready to harvest the fruits of the earth that had grown with the help of a lot of hard human work and effort to reap.
The word "harvest" directs our thoughts in the same direction today, although we, as people from countries with a high level of industrialization, hardly have any real idea of ​​what the ripening and harvesting of the fruits of the earth means to the farmer and to the farmer in general people mean.

With the image of grain ripening for harvest, Christ means the inner growth and maturing of man.

Man is integrated into his nature and dependent on it. At the same time, however, he surpasses them with the entire inner orientation of his personal being. Therefore, human maturation is different from maturation in nature. He is not just about physical and mental exertion. The spiritual, the religious dimension of his being is therefore an essential part of man's maturation. When Christ speaks of the "harvest," he means that man must mature toward God and then in God himself, in his kingdom, receives the fruit of his struggle and maturing.

I would like to point out this truth of the Gospel to you, you young people of today, with great seriousness and at the same time joyful hope. You are in a particularly important, critical time in your life, in which a lot or even everything is being decided now for your further development, for your future.

Knowledge of the truth is of fundamental importance for the formation of one's own personality, for the development of one's inner humanity. Man can only become really mature in and in the truth. Therein lies the deep meaning of such important education, which the whole system, from schools to universities, must also serve. It must help the young person to get to know and understand the world and themselves; it must help him to see everything through which man's existence and work in the world receive their full meaning. That is why she must also help him to get to know God. Man cannot live without knowing the meaning of his existence.

2. However, this searching, aligning and maturing with the fundamental and full truth of reality is not easy. It has always been necessary to overcome a variety of difficulties. It is precisely this problem that St. What Paul means when he writes in the second letter to the Thessalonians: "Do not be easily disconcerted and frightened... Do not let anyone deceive you in any way!". These words, addressed to that young church among the early Christians, must be read again today against the changed background of our modern civilization and culture. So I would like to call out to you young people today: do not be deceived!

Be thankful when you have good parents who encourage you and point you in the right direction.

Maybe there are more than you can see at first glance. But quite a few suffer from their parents, feel that they are not understood enough or even left alone. Others have to find the path of faith even without or against their parents. Many suffer from school with its "pressure to perform", as you say, from the conditions and constraints at work, from the uncertainty of future career prospects. Shouldn't we be afraid that technical and economic development will destroy people's natural living conditions? And anyway: How will things go on with our world, which is divided into military power blocs, into poor and rich peoples, into free and totalitarian states? Again and again wars flare up in this or that part of the world, bringing death and misery to the people. And then in many parts of the world, near and far, acts of brute force and bloody terror. Even in this place of our Eucharistic celebration we have to commemorate before God the victims who were recently wounded by an explosive device or killed on the outskirts of this large square. It is hard to understand what man is capable of when his mind and heart have gone astray.

It is against this background that we hear the call of the Good News: "Don't be easily disconcerted!". All of these hardships and difficulties are among the obstacles against which we must nurture and test our growth in basic truth. This gives us the strength to help build a fairer, more humane world, and we grow willingness and courage to take on more and more responsibility in the life of society, the state and the church. It is truly no small consolation that, despite many shadows and glooms, there is also very, very much good. It is not missing because it is not talked about enough. Often one has to see all the good that is at work in secret and perhaps only later becomes radiantly visible, want to discover and appreciate. For example, what did Mother Teresa of Calcutta first have to do in small and hidden ways before a surprised world became aware of her and her work? So don't get discouraged so easily!

3. Isn't it the case, however, that in your society, as you experience it in your environment, quite a few who profess Christ have wavered or even lost orientation? And doesn't that have a very detrimental effect, especially on young people? Doesn't that show something of the various temptations to apostasy that the apostle speaks about in his letter?

The Word of God in today's liturgy allows us to glimpse the broad horizon of such apostasy, as it seems to be emerging in our century, and also makes clear its dimensions.

St. Paul writes: "The secret power of unlawfulness is already at work...". Shouldn't we also say that for our time? According to Paul's letter, the secret power of illegality, of falling away from God, has an inner structure and a certain dynamic sequence of stages: "... the man of illegality must appear..., the adversary, who rises above everything that God or sanctuary means, exalted so much that he even sits in the temple of God and poses as God. Here, then, we have an inner structure of denial, of the uprooting of God from the heart of man and the uprooting of God from human society, with the aim, as they say, of a fuller "humanization" of man, that is, to make man human in the fullest sense and to put him in God's place in a certain way, to "divinize" him as it were. However, this structure is very old and we know it from the beginning, from the first chapters of Genesis: namely the temptation to replace the "divinity" (of the image and likeness of God), bestowed on man by the Creator, with the " deification" of man against God - and without God, as is evident in the atheistic presuppositions of some contemporary systems.

Those who refuse the fundamental truth of reality, who make themselves the measure of everything and thus put themselves in God's place, who think more or less consciously that they can do without God, the Creator of the world, without Christ, the Redeemer of mankind who, instead of seeking God, runs after idols is always already on the run from the sole grounding and sheltering truth.

There is the escape within. It can lead to resignation. "It's all pointless after all".

Had Jesus' disciples done so, the world would never have known of Christ's saving message. The. Escape within can take the form of aspired expansion of consciousness. Quite a few young people, including you, are in the process of destroying their inner humanity by fleeing into alcohol and drugs. Fear and desperation are often behind it, but often also pleasure-seeking, a lack of asceticism or irresponsible curiosity to “try” everything once. Or the flight inward leads to pseudo-religious sects that abuse your idealism and enthusiasm and rob you of your freedom of thought and conscience. This also includes the flight to any salvation teachings that purport to achieve true happiness from certain external practices,

Then there is the flight from the fundamental truth outwards, namely into political and social utopias, into some sort of dream images of society. As much as ideals and goals are needed - utopian "magic formulas" do not help, especially since they usually go hand in hand with totalitarian power or the destructive use of violence.

4. You see all this, these multiple avenues of escape from the truth, the secret and sinister power of lawlessness and evil at work. Don't you fall into the temptation of loneliness and forlornness? Today's reading from the prophet Ezekiel gives the answer to that. He speaks of a shepherd who follows the lost sheep into solitude in order to "fetch them back from all the places where they have scattered in the dark, gloomy day".

This shepherd, who seeks out people on the dark road of their loneliness and forlornness and wants to lead them back into the light, is Christ. He is the Good Shepherd. He too is always present in the hidden center of the "mystery of evil" and takes care of the great cause of human existence on this earth. He does it in truth, freeing the heart of man from that fundamental contradiction which lies in wanting the deification of man without or against God, and which creates a climate of loneliness and forlornness. On this path from dark loneliness to true humanity, Christ, the Good Shepherd, takes care of each individual, especially each young person, with the deepest, ensuing and accompanying love.

The prophet Ezekiel goes on to say of this shepherd: “I will bring them out from among the peoples, I will gather them from the countries and I will bring them to their own land. I will lead them to pasture in the mountains of Israel, in the valleys and in every inhabited place of the land." “I want to look for the stray animals, bring back the driven away ones, bandage the injured ones, protect the weak strong ones, the fat and strong ones. I will be their shepherd and care for them as is right."

In this way, Christ wants to accompany the maturing of man in his humanity. He accompanies, nourishes and strengthens us in the life of his Church with his Word and in his sacraments, with the body and blood of his Passover. He nourishes us as the eternal Son of God, makes man partakers of his divine sonship, "divinizes" him inwardly so that he may become "man" in the full sense, so that man, created in the image and likeness of God, may come to maturity in God .

5. It is precisely for this reason that Christ says the harvest is "great". It is great because of man's destiny, which transcends all dimensions. It is great because of human dignity. It is great according to his calling. Great is this marvelous harvest of the kingdom of God in mankind, the harvest of salvation in the history of man, peoples and nations. It is truly great - "but there are but few workers".

What does that mean? That is to say, my dear young people, that you are called, you are called by God. My life, my human life, has meaning when I am called by God in an essential, decisive, definitive call. Only God can call man like that, no one but Him. And this call of God comes unceasingly in and through Christ to each and every one of you: to be laborers in the harvest of your own humanity, to be laborers in the Lord's vineyard, in the messianic harvest of humanity.

Jesus also needs young people from among you who follow his call and want to live like him, poor and single, so as to be a living sign of the reality of God among your brothers and sisters.

God needs priests who let the Good Shepherd take them into the service of His Word and His Sacraments for the people.

He needs religious, men and women, who leave everything to follow him and thus serve the people.

He needs Christian spouses who minister to one another and to their children for the full maturity of humanity in God.

God needs people who are willing to help and serve the poor, the sick, the abandoned, the afflicted, and the emotionally wounded.

The more than 1000 years of glorious history of faith in Christ in your people is rich in people whose example can inspire you in the fulfillment of your great calling. I would like to name just four figures that inspire me today and the city of Munich. In the very beginning of the history of your faith it was St. Korbinian, whose episcopal work laid the foundation for the archdiocese of Munich-Freising. We celebrate his memory in today's liturgy. I am thinking of the holy bishop Benno of Meissen, whose bones rest in the Frauenkirche in Munich. He was a man of peace and reconciliation, preaching non-violence in his day, a friend of the poor and needy. Especially today I am thinking of the great St. Elisabeth, whose motto was: "Love - according to the Gospel". As Princess of the Wartburg, she renounced all the privileges of her class and ended up living entirely for the poor and outcasts. Finally, I would like to point out a man that some of you or your parents still knew personally, the Jesuit Father Rupert Mayer, at whose grave in the center of Munich, in the crypt of the Burgersaal, hundreds of people hold brief prayer retreats every day. Irrespective of the consequences of a serious wound he suffered during an accidental accident in the First World War, he publicly and fearlessly stood up for the rights of the Church and freedom and therefore had to endure the harshness of the concentration camp and exile. the Jesuit Father Rupert Mayer, at whose grave in the center of Munich, in the crypt of the Burgersaal, many hundreds of people hold brief prayer retreats every day. Irrespective of the consequences of a serious wound he suffered during an accidental accident in the First World War, he publicly and fearlessly stood up for the rights of the Church and freedom and therefore had to endure the harshness of the concentration camp and exile. the Jesuit Father Rupert Mayer, at whose grave in the center of Munich, in the crypt of the Burgersaal, many hundreds of people hold brief prayer retreats every day. Irrespective of the consequences of a serious wound he suffered during an accidental accident in the First World War, he publicly and fearlessly stood up for the rights of the Church and freedom and therefore had to endure the harshness of the concentration camp and exile.

Dear young people! Be open to Christ's call to you! Your human life is a "unique adventure and risk" that can become a "blessing and a curse". With regard to you young people, who are the great hope of our future, we want to ask the “Lord of the Harvest” to send each of you, each of your young fellow human beings on this earth, to work in his “great harvest”, accordingly the great abundance of callings and gifts in His kingdom on this earth.

I would like to close with a special blessing to our evangelical brothers and sisters who are celebrating their day of repentance and prayer in this country today. For you, this day is borne by the knowledge and need for constant conversion and by the calling of the Church to commemorate the people and state community in prayer before God. The Roman Catholic Church is connected to you in these concerns. Please keep your fellow Catholics and your brother John Paul and his ministry in the prayers of this day. Amen.

© Copyright 1980 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Copyright © Dicastero per la Comunicazione - Libreria Editrice Vaticana